Week 2

Dear families,

Please take a few minutes to read this week's focus. 

Sincerely,

Mrs. Waters

Week One Announcements

Dear families,

Thank you for taking your time to meet me during our Meet The Teacher Day. I'm very excited to have your child in my class. 

Please see Week One Focus and Class Schedule if you haven't picked up a copy last Friday:

1. Get to know each other
2. Build relationship and make connections / Buddy Up
3. Learn our class expectations and rules
4. Set up interactive Math Notebook
5. Practice Log in to student account
6. SEL: word of the week - Respect
7. Practice routines and Procedures
8. Ways to represent a number 
9. Use Class Website 
10. Place value and place value chart
11. Compose and decompose whole numbers
12. Expanded form, word form and expanded notations
13. Accountable Talk
14. Math Goal Setting
15. Bulit Math Toolkit
16. Self monitoring skills
17. Problem of the day
18. Growth Mindset
19. Imagine math and Reflex Math 

Best regards,

Mrs. Waters

Week 35

Dear families,

This coming week we'll have the online STAAR assessment.  The campus will be closed to all visitors during the test days May 17-19.  Please be sure you read the LivingTree announcement from the school office. Let me know if you have any questions.

Please make sure our students get a good night's sleep, have a nutritious breakfast, wear comfortable clothes and take a sweater just in case the air conditioning is a little too cold.

Remember children,  I won't be the test admin for my own students. Be sure you take every single step I taught you carefully and patiently to do your best. You have worked very hard the entire school year, this is the time for you to shine! 

I have organized this week's main focus in a chart as follows:

Good Luck!

Week 34

Dear families, 

This coming week we will have the paper based STAAR assessment.  Next week will have the online ones. The campus will be closed to all visitors during the test days May 10 - 12 and May 17-19.  Please be sure you read the LivingTree announcement from the school office. Let me know if you have any questions.

Please make sure our students get a good night's sleep, have a nutritious breakfast, let them wear comfortable clothes and take a sweater just in case the air conditioning is a little too cold.

I have organized this week's main focus in a chart as follows:

Have a great week!

Mrs. Waters

Share and tell Moment

Work With Strategy 

Thank you for ALL you do!

Week 33

Dear families, 

I hope you enjoyed the Dad's Club Crawfish Boil on Sunday. If you were there, you may have noticed a hilarious and clever poster designed by Hernan Benito Juarez, which I attached here too. Congratulations again Hernan. You have done a fantastic job!

STARR is one week away. We are getting ready for it.  Making connections to prior knowledge and renewing our skills, building stamina while pacing our time during our work, analyzing each question and answer choices carefully, taking time to break down the process by using all the necessary strategies.  Asking the teacher to read the questions for you during the test is allowed since it's a math test.  Please do not rush through your work, read, understand, think of the ways to do it, and then answer.

To better prepare our students to perform to their best level this week, each day we will have a number of the day, a main focus skill, a Kamico unit for the class, and mini lessons and interactive games (or challenges) for small groups as in the following chart.

Week 33 Focus

Have a great week!

Mrs. Waters

Week 32 Announcements

Dear families, 

We had a lovely weekend with gentle sun and wind.  Hopefully our class plants in our garden are still growing well. We have two more weeks before STAAR. If your child has missed school days or has forgotten some concepts and skills, please use the Mock STAAR as a reference to review with your child. I'll do my best to help my students in class. In the following week we will focus on reviewing the skills below:

1. Compare fractions with the same denominator in word problems by reasoning about their sizes and justifying the conclusion using symbols, words, objects, and pictorial models. 
2. Compare fractions with the same numerator in word problems by reasoning about their sizes and justifying the conclusion using symbols, words, objects, and pictorial models. 
3. Represent and solve one and two- step multiplication and division problems within 100 using arrays, strip diagrams, and equations.
4. Relate subtraction and division word problem solving 
5. Classify and sort plane figures
6.  Classify and sort two- and three- dimensional figures based on attributes using formal geometric language such as faces, edges and vertices
7. Investigate how environmental conditions affect populations within an ecosystem
8. Explore how adaptations help an organism survive in its environment
9. Fun Friday - rewarding students who maintain excellent conduct and have a good work ethic.  They will have a fun and relaxed lunch in class with me. Snacks and drinks will be served while watching fun and healthy educational movies such as PBS's Planet Earth during lunch block. Students who are invited by Mrs. Waters will bring their own lunch or pick up school lunch. Parents are welcome to donate snack such as gold fish, tangerines & juice boxes starting Monday April 25th.
10. Cycle 5 Report Cards will go home Friday April 29th.

                                 How is our garden growing?

           Wow, 26 inches!

Week 31

Dear families,

Happy Easter Sunday!

The Mock STAAR test result is out. Most of our students did a great job.  If your child rushed through or didn't do their best this time, please encourage them to work hard in the following weeks.  Please keep in mind that we have 16 days to learn, to review and strengthen our knowledge and skills before the real STAAR test on May 10th.

This week we will focus on the following:

1. Review Mock STAAR TEAKS
2. Students will be able to find the appropriate units and tools to measure the weight of objects using the customary system of measurement.
3. Students can find the appropriate units and tools to measure liquid volume using the customary system of measurement.
4. Students can find the appropriate units and tools to measure liquid volume using the metric system of measurement.
5. Students can identify the appropriate units to measure liquid volume and weight.
6. Kamico Assessment
7. Science research project: students will create their own imaginary animal, analyze what components are needed for survival, and design a 3D model of an ecosystem to ensure the survival of that animal
8. Continue planting vegetables in the school garden
9. Spiral Up 2D and 3D figures

Have a great week!

Mrs. Waters

Happy Easter!

Time for a Smile

Congratulations Scarlett!

       John Henry's Math Mock STAAR

           John Henry's  Math Mock STAAR 

Week 30

Dear families,

Texas students 3rd grade and up are required to take the STAAR. Our goal as educators, is to increase our students' performance. The STAAR is one important way to help us know how we are doing in educating our students. The results that we get from the test also help us know where we can concentrate our efforts for continued progress.

As you have received a letter from our school last week, this coming week our 3rd graders will have Mock STAAR Math on Tuesday and Reading on Wednesday. This will help our students get familiar with the format of the test. My goal is to help my students reduce their test taking anxiety and prepare to do the best job possible on the test.  It's important that your child gets plenty of rest each night before the test and has a nutritious breakfast each day that the test is administered.

Thank you for your support.

This week we will focus on the following:

1. Students will be able to explain that credit is used when wants or needs exceed the ability to pay and that it is the borrower's responsibility to pay back the lender, usually with interest.
2. Identifying decisions involving income, spending, saving, credit, and charitable giving. 
3. Students learn Test Taking tips
4. Learning Strategies for reducing students' test anxiety
5. Tuesday: Math Mock STAAR
6. Wednesday: Reading Mock STAAR
7. Science research project: students will create their own imaginary animal, analyze what components are needed for survival, and design a 3D model of an ecosystem to ensure the survival of that animal
8.  Planting vegetables in the school garden

This Friday is a school holiday, the school will be closed.

Have a great week!

Mrs. Waters

                    Sample Student Work

I wonder why ... this one worked out the correct answer first but ...

Week 29

Dear families,

I hope you enjoyed the Spring Fling and had a great weekend.  Spring is finally here. We have prepared seedlings to plant in our school garden. This week we will be focus on financial literacy.

1. Students can determine the value of a collection of coins and bills.
2. Understand the connection between labor(human capital) and income.
3. Understand what credit is and the borrower's responsibility to pay it back to the lender.
4. Understand the benefits of saving.
5. Students can make decisions involving money matters, including identifying costs and benefits of planned and unplanned spending.
6. Understanding the relationship between availability and scarcity of resources and cost.
7. Compare the ways living organisms depend on each other and on their environments such as through food chains.
8. Understand animal decomposition and the organisms that feed on decomposing animals.
9. Students can create food chains to show and describe such as the flow of energy in an aquatic ecosystem.
10. Spiral Up Perimeter and Area.
11. Students will use Kamico Assessment and create their own data tracking bar chart.

Cheers,

Mrs. Waters

               This Bird Pattern is Made Out of a Triangle

                               Cilantro Roots Day One

Cilantro Roots Day Three

                                        Our First Seeding

                      Our Class Bulletin Board of April

                                Mr. A's SEL Lesson on April 1st