Parents please disregard the STAR Diagnostic Reports that were sent home in Monday folders. There is a glitch in the system that generates that report, and our IT Department is currently working with the company to get the issue resolved. I will reprint and send home a new report once the problem is fixed. I apologize for the confusion!
Updated 09/10/12
READING
Please be sure that your student is reading nightly for 20 minutes, recording it in their Agenda, and getting a parent/adult to initial it. There are several students who are not reading and/or recording their reading in their Agenda on the green reading stamp. Please remember good readers become GREAT readers when they read! If your child does not have a green reading stamp in their Agenda for the week, that means that they did not follow our classroom routine and did not have their Agenda available when I was stamping them if they were present at school. Please visit the "Scholastic Book Club" page for information on how to order books for at-home reading.
We will finish reading Who is Neil Armstrong? and will continue working on summarizing, using context clues, main idea and details, and prefixes/root words.
Please click here to visit the Accelerated Reader (AR) page and see what's new with AR this week.
SPELLING/WRITING
Spelling tests will be every other week! Students will write the words in their Agenda on every other Friday so that they can begin previewing the words over the weekend. Our next spelling test will be Friday, September 14th. The spelling list for this week has been posted to SpellingCity.com and is now available. Visit www.spellingcity.com and select the "Week of September 10, 2012". Please remind your child that if he/she is absent from school on Friday, it is THEIR responsibility to get their words when they return to school.
You may also click the links below to access the spelling lists:
08/13/12 - Long and Short A Spelling List
08/27/12 - Long and Short E Spelling List
09/10/12 - Long and Short I Spelling List
In writing this week, we will continue working on parts of a sentence (subject, simple subject, predicate, simple predicate) and writing complete sentences.
SOCIAL STUDIES
We will continue our Native American Unit. This week we will be discussing the Pawnee tribe and will be covering Chapter 2, Lesson 4 in the Social Studies textbook. Our Chapter 2, Lesson 3 Quiz will be Wednesday, September 12. Please make sure your child is studying the Native American graphic organizers we have been completing in class. We will have a Unit Test in about 2 weeks and they do not need to wait until the week of or the night before the test to start studying. I will announce the actual Unit Test date at least a week in advance.
HOMEWORK
Students will receive their Reading and Daily Geography homework packet on Mondays of every week. On the weeks that we have spelling tests, they will also receive a spelling sheet in the packet. The homework packet will be due on Fridays. Any student who completes their packet before Friday is welcome to turn it in early. In addition to the homework packet, it is highly recommended that students are reviewing their social studies and science notes and textbooks nightly. These subjects contain a lot more content than what students saw in 3rd grade, so they should not be waiting until the night before a test to study the material.