12 4 09 Newsletter

HIGH POINTE ELEMENTARY SPELLING LIST

The Brubaker Buzz I S S U E

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DATES TO REMEMBER Christmas break 12/23 @ 12:45 Christmas break 12/23—1/5

A Look Back We had a fantastically busy week. The students worked hard and learned some great new things. We focused primarily on multiplication problems and arrays. We used our brains to figure out the dimensions of arrays when I would give the students the area first. For example, I would say find the dimensions of an array that has the area of 25. They would then figure out the 5 rows of 5 would give them the appropriate number of boxes. We also took our first multiplication test. Keep practicing those flashcards.

During reading we read a story Tornado Alert. During this story we focused on context clues, synonyms, and fact/opinion. On Thursday the students took a quick check-up over the story and complete a context clues activity. Context clues are pretty tough, but knowing how to use the story to help figure out unknown words is always helpful.

We’ll continue our unit of multiplication and

We also started our unit on the U.S. Constitution. The students are really enjoying this. We took the time to write our class constitution during this time as well.

During our writing Overall, we had a time, we revisited our favorite terrific week! I can’t wait to holiday writing. Since I was gone during that writing time, get started next week. I wanted to go back and teach some more concepts that go with a story like that. We learned how to write dialogue, Classroom Rule:

A Peek to Next Week We’ll be just as busy next week. There seems to be a never-ending amount of work to be done in third grade.

when to properly use I or me, and when to capitalize letters. The students are doing great with this writing. The holiday prompt really lends itself to juicy details and a lot of descriptive language.

introduce division as a relative. The students have been doing division in story problems for a long time, however I will now introduce division fact finding and work our way to some fluency. That will take time and come along

Give your best effort. It’s always best to do it right the fist time. with learning multiplication facts. We’ll work on these continually throughout the school year. During reading we will begin our unit on, one of my favorite books, Stone Fox. We’ll refresh our knowledge

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Next Week Cont. of the setting, vocabulary, comparing and contrasting, and look at why authors name books and chapters what they do. This story will take us to Christmas break. During writing we will continue to write on our favorite holiday prompt. This week I will introduce the use of figurative language such as similes,

metaphors, and onomatopoeia. We will also take a second look at strong verbs and words to make our paper much more juicy. We will continue to work our U.S. Constitution studies and develop an understanding of The Declaration of Independence.

Ask Me, I Know! Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. -William Butler Yeats

Draw an array with the area of 30.

My mother and me went to the store.

What is the rule for using I or me in a sentence?

Would you like to go to the store with my mother and me?

Which sentence is correct?

Appreciation and Reminders The donations for our Christmas card activity has been overwhelming! Thank you so much for sending in so many supplies to help us make these! We truly appreciate it.

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Please remember to sign your child’s assignment book each night. Don’t forget to sign and return the math check-ups that come home each Friday.