We made it through ISTEP with flying colors. I just wanted to thank you all for packing healthy snacks on those testing days. The students were so thrilled to enjoy snack after the long tests. They also loved reading the letters everyday for an extra boost. 

IREAD practice at home: I would suggest that you use this website: http://msktodd.weebly.com/iread-3--istep-practice.html (students know how to get to this)

I have been using this in the classroom to prepare them for IREAD. Some of them will tell you the student's percent correct. It's also great because it has the math section too, which is for the ISTEP prep. The language arts section is great!
Here are the links I would click:

• Either common core practice test
• Pearson test prep
• Prep dog Reading (not language)
• Mr. Anker's Reading comprehension
• Mrs. Nussbaum's Reading comprehension.
• Soft schools reading comprehension

​Reminders:

We would love to see you on Friday, March 10th at the 5th Annual Serve It Up Volleyball Tournament! Noblesville High School Gym (Enter Gate #5) Admission: $2.00 Doors Open at 4:15 p.m. Tickets are sold at the door the evening of the game.
Promise Road Elementary Staff plays at the following times:

• 5:20-5:35 Promise Road … vs… Hinkle Creek
  
• 6:35-6:50 Hazel Dell … vs… Promise Road
  
• Final Four Tournament Starts at 7:30 p.m.
  
• Championship Match starts at 8:15 p.m.
  

Order your yearbook today! The cost for a standard yearbook is only $16.00. Order now!  The deadline is March 13th for paper and online orders. Order your yearbook at ybpay.lifetouch.com. Enter the ID Code: 11561617. Get your yearbook before it's too late! 

My Website: Remember to use my classroom page on the school website to access resources. It is especially helpful for reading resources as of now.
 
Glue Sticks: Some students are running low on glue sticks! Please ask your child if they are out and have them bring more in if they are. Donations would be much appreciated! Thank you!
 
Boxtops: As a class and school we are still collecting boxtops, so if you have been collecting them at home bring them in any time throughout the year!

Moby Max Math Facts: Students are able to complete this at home. We practice our facts in class and with facts sent home, but students can practice them even more with this website!

Hello there!

I hope this newsletter is finding you well! I assume everyone is enjoying their Fall Break. I apologize for not sending out a newsletter last week. We have been doing a lot of learning these past few weeks. I will do my best to fill you in on what has been happening in room 307! 

​Class Reward: Bring your own Technology to school was a success! The students had a great time sharing their favorite games and apps with friends. There was NO arguing over technology. I saw a lot of collaborating and sharing going on which was great to see:) I can't wait to see what the students pick next time for their class reward. They sure earned it!

Two Fridays ago, I introduced another new website that students will use during their Literacy Tasks each week. It is called Actively Learn. Students are able to sign in, read a story, highlight/ take notes, converse with other students and answer questions. In the past students have really loved it and again, I love the information I get it! They tried it this past week using two articles about Peyton Manning and Jane Goodall. Although they are about the 2014 race for "Person of the Year," I think they are great articles for students to read. Have your child show you! I try to use stories or current non-fiction articles to test their comprehension. 
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PBL: Our first PBL is in full swing. Our driving question is: How can we, as Noblesville citizens, help to improve our community? We are going to be trying to answer this question over the next couple of months. As you know, we already interviewed Noblesville community members to see what they thought were some problems in our city. Students also brought those same interview questions home to interview family members or neighbors. We used that information to make an idea board. If you would like to learn more about what we have come up with some far, check out this link: http://ideaboardz.com/for/Community%20Interviews/2492486 Our next steps are to have students make generalizations about the information we gained. What problems came up a lot? What do we already do well? Then, the students will each pick one of the problems to try and solve. I am excited to see what they come up with!

Reading: We have been talking about making reasonable and realistic predictions based on the information read as well as retelling the story. We were using the book Stone Fox to learn all of  these strategies. We have since finished the story. We found that the end is somewhat of a cliffhanger, so the students are currently in the middle of creating their own "final chapter" to answer a question they were left with. Did Little Willy win the race? What happened to Grandfather? Did they lose the farm? What did Stone Fox do after the race? We also worked on context clues this past week. Students were able to be "Word Detectives" to figure out the meaning of words they are unfamiliar with. 

Writing: We will be publishing our personal narratives the week we get back from break. The students have been working so hard to continue to stretch out their stories and add details. The past two week we learned about paragraphing and analyzed other writing to decide why the author started a new paragraph (new person speaking, setting changed, time changed, new sub-topic). We also learned how to use quotation marks correctly. Students looked at writing to see how this works. They even practiced way to explicitly say how someone said something without using the word "said." After learning writing skill, they edit their story to show it. Lastly, students worked on picking an ending for their story. Just like leads, students tried out different kinds of endings and chose the one they felt made their story the strongest. 

Kindergarten Buddies: We have paired with Miss Brune's class and try to meet every other week. So far we have just read with our buddies, but in the future we plan to do other things as well. Miss Brune shared with me that her kindergarteners get so excited when they see their "3rd grade buddy" around school! I have posted pictures below. They are so precious together:) Ask your child about their buddy. We spent the first meeting trying to get to know them. The most previous visit was spent helping the kindergarteners out with their current PBL. They will be learning about community helpers, which works out well with our current PBL. The 3rd graders read various books to their buddy about community helpers to kick start their learning. 

​These past few weeks the students LOVED learning our new websites "Epic" and "TenMarks." I love the information and data I gain from the sites and they are all so engaged! Epic can be used at home on computers, tablets and IPADs. When signing in you use my email and the password "panthers." The students can then find their name and use their classroom number as the password. 

If you have not signed up for conferences, please remember to do so. I sent out a reminder for you to fill out if you hadn't signed up. You can sign up by filling out that sheet or use the link.
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http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0d4baca62dabfb6-student

Reading: The past few weeks we have spent a lot of time practicing different strategies to help think about our comprehension as we read! We are working towards taking control of our reading lives and finding ways to better them. Encourage your child to make "think marks" with sticky notes or to do a comprehension check as they read.

Writing: We worked on leads for our narratives and trying out different ways to "hook" the reader's attention. Students practiced using dialogue, sound effects, questions, and setting the scene for their leads. 

PBL: We have been working on answering the question, "What are the rights and responsibilities of a citizen at home, school, state and country?" Students were split up into groups to learn about their rights and responsibilities in one of those places. Then, they switched and taught each other what they learned. We also continued to practice interviewing each other for our upcoming PBL project. We watched a kid president video, and the students analyzed what he did well and what he could improve. We created a list of interview expectations from that. I look forward to seeing where this PBL takes us!

Hello! We had yet another great week in third grade. I can't tell people enough how much I love this group of kiddos. We are definitely still working on active listening and appropriate body language, but I know it's something they can fix!

This week I finished benchmarking each students, which means I now have their beginning of the year reading level. I plan to get guided reading groups started next week. 

Students worked on their individual spelling patterns again this week during word study. They complete different sorts with the words, search for words in a story that follow the pattern, and write the words in sentences. They do this all with a partner in their word work notebooks. I am curious to see how this program transfers over into students' writing.

During literacy we also started talking about parts of speech. We discussed nouns, adjectives, and verbs first. Students wrote sentences in their word work notebook and worked with their group to pick out the different parts of speech. We will continue to do this throughout the year. We will eventually work towards extending these sentences by adding parts of speech to make them stronger. 

Ask your child about their new reading partner! This week we learned about interviewing a reading partner and what that looks like. The students glued questions into their reader's notebooks and practiced interviewing their partner. Students are learning to find out more about their partner's reading life to better their own. It was great to see students ask follow up questions and truly listen to their classmate talk about what they like to read. 
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• What are some examples of good body language? Why is good body language important?
• How are some ways to read books like they are "gold"? 
• Explain what the difference is between reading fluency and accuracy? What are some things you can do as a reader to improve these areas?
• What is an adjective? Give some examples.
• What is a watermelon idea? What is a seed idea? 

​Thanks for reading until the end!

Hello parents! We are now three weeks into third grade and things could not be going better! We have started learning routines and procedures for our Literacy Tasks and Guided Math rotations. 
 
We made it through our first round of NWEA! This test will take place three times a year. There is a reading/language arts portion and a math portion. This is a growth-based assessment that will assist us in planning for your child and will also be a way to track their progress. The students did a great job "showing what they know" and I am very anxious to start looking at each of their individual scores and begin planning for them. NWEA scores and information will be reviewed with you at Student Led Conferences in September.
 
This week your child was asked to complete an interest inventory as part of morning work. This will help me help your child choose books, generate writing topics and just get to know them better overall! 

Box Tops: 
Don’t forget to SAVE Boxtops! All classrooms have a collection envelope. Please put your child’s name on the baggie of Boxtops! We could win a class party!
 

Important Dates:
August 24th: Early Release @ 2:30
September 22nd & 27th: Student-Led parent teacher conferences (students released @ 12:40)

Hello! We made it through week two! We are off to a fantastic start to third grade. It has been so fun getting to know your children over the last few weeks. This week we finally started diving into our curriculum and homework has started. I apologize ahead of time for the length of this newsletter, but I do appreciate you taking the time to read it fully.

The first week we worked a lot on getting to know our classmates. We completed several activities that made us communicate with one another in order to find out more about each other. Those activities helped us create a classroom community that I hope only grows stronger as the year progresses.  
 
This week, was more about our classroom routines. We began discussing what readers look like in the classroom and worked on building our reading stamina. We investigated the difference between books this week and came to realize there are sub categories to Fiction and Non-Fiction genres. I challenged the students to always be mindful of what genre they are reading. We also talked about writer's workshop and how our writing block will look. The first writing unit will be writing personals narratives. We began switching for math classes too. 

Leadership Binders
Students began using their "Leadership Binders" this week. In the past they may have been called "Data Binders." Every Monday students will write a goal for the week and their plan to reach that goal. Their goal can relate to academics, behavior, social skills, etc. Basically, anything they feel they need to improve. Students will keep track of all their assessment scores in their Leadership Binder and will set goals each time they log a new score. We talked about how goals are personal and that everyone’s goals will look very different. We create goals as a class as well so students can work together to reach them. 

Next Week...
Reading- Answering a question in writing, Building a Powerful Reading Life, Reading as if Books are Gold, Choosing Books
Writing- Personal Narritives, Generating Ideas, Writing Up a Storm
PBL- 8 Habit Behavior Lessons/ Growth Mindset

*Each newsletter will contain a section titled "Table Talk." In this section I will list questions or prompts that you can use to talk to your child about what we are learning in school. These conversations are great for the dinner table, car rides, or right before bedtime! Here are a few to get you started. 

• What are some ways you can be a "bucket filler" in school?
• What are some freedoms that go with being a level 3 or 4? 
• What does the reading strategy "tune into interesting words" mean? Why is it important?
• What does it mean to have a growth mindset?

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​Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. Thanks for a great start to the school year. Have a great weekend!