Gala

Families, recently your child brought home a paper reminding you about our 5th Annual Gala event, taking place on Saturday, March 21st.  This is our big fundraising event for the year.  This is a great time to have a night out for a great cause, your children!  Money raised helps provide funds for your child’s school.  Ticket prices will go up after Parent Teacher Conference.

Reminder that Parent Teacher Conference sign up is currently posted.  If your child works with both myself and another teacher, please sign up at the same time on both schedules and we will all sit together for conferences.  Students are encouraged to attend this round of conference, it is a great way to discuss their accomplishments and create accountability.  Reminder that next week, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, are all early out days for conference.  School will be off  Friday the 13th and Monday the 16th.

Student will be able to bring Valentines to exchange on Thursday the 12th,  Any treats will need to be in sealed envelopes to enjoy after school.  Please know that Valentines exchange is completely optional.  For those who wish to participate, I will get a list of our class names to send home with the students in their folders for next Monday.

Home projects were fantastic for January!  Please get started soon on this months assignment.  We will soon be discussing rubrics as an evaluation tool for our home projects.

As always, questions, concerns, or celebrations, please email me.  Thank you, to those of you who have been supporting your students on their IXL, this weeks lessons are posted.  Also, thank you to our third grade families for supporting your child on Utah Compose.  I wish we had more computers to accomidate more time during class for these computer based assignments.  So please, remember to attend our Gala, this money helps to fund our technology and create more computers for our classrooms.

I look forward to visiting with you soon.

SAGE Test

This post applies primarily to our third graders.  This is the big year when students are introduced to standardized state testing.  Last spring, the state piloted a new test, the SAGE test.  Third grade students are tested on their proficiency in the areas of math, language arts, and writing.  Monday, November 3rd, our third grade students will be taking the SAGE interim exam.  This is currently an optional test according to the State Office of Education, but a great tool to both familiarize the students with the SAGE summative test as well as show growth.  I am excited for this optional and feel that this will be a great way to help students know what to expect, come spring, when they are taking the required SAGE summative test.

In addition to iXL, students will be able to access a program called typing web.  My intention is to create time for each third grade child to use the program during their regular morning work cycle.  My hope is that the use of these two programs will help with an important piece of the SAGE test, digital literacy.  These tests are important, but they are only a piece in the assessment of your child.  We are all unique individuals, who learn differently as well as demonstrate knowledge differently.  We ask you to help your child perform well on these tests by encouraging attendance (make up time for these tests are extremely difficult)  a good nights sleep followed by a hearty breakfast that includes protein can make a great difference come test day. (Hopefully, they will have come down from their Halloween sugar high by Monday morning.)  Thank you for your support.