Weekly Updates & Announcements (10.7 – 10.11)

Good Evening Shoe Crew,

I hope this message finds you well and that you had a relaxing weekend. I was up at Wellington Lake camping and enjoyed the cool weather and incredible colors! Hoping you did something to rejuvenate your soul 😊

My updates & announcements for the week:

• 3^rd grade students will be completing their first round of Illuminate Testing (for both Math & ELA) on Tuesday, October 8^th. This is a district-wide progress monitoring tool used to assess student progress towards meeting 3^rd grade state standards. We also use this assessment to prep students for their PARCC assessment at the end of the year. The online format is similar and so are the types of questions that students will be asked. We want to get them familiar with the technology and rigor of the questions, so that by the time PARCC rolls around, they aren’t intimated but rather confident about the assessment.

• Field Work / Chaperone Opportunities:
  1. We will be doing a walking visit to the Hamden Heights Library the afternoon of Thursday, October 17^th. This will be a 1-2 hr commitment. Please let me know if you’d be interested in tagging along!

1. Our first SPREE field work will be to Confluence Park on Thursday, October 23^rd. Looking for chaperones to help lead small groups on this day.

• We are beginning to run low on class snacks. If you are willing and able to donate, the gesture would be greatly appreciated!

• Specials Schedule for the Week:

Group A (Megan)-Tech

Group B (Bri)-Performing Arts

Group C (Kelsey)-Creation Lab

**as the weather begins to cool, pleasure ensure students have appropriate clothes/outer wear for both adventure & recess** 

• Academically Speaking:

Crew: Last week we began unpacking the Habit of ‘Mindfulness’: taking notice of how your body feels and what you see, smell and taste.  Maybe you even feel emotions in your body, perhaps through a tightness somewhere, or a good sensation. Mindfulness is also noticing what your mind is doing. What happens when you start noticing these experiences? The students discussed that some strategies for mindfulness are taking mindful moments, taking deep breaths, “going to your happy place”, and focusing on the NOW. We will continue to unpack and practice this habit and how it lives in our learning as well.

Math: Last week students focused on multiplying using number lines, cube trains, skip counting and arrays as their model. We also explored strategies such as the commutative property, doubling, and using facts you know to help you solve for harder or less known facts. Students took a ‘checkpoint’ on their current understanding of multiplication that I set home in last week’s Friday folders. This week we will begin exploring ratio tables and pushing students to think about the variety of ways we can see multiplication existing in the world.

Expedition: We wrapped up Unit 2 of our expedition last week with students writing a new informative paragraph describing the challenge people face in Mongolia and how this challenge was overcome. Students were asked to write their paragraph independently, using text evidence from My Librarian Is a Camel to support their thinking. I am grading these over the weekend and will send home the scored assessment in this week’s Friday folders. In Unit 3 students move from analyzing challenges faced by others, to learning challenges that they face, specifically with reading. This is framed with the book More Than Anything Else by Marie Bradby, which describes the reading challenges Booker T. Washington faced and how he used perseverance to overcome them. This book will be our anchor text as students begin to look inward and reflect on their own reading challenges and begin to make a plan on how they might overcome them.

As always, I look forward to seeing you all throughout the week. Please reach out with any questions and any desire to volunteer!

Best,

Kelsey