Week 10: October 24 - October 28

Parents, 
Thank you all for making our conferences a huge success! We believe that communication between parents and teachers is a key component for student achievement, so we truly appreciate your support and involvement. 

Red Ribbon Week!

Each fall during Red Ribbon Week, communities around the country unite to educate children about the benefits of a healthy lifestyle. This year's national Red Ribbon Week theme is YOLO - You Only Live Once...Be Drug Free!!!!!  HCE wants to emphasize the importance of making healthy choices, staying positive, and focusing on the future!

Please encourage your HCE Cougar to participate in the following dress up themes and remind them YOLO!!!!!!

• Monday - "My Future is Bright"   Wear neon.
• Tuesday - "Team Work Makes the Dream Work"   Wear your favorite sports team jersey.
• Wednesday - "Fight For Your Future"   Wear camo.
• Thursday - "Peace, Love, Happiness"   Wear tie dye.
• Friday - "Hair's to a Healthy Lifestyle"   Crazy hair day

Classroom Spelling Bees will be held during the school day this Friday, October 28. The top 2 winners from each class will advance to the School Spelling Bee held on Thursday, December 8. One final Bee practice for all grades will be this Wednesday morning from 7:25 to 7:55 in room 7.

FIELD DAY: Friday, October 28th  Third graders will take the field in a battle of the countries this Friday from 10:15-11:45. Come cheer on your child's team as they race to each event with unleashed spirit!  Lunch this day will be from 12:20 to 12:50.

Please consider supporting Ms. Jackson’s flexible seating Donors Choose fund. 

Jackson

Reading: Readers will continue exploring theme in both familiar and non-familiar texts. Each day, we will focus on a new theme and brainstorm books that model each lesson. Themes/lessons we will focus on this week:

• Teamwork
• Honesty

We will also spend time discussing and writing about the differences between plot and theme. We want our learners to be able to not only identify them, but to support it with text evidence. Students' written responses have been more detailed as we are focusing on citing our thinking with text evidence. 

Writing: Writers will be introduced to new Stories From My Life (or SFML for short) this week to focus on our core questions with unfamiliar texts. We will work on concise retelling through Q1 (What is happening in this story?) and identifying theme/lesson through Q2 (What does this story mean?). Finally, we will map the story on the narrative arc to identify all of the important elements. Writers will continue exploring SFML narratives in their own writing.

Example Story Arc   

Spelling: Students received new sorts/words on Wednesday, October 19th. The assessment on those words will be this Wednesday, October 26th. Remember to utilize the at-home spelling practice if your child could benefit from additional practice at home

Social Studies: We are wrapping up our unit on famous explorers! We will complete our pop-up book (to be showcased during Publisher's Picnic!) with important facts about Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Lewis & Clark, and Christopher Columbus. Our students have loved learning the details of how these explorers have contributed to our nation and our world. 

Math:  This week students will continue their study of subtraction and how it relates to the real world. We will review the different kinds of subtraction (take away, compare, missing part) and the scenarios in word problems that require either addition or subtraction. Distinguishing between the two is critical. Students will try their hand at writing their own story problems based on a short list of criteria and then solve them, keeping in mind the expectations we have followed all year. Students on their addition and subtraction facts need to study for FFW and FFF. Multiplication will only be tested on Friday's FFF. There is no Problem of the Week (POW), but there will be the usual written homework Monday through Wednesday nights. 

Science:  Having completed our Matter unit last week, we move on to investigating mixtures. A mixture is a combination of 2 or more ingredients where the ingredients keep their own properties and can easily be separated. We will discuss the tools used to separate those ingredients because of their properties.