I first wanted to take a moment to thank you all SO much for your donations to our Saturday Live basket!!  It turned out so well and from what I heard it went for about $500 on Saturday!!! Thank you so much for your contributions to our school! 

On Monday Arrowhead is participating in a full school evacuation drill.  At 10:00 on Monday morning we will all leave the school and walk to the Lillis center.  The whole drill will only take about 30-45 minutes, but please make sure that your child is wearing comfortable shoes and has a jacket. 

This week we will continue to practice the reading comprehension skills of inferring and drawing conclusions.  We will also continue our research for our inquiry groups, the kids are looking into the question: What are changes that affect families? 

In math this week we will be using place value blocks as a strategy for subtracting 3 digit numbers.  We will also be practicing subtracting across zero.  When using the place value blocks we are practicing our regrouping tens to ones and hundreds to tens, it is a great visual for the kids.  If you are wanting to practice at home and don't have place-value blocks the kids just draw a box for 100, a line for 10, and a dot for 1.  

Please make sure to practice spelling words ever night at home, this week the skill is long o words.  

This week we are continuing to talk about changes as we read the story Scaredy Squirrel.  We will be working of the reading skills of making inferences, determining word relationships, and drawing conclusions.  

This week in reading we will continue our story about changes.  We will be working on the skills of determining author's purpose, determining important information, and using context clues. 

In math we will continue to use mental math strategies for two digit numbers.  These include using 10's to add and subtract.  For example if you are adding 28 +7, think of 7 as 5+2 so it now becomes 28+(5+2) and they learned last week about the associative or grouping property so they know that they can group that as (28+2)+5. So 28+2=30, 30+5=35, so 28+7=35.  

In Science we are looking at the inside of an egg and in Social Studies we are learning the cardinal directions.  In Art last week we started learning about Vincent Van Gogh, and we painted a look-a-like painting of his Sunflowers.  We tried to paint using one of his techniques where you can really see the brush strokes.  Check out your kiddos art under the tab student work!  They are beautiful!  We will be continuing Van Gogh this week with Starry Night. 

Due to issues with the NWEA browser last week we were unfortunately not able to complete our testing.  We will have our final reading test on Tuesday morning at 8:30.  Thank you so much for your patience with this!

This week we have picture day on Thursday the 19th, as well as Open House on Thursday the 19th from 6-7.  I will be giving two identical presentations, one at 6 and one at 6:30.  

Have a wonderful week!!

The votes are in..... Movie Night is our theme for our Saturday Live basket.  As a class we brainstormed a few ideas of things that we think of for a movie night:

Welcome to our first full week of school! This week will be the kids first experience of NWEA testing.  Our NWEA tests are scheduled on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday of this week at 8:30-10:00 in the morning.  We will be testing Math, Reading, and Language.  These tests are computer based and are a great starting data point for us to look at.  Please help your child by making sure they have a good night sleep the night before and a good breakfast the morning of the test!  Thanks so much!!

I wanted to quickly clarify part of this weeks homework assignment.  I realized this morning that I had printed the reading log for Monday through Friday, since it is due on Fridays I do not expect Friday to be signed for 15 minutes of reading.  It takes me a couple times to get back into the swing of things too!!  So for this week since Monday was a holiday (although I do hope your kiddo was reading that day too) I am only expecting Tuesday through Thursday to be signed.  From here on out it will come home with just Monday- Thursday.  Thank you so much for working with me on this, mistakes and all!! :)  Thank you also for reading at home, I can't stress to you how important this is in your child's reading development!! Have a great week and please contact me with any questions!!