Last Days of October!

Good afternoon!

I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Sight Word Books: Last week, most of the kids were tested again on their sight word books! Many of them did a great job and they received a new sight word book since they tested out of their old one! Woo Hoo!!! Please make sure your child is keeping this book in their BOBCAT binder. Some kiddos did not have their book and therefore could not be tested. I reminded them that if they lose them, they have to pay me $5 Bobcat Bucks for a new one. The kids that were not tested this past week will be tested next week. Since this is taking quite a bit of time to test the kids, we will now be rotating weeks between a boys testing week and a girls testing week. This way, your child will still be tested every other week. Please make sure to run through these at home!

Fall Festival: The Fall Festival is this coming Saturday! I hope everyone has purchased their tickets! We are in need of volunteers, so if you are able to volunteer, please sign up on the sign up genius that Mrs. Nelson sent out last week. Thank you!

Reading Logs: October Reading Logs will be due next week (Oct. 31st)!

Book Bags: Many of you have sent back your book bags for new books. If your child has not finished with their books bags, please hang onto them until they have read them! Again, these books are a great independent reading option at home, since they are chosen based on your child's reading level. New books will be sent home if you returned your book bag soon! Also, make sure you are practicing the comprehension questions as well!

Math: We are finishing up Module 2 this wee (hopefully) and we will be moving into Module 3! We are still working on measurement this week using the metric system. As we chug along in math, I will begin to pick and choose what problems the kids do for homework. Some of the questions I feel are a bit extensive and I want to avoid frustration as much as possible. I want the kids to feel confident in math and I don't want homework to be the reason they feel resentment towards it. My goal is to build a positive math relationship for everyone in class. That being said, some nights they may not have every problem on their math sheet to do. I feel that some are definitely more challenging and can cause frustration at home (believe me, I feel it to when we go over it in class) so please reiterate to your kids that they do not have to do all the problems, just the ones highlighted. If they want an extra challenge, they are more than welcome to do the entire sheet. I want to encourage that mindset as well! I have also noticed that across the board, students need to work extra hard on their math fact fluency (their addition and subtraction facts) We started a new math game online in class that will help with this. It is called Front Row (https://www.frontrowed.com). The kids can log in at home, like Prodigy, with their first and last name. Once on the home page, they will click on the student login. Our class code is: yphkmv

I have also done some digging and have found some fun, free math apps you can download at home! As a primary team, we strongly encourage all students to practice their addition and subtraction facts. In third grade, students will be moving on to multiplication and division tests and the better the kids know their addition and subtraction, the more they will succeed with third grade math concepts.

Links with apps:

https://www.edutopia.org/blog/10-apps-for-math-fluency-monica-burns

http://primarychalkboard.blogspot.com/2015/11/must-have-fact-fluency-apps-for.html