This is going to be a whirlwind week, so come prepared to learn, review, assess, create, write, wrap and party!  All in a certain order of course with the party completeing the week.  With that said, we are also already planning for a fieldtrip at the beginning of January, so if you would like to go with us on January 9th (Destination and more information  to be revealed this week), please comment and let me know. 
Dates to Remember
December 15  SAGE writing 12:45
December 16  Library 
December 17  Happy Birthday Shailynn S.
December 17  SAGE writing 12:45
December 19  Grinch Day 
                             Ugly Sweater Contest
                             School Sing – A – ong
                             Short Day Schedule

Grinch Day
We will be earning hearts to help our Grinch’s heart grow.  At the end of the week we’ll celebrate that Christmas isn’t just about the gifts and the ribbons.   Please make sure to mark the items that your child may have food wise for our Grinch feast (No, it’s not Roast Beast ) on the form at the bottom of this post.

Homework
This is a modified homework week.  We will not be doing sorts or a spelling test, but we will be taking a Spelling Inventory when we come back after the Christmas break.  

Please do your 20 minutes of reading, and math practice as usual. 

Have a fabulous week!

We have 2 weeks until Christmas Break and SO O O O O O O  much to accomplish before  the 19th (Our last day before Christmas!) 
A couple of things to be aware of:

First of all we need to remember the uniform dress standards.  Please review these on the Quest Website.  All jackets and sweaters have to be school colors and no hoods allowed. ID tags should be worn at all times.  If a name badge is miss placed or lost, a new one may be purchased from the office for $5.00

December 10th:  SAGE MathTesting 8:45 – 9:45
December 11th:  Hour of Code 12:45 – 1:45
December 12th:  SAGE Math Testing 8:45 – 9: 45
December 19th: Short day and a $1 dress down day.
                              Ugly Sweater Competition (Participation is optional)
                              Sing Along
                              3rd Grade Grinch Day

If you have any questions or concerns about your child taking the SAGE, please feel free to come chat with me.

THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! Everyone who sent a Cool Whip lid and those who rounded up extras and sent those.  We will be starting our December Parent Surprise this week because of all of you!

We will also be working a blogpost that will be ready to go live on Monday.  We did the descriptions of the baskets that were up for auction, and those write-ups were fabulous.

Homework        
Reading:  Please read 20 minutes every night and record it.  Remember to stop and ask questions about what you read.  

Word Sorts
Red Group:  sort 35
Pink Group: sort 12
Orange Group:  sort 39
Blue Group: Review of  Past Sorts and Assessment

Math
Xtramath.com 3 times a week, and if you would like to work on frontrowed.com it will help you even more with the math concepts we are working on in class. 

Bonus
Who is Admiral Grace Murray Hopper?  Find out who she is and write 2 or 3 sentences about her.  Bring it to me, and I’ll give you a punch!

Thanksgiving is over and the Christmas Season is upon us.   I am thankful that I am at Quest with you and I’m thankful for my fabulous class and their families!  I thought of you all last week, and hope you all had a safe and wonderful break.  Now we are going to work HARD for the next 3 weeks with some fun sprinkled in.

Dates to remember:
Dec. 3rd: Library (We usually go on Tuesday, but this week we go to the library on Wednesday)

COOL WHIP lids!  We are in dire need of Cool Whip lids.  We are starting our Parent Gifts this week and every child will need a cool whip lid.  We have a few more trickle in but really need more.  Please check with your friends, grandparents, aunts, uncles, anybody else who might have one so our projects will turn out.  Thanks for helping us find these for this fun Christmas project.

Homework:

Reading: 20 minutes every night.  
Math: Xtramath.org 
Spelling:  We will be keeping the same sort that we did the week before Thanksgiving.  With all that was going on the that week, we did not give the needed time to our sorts, so we will be keeping them one more week.  We will also be doing assesments that will help indicate if the sorts we have done so far are sticking with the students.  A new placement inventory will be given in January.  This will help me know which sorts will benefit the students the most.

Red Group:  sort 34
Pink Group: sort 11
Orange Group: sort 38
Blue Group: sort 55

Code is a very fun and valuable tool to understand.  We are lucky to have a site that teaches it in a very fun as well as educational way.  The students love using code to make characters they like move about the board.  We do code practice here at school and many of the student’s have requested that I post the code link so they can practice at home and so that we can link quickly at school.

Here’s the code link to get into our classes Code Page:

http://studio.code.org/sections/TEUWPN

This is NOT homework!  Thanks for your support!

Wow!  One more week and Thanksgiving will be here.  This week is a fun and exciting week with a lot going on.  The book fair will be here all week, SEP’s are on Thursday (If you would like to come meet about your child’s progress please let me know as soon as possible, I have 3 spots left.) and the Holiday Basket Voting is going on until Thursday.  Another exciting thing is that our first blog post on the school blog should go up today.  Make sure you check it out.  Every student helped write one of the paragraphs about the baskets.   

A huge thank you goes out to all families that donated to our Holiday Baskets.  We have 5 Sports Themed baskets.  Please come in and vote for your favorite.  The Jazz basket has 4 tickets to a Jazz game, the Weber State Basket has a HUGE number of t-shirts and dry-fit shirts.  The U of U basket has a ton of fan items, USU has t-shirts and cowbells, and last but not least the BYU basket has t-shirts and game snacks.  Remember the grade with the most votes receives a prize for having the “People’s Choice” basket.

We are in need of more Cool Whip Lids.  We currently have 6 lids and need 19 more.  As you do your Thanksgiving making and baking please save your Cool Whip lids and send them to school with your student.  If you don’t buy Cool Whip, please check with family members and see if they might have one to donate.   

Important Dates to Remember;
Nov. 17th   Book Fair All Week
                    Basket Voting All Week
                    Grand Lunch
Nov. 18th   Grand Lunch
Nov. 20th  SEP’s after lunch
Nov. 21st   Early Out Schedule
                    Dollar Dress Down Day
Nov. 24 – 28 Thanksgiving Break 

Homework
Reading:  20 minutes a night and reading articles or information for your research project counts toward this 20 minutes.

Math
Xtramath.org multiplication at least 3 times a week.  Extra practice in Frontrowed.com is great too, but not required.

Word Sorts
Red Group:  sort 34
Pink Group: sort 11
Orange Group: sort 38
Blue Group: sort 55

Important Dates to Remember:
November 11th:  Happy Birthday Jenna S.
                               Spirit Night at Dicky’s Bar-B-Que in Clinton 
November 12th: Basket Donations Due
                              SAGE Interim Language Arts 8:40 am
November 14th: SAGE Interim Language Arts 8:40 am
November 17th – 21st  Book Fair
                               Book Fair Hours
                               Mon-Wed 8 am – 330 pm
                               Thurs 8 am – 630 pm (SEP night)

We are well on our way with multiplication tables, cursive and improving our writing skills.  This week we have a lot going on and will be learning  new things.  We start off the week with learning the SAGE testing system, and we’ll be taking what’s called an interim test.  This means that we will have data that will tell us if were are on the right track for end-of-year success.  The results will help me know where we are with the topics we’ve already learned and help me adjust instruction to support student growth between now and the end of the year.  It will also give us the opportunity to use the SAGE system so it’s not new to us in the spring.

We are still collecting items for our basket.  We have some really fun donations and are hoping to win the “People’s Choice Award”, which will give 3rd Grade  25% of all the money collected.  We are also collecting Box Tops, Soup Labels, Tyson Product School Labels, and Coke Rewards.  These are worth a free dress down day and if we win over all a Pizza and Movie Party.  Last but not least, as you plan for the holidays, we need the lids from your cool whip containers for a Christmas project.  We can’t tell you what it is, because it’s a surprise for our parents.

Our writing program “Strategies of Writing” has a great way to teach how to write a research paper.  We will be starting to research and write our own reports this week.  After the reports are written, we will be creating a PowerPoint to present the information found. It will be so much fun to hear 25 different topics and the way they are presented.

Homework
Reading:  20 minutes a night and reading articles or information for your research project counts toward this 20 minutes.

Math
Xtramath.org multiplication at least 3 times a week.  Extra practice in Frontrowed.com is great too, but not required.

Word Sorts
Red Group:  sort 33
Pink Group: sort 10
Orange Group:  sort 37
Blue Group: sort 54

Hello Friends!

We are in the process of putting together a basket for POQA.  We thought it would be great fun to make a basket for IN STATE University Rivalries.  We are looking for items from BYU, University of Utah, Utah State and Weber State.  (Please notice that those were put in alphabetical order so as not to upset anyone!)  If you have anything, or see anything that you would like to donate, please do, ASAP.  If you go to one of their games in the next week or so, please see if you can snag an extra FAN FREEBIE to add to our basket.  When the baskets are voted on, the most popular basket’s grade will receive 25% of the proceeds.  Yep, Third Grade wants to win!  

Thanks for all you do!

Here’s information from POQA:

Gift Baskets

Sponsored by POQA

Its competition time! Each grade will be responsible for putting together a basket. The theme is up to the grade to decide. Some possible ideas are listed below.

To make this happen, we need some donations from family/friends. Be creative and fun with the donations to fit the theme you’ve chosen. Feel free to ask companies for donations, purchase items, or re-gift items. All donations are due no later than Wednesday, November 12, 2014.

We will have the baskets on display Nov 17-20^th, 2014.

Voting will take place on the baskets to determine which basket is “People’s Choice” or most popular. Additionally, on the morning of Friday, Nov 21, a drawing will take place from the votes placed in that basket. A winner will be drawn for each basket to take home that day!

Grades in Q1 will be competing against each other. Grades in Q2 will be competing against each other. Essentially, this means there will be TWO “People’s Choice” winners. The grade in each school with the most popular basket will receive 25% of proceeds from the votes in that building. 

Voting will take place as follows beginning on Nov 17 and ending at close of business on Nov 20:

Purchase votes:

$1 per vote
             $10 for 12 votes
             $20 for 25 votes

I think the weather changed faster than I was ready for it to.  I was hoping for another week of warm sunshiny days and cooler evenings, but it’s getting cold quickly.  With that in mind, don’t forget to bring a jacket for outside.  Even when it’s cold, we have outside time everyday, so please come prepared for the weather.  I am also finding a lot of sweaters, and jackets without names hanging around after the students go home.  Please make sure you label all articles of clothing your child brings to school.  

I want to thank all of the parents who planned, helped or supported our Halloween activities on Friday.  A great time was had by all!  

Friday we will have a guest teacher, Mrs. Ruby  as I will be gone for the day.  If you have anything you need from me, please contact me before Thursday.

I just want to add a quick side note.  I love teaching your children and I’m really happy to be a part of Quest!  It’s a great place to be!

This week we will be taking a chapter test on multiplication and division of 1’s, 2’s, 5’s and 10’s.  We will also be starting our next unit which is a continuation of Multiplication and Division.  The majority of our class has a great understanding of the concepts taught  in these chapters , we’re just fine tuning skills and mastering the facts.  Many of the kids have asked for the website to Timez Attack, a very fun way to practice multiplication facts, so here’s the link:  TimezAttack.com .  This is a fun, video type game, created by a video game maker who wanted a fun game for his son.  The free version works great!

We will be finishing Stellaluna, and then writing about Candy Corn.  Our students will be experts about this yummy seasonal treat.  We are also going to have the opportunity to use a new tool called Utah Compose, which is a computer based writing program that will help us as we learn to write informational pieces.  This is the first year this is available to 3rd graders.  It will be fun to watch our writing proficiency grow.

We are still in need of Cool Whip lids.  We will be collecting these all month, for a surprise project in December.  We are also collecting  all the box tops, soup labels, and Coke Codes we can get.  Sadly we did not win the free dress down day this time around, but we are going to push hard for the next one.  If we collect the most over all, we will earn a movie and pizza party. 

Homework
Continue reading every night for 20 minutes.  I have had a few parents say that their student does not love this reading time, that means we have not yet found them a great fit book.  Have them talk to me and let’s see if we can’t find something that they love to read.

Math
Xtramth.org at least 3 times a week.  Remember the more you practice, the easier the facts will come. Frontrowed.com is a great option if you want to do more math homework. 

Words Their Way

Dates to Remember
Monday October 27: Happy Birthday David J

Activities for This Week Positive Me
Monday:  Crazy Sock Day
Tuesday: Wear Red
Wednesday: Wear a Team Jersey
Thursday: Wear your favorite Accessory 
Friday: Dress up for Halloween
              Halloween Parade at 9:00
              Halloween Party in Class (Please check the blog tomorrow night for permission for food)
              Short Day

I want to thank all of our wonderful parents for all of your support.  We do so many fun things in the process of learning and your support is fabulous! 

A quick note about the witches.  I am so sorry!  Apparently the sand we used was too wet and the sticks on our witches started to mold.  On Monday I will be sending home a new stick.  Please either dump out the sand and let it dry before putting your witch back together, or  tip the bottle rotate to dry out the sand.  The witches really do last years, and this is the first time they have molded.  

In looking forward to the holidays, we are starting to collect Cool Whip lids.  The Winco Brand of Whipped topping will not work, but the Western Family or Cool Whip brands do.  These will be for a Christmas surprise.  

Multipication Madness is in full swing and we are doing very well.  Keep practicing and I’m sure we’ll have Banana Splits built in no time.

Math
Keep practicing your multiplication and doing Frontrowed.com  We will be looking at patterns in multiplication and learning the patterns in the facts.

Language and Reading
We will still be working on Stellaluna and Bats.  This is really a fun unit and our foldable is going to be so cool!

Technology
We will be finishing our Sun Projects this week and then I will post the finished project here on the blog

Words Their Way
Red Group:  yellow sort 31
Pink Group: green sort 8
Orange Group: green sort 35
Blue Group: green sort 52