Second Week

We continue to work on building our community with more TRIBES activities that focus on the five agreements: safety first, mutual respect, attentive listening, right to participate, and tolerance and appreciation of others. We will be working together to create posters for each classroom in our POD to remind us all about these expectations.
Many of our students have completed the Achieve Level Set and are working on the steps to complete Achieve activities and thought questions. There will be a time this week in which the students are asked to not go on the Achieve website until it updates some of our district account information.
As we continue to level our students in reading, we look forward to getting them into reading groups in the upcoming days. Also, we are practicing the Daily Five areas too. In particular, we are building our stamina in reading independently and in monitoring our comprehension by taking notes as we read.
In math, we have switched into math groups based on our needs. We continue to review the different math strands. We started with reviewing basic Number and Operations in Base 10 and are now working on Fractions. While we continue to work on the review, we also will focus our main math unit on Base 10 throughout this quarter.
Our first inquiry unit is the Human Body, Health and Nutrition. We are working on reading strategies as we start to build knowledge in this area.
Finally, we are taking MAPS testing in a three-day window. On Monday we took the Language Arts test, on Tuesday we took the Reading test, and on Wednesday we will finish with the Math test. Many students are doing a great job taking their time! Some students may have to finish tests during make-up times in the afternoons during the rest of the week. We will use this information to help guide students' instruction and learning plans as we go forth this quarter.
One thing that would be really helpful from parents is if they could get their students a soft pencil pouch to store pencils, etc. It seems it was left off the supply list. A soft pouch travels well with the students as they transition to various areas of learning. Please make sure to label the pouch too.
Thanks again, and we will continue to keep you posted on upcoming events!