Mrs. Foulk's News
9/25/15
Mid-Term Information
The first several weeks of school are spent going over classroom expectations and procedures. Because of this, there are not many grades that have been “officially” taken at this point. Now that I have a more clear picture of your student’s capabilities. I will begin emailing parents if there are specific concerns that I see. I will also let you know what steps I am taking with your student to help them succeed.
If you see a concern on the mid-term, please don’t hesitate to email or call me. Remember, this is the first time your student has received an actual letter grade if they have been in the Blue Spring’s School District. Any of the mid-terms and grade cards that follow this first weeks will have more assignment.
There are not a lot of assignments for writing that have grades. The majority of our year has been used “collecting ideas” for future writing projects. Students are given a grade every quarter for being able to write for an extended period of time. This would mean that they are on-task during our writing time. We will begin to have more specific grades in the area of writing as we get into editing and revising our writing pieces.
If your student “corrected” an assignment because they got below a 70%, it will appear in the gradebook as a 70%. This includes assignments where they received a corrected grade of 100%.
The Lexile score given to your student was determined after they took an online reading assessment. I think this score is a good place to start when beginning to understand a student’s reading ability. However, I also think it is very important for us to take into consideration what they are capable of doing when they are actually reading books. If you think your student’s score is lower or higher than what you see at home, let me know and we can discuss what types of books they are reading in the classroom.
You have two separate flyers coming home for Scholastic this week. One is a flyer for the book fair that is going to be at school during Grandparent’s Day. There is also a “book order” form that can be filled out and returned or completed online. Our class code is LKW66. They will be due the week of Parent/ Teacher Conferences. Purchasing books is always an option. There should be book orders coming home once a month for the rest of the year. You can use the Lexile scores on your student’s mid-term to help decide books that are on their level.
The website you would use to order books off of is https://clubs2.scholastic.com/.
Next Week:
Our next unit will focus on the skills of rounding, estimation and addition/subtraction within 1,000.
Writing:
Students will draft their memoir next week. From there, we will begin discuss how writer's create interesting leads and closing in their writing. We will also be discussing grammar and convention lessons that are appropriate for narrative writing (capitalizing the beginning of sentences, quotations, etc.)
Reading:
We will be using the reading strategies of "Inferring" and "Synthesizing" to end our unit.
Social Studies:
Students will finish their "Three-Branches of Government" unit and begin a science unit on inquiry.
Important Dates:
October 2nd: Grandparent's Day (11 am)
October 7th: Walk-To-School Day
October 8th: 3rd Grade Art Auction and Music PerformanceOur Specials Schedule:
Monday: Computer Lab
Tuesday: Art
Wednesday: Music
Thursday: PE
Friday: Library