10 23 09 Newsletter

HIGH POINTE ELEMENTARY SPELLING LIST

The Brubaker Buzz I S S U E

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A Look Back

everything hidden our monster globe toast collar hello grown along coat coach Africa DATES TO REMEMBER Conferences 10/27 &10/29 10/30 Fall Parties in the gym

11/6 Book Orders due

We had a great first week of second quarter. We introduced a few new concepts that went very well in class. The key to always knowing if the concepts are mastered is the check up that the students take every Friday. If those concepts aren’t mastered, I go back and re-teach them. If only a few students aren’t mastering them, I will get with them one on one to ensure that they understand the lessons. We do move quickly as there are so many objectives that must be mastered by the end of third grade. However, I won’t leave anyone behind. We al l learn at different paces. Sometimes it takes me a couple of times of seeing something before I learn it, too! We concentrated our efforts on learning what attributes are and how they apply to 2-D shapes. We’ll take those

lessons in to 3-D shapes a little later. Attributes are words that describe something. In particular, for us, a 2-D shape. We focused our attention on triangles and quadrilaterals. We got a little behind because we had such great discussions, but we’ll catch up next week! In reading, we finished up Horrible Harry at Halloween. Our lessons that accompanied the book this week were problem/ solution, comparing and contrasting, connecting with the story, and vocabulary. If you take a look at your child’s portfolio, you’ll notice all of our mini-lessons from our week. On the right hand side of the binder will be the lesson that we do together; the left hand side is where they do their work

from questions that I ask them. We learned the difference between laws and ordinances this week. We also set a group of class laws and fines if the laws are broken. We began a writing project about a child who wakes up and finds a castle has appeared outside of his house. This is a cute prompt that really lets the students explore the fantasy side of writing.

Classroom Rule:

Wait your turn

A Peek to Next Week Next week looks daunting to me because of parent/teacher conferences! I truly enjoy how our parent/ teacher conferences are set up. I think you’ll like seeing how your child does things in the classroom. If you need to

know your conference time, please drop me a note so I can tell you. In math, we will spend next week reviewing some tougher lessons and discussing word problem strategies. Words problems in third grade are typically multi

-step problems. Therefore, we need to figure out some great strategies that will help us be successful when tackling these! During reading we will revisit non-fiction books. This story will be about Thomas Jefferson. It’s a great book that tells some great stories about him. We’ll con-

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Next Week Cont. centrate on sequencing of events, timelines, and character. We’ll switch back to science for the upcoming week. Our focus will be on the water cycle. Although this is a super fun unit, we do learn some tough vocabulary and concepts. Be on the lookout for a new class song video about the water cycle! We’ll tie writing into science and write about being in the water

cycle. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you at conferences!

Ask Me, I Know! What are attributes?

There is a brilliant child locked inside every student. -- Marva Collins

Give two attributes of a triangle. Give two attributes of a quadrilateral. What is a law? What is a right angle?

Reminders •

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Don’t forget to sign your child’s assignment book each night. This is a great way for you to know what is going on in the classroom. Also, weekly checkups will be coming home on Friday for

BRUBAKER

BUZZ

you to sign and your child to correct. These are due back on Monday.