Weekly Update: October 25 - October 28

Announcements:

• 1st Nine Weeks Report Cards:  Your child's report card went home yesterday in your child's Thursday folder. Please remove the items inside the envelope. Then, sign the envelope and return it to school. 
• Field Trip Permission Form: The yellow and green field trip permission form went home yesterday in your child's Thursday folder. Please complete and sign the forms. Return forms in your child's folder by no later than next Friday, November 4th. 
• Halloween on Monday: Halloween is on Monday. There is school. Students will have a "normal" day. There might by Halloween themed activities in various subjects. Students are welcome to wear a holiday themed shirt, sweatshirt, hair decorations (ribbons, barrettes, headbands,) that are not distracting to your child or to others. Students should NOT wear their costumes to school. 
• Math Superstars: Challenge your child to show off their math skills as a Math Superstar! Participants who complete all 20 worksheets will receive a prize packet! This program is supported and run by PTA volunteers. Please visit  https://england-pta.memberhub.com/w/programs for more information. If you have any questions, please contact eee.mathsuperstars@gmail.com
• Become a PTA Member: Our school needs parents like you to sign up for PTA. Critical learning tools, field trips, and resources are paid for by our wonderful PTA, but that means we need you!  Please, become a PTA member today. England PTA website
• Home Access Center: Please, check weekly to stay up to date on your child's academic progress. Link to Home Access Center.  Continue to discuss with your child the importance of listening to directions, staying focused on school work and doing his/her personal best on all assignments. Remember, if a student earns below a 70% on any assignment or test, the student can make corrections to earn a possible passing grade (70%) per school district policy. ​​

Upcoming Events:​​​​.​ ​​​​​​​​​​

• Nov 4 - Field Trip Permission Form must be returned
• Nov 7 or 8 - Math Test (Swyers/Lilleboe) - Geometry 
• Nov 11 - Veterans' Day (3 - 5th grade assembly) 
• Nov 16 - 3rd Grade Field Trip to McNeil High School Performing Arts Center 
• Nov 17 - Science Unit 4 Test - Forces, Motion, Gravity and Magnetism

What's Been Happening In Class?  

• Writing: We are deep into our Realistic Fiction stories. Each student has created a character, setting and plot (problem and solution) for their story. We planned out our stories and wrote the introduction. Next week we'll continue to work on our rough drafts by writing the plot, dialogue and conclusion (what the character learned). 
• Reading: We are in a new unit - Characters in literary text (fiction). This week we discussed character traits and how character traits contribute to the plot and theme of a fiction story. We also wrote our first reading response together in our reading notebooks. Reading responses are new this year for the STAAR test. We will continue to practice throughout the year. 
• Math: 
  • ​Swyers and Lilleboe Students: We are currently in our Geometry, Area and Perimeter unit.
    • ​Identify attributes of all quadrilaterals (squares, rectangles, rhombus, trapezoids, parallelograms)
    • Identify attributes of 3 types of triangles
    • Determine the perimeter of a 2D shape
    • Determine the area of a 2D shape
    • Describe the differences between prisms and pyramids
  • Bae/Jones/McKenzie students: Multiplication and Division. Students will use a variety of strategies to solve multiplication problems (arrays, equal groups, repeated addition, number line) and division problems (equal groups, repeated subtraction, skip counting, fact families). Students took their test today!  New unit starts next week!
• Science: We took our Forms of Energy test on Wednesday. Scores are in Home Access. Our new unit is Force, Motion, Gravity and Magnetism. We've taken time to review the terms "push" and "pull". Then, we explored the book collection I created on Epic Books. Kids will have access to this book collection for the duration of the unit. 
• Social Studies: We are beginning our unit on Government. We learned about the 3 branches of government today (Executive, Legislative, Judicial). ​