Friday, September 29, 2017

Next week we have PE on Wednesday

Dear Parents,

We would like to send out a big thank you to our two wonderful guest speakers this week, Mr. Randy Ahrens, Broomfield Mayor and Mr. Fischel, Amber’s dad (3Gr) who gave us a very inspirational talk about having a positive attitude and never giving up.

Please be sure to check your child’s Friday folder today for a permission slip for our first field trip to the Denver Zoo. We will be going on October 20. If you are interested in helping us with this trip, please check the box on the permission slip and make sure that your volunteer documents are in order with the office. If you have any questions about that, please let me know or contact Mary in the office (720-561-8600 or mary.bunge@bvsd.org). I need all permission slips and money for the trip in by October 19. If you have a financial difficulty please let me know as soon as possible. Thank you!

Jog-a-Thon is almost here!  Our class will participate in the Jog-a-Thon from 9:00 to 9:40 on Friday, October 6th.  Jog-a-Thon donation envelopes are coming home in Friday folders today.  Thank you for supporting our school through this fun fundraiser.  

On October 27th Kohl will be hosting our first ever Trunk or Treat!  We would love to have at least one parent volunteer from each third grade class to set up their car trunk with treats for this event.  Please let us know via email if you plan to be set up a trunk or treat station.  Thank you!

CURRICULUM UPDATES:

Literacy: Your child’s login information for ReadingPlus and iReady is in the Friday folder today. If you do not see a highlighted iReady login on the Reading Plus letter, then your child does not have iReady lessons to complete at home.  We are using both programs in the classroom to help improve reading fluency, comprehension and vocabulary development. Your child should be using one of these programs at least once a week at home to support their learning at school.

We have published our first piece of writing- a personal narrative paragraph. These will be on display in the hallway, and we will use this first writing as a baseline for growth throughout the year. Our next writing unit is informational writing. Students will be learning about healthy habits and using this information in a special presentation to share their learning with others. More about this to come...

Math: We will have our first unit assessment on Tuesday. This will cover all multiplications and divisions of 0,1,2,3,4,5,9 and 10 facts. Students will need to be able to solve math fact problems and word problems using both multiplication and division. If your child is not studying/practicing their math facts each night for at least 5 minutes, this might be a very difficult assessment. I will be able to support students on the test by reading the problems, but they need to be able to do the math on their own.

Starting on Thursday, students will begin having Math Dashes. These are short, ‘timed’ fact checks for students. Students will work on each one until they pass it and then move on to the next. The first dash will cover facts of 2s and 5s multiplications. The second is 2s and 5s divisions. When your child passes all of the dashes I will treat them to an ice cream sandwich for all of their hard work. This usually takes several months.

Social Studies/Science: We are wrapping up our first unit in Social Studies, local community government. Students have learned about the many important people in our local government as well as how our local government works and how we can have a voice in our community. We will have an assessment on this unit at the end of next week.

Our next unit will be Science- Life Cycles. We are lucky to have a couple of CU Students, Johnny and Andrew, who will be helping us with a couple of lessons in this unit as well. We met them on Tuesday. They are part of the CUTeach program.

Homework for next week:

• ReadingPlus or iReady lessons at least once per week.

• Check in with your child about their Mystery State assignment.  Help your child practice their Dictado sentence.  This should be written in their homework notebook each week.
• Practice math X and / facts 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, and 10. 5 minutes daily

Here are a few websites for math fact practice:

   https://mathfactspro.com/#/home

   https://www.factmonster.com/math/flashcards

• Have your child use MobyMax to practice math, reading, writing, social studies, science and more!  We have used this site once in class and will continue to use it at least once a week at school.  It is a great resource as it adjusts content and pace for each student’s level and needs.

https://www.mobymax.com/signin

Mark Your Calendar:

Friday, October 6th-Jog-a-Thon 9:00 to 9:40

Friday, October 20- Field Trip to Denver Zoo

Friday, October 27th-Fall Party 1:30-2:30 Parents are welcome to join us in our classroom to celebrate.

Friday, October 27th- Trunk or Treat 5:30-7:30

Enjoy the weekend!  

Sincerely,

Mrs. Aisha Galt

Friday, September 15th, 2017

Next week we have PE on Thursday

Dear Parents,

QUICK REMINDERS:

Saturday, September 16th Broomfield Days Parade: The Broomfield Days Community Parade begins at 9:30 a.m. at Main and Midway Boulevard. If you plan to march with Kohl, please meet up with the parade at Midway and Lamar Street or jump in and join us along the Midway route.

Monday, September 18th is a teacher professional development day.  No School for Students

Literacy: This week during literacy we continued working on parts of a paragraph and used paragraph structure to write small moment personal narratives. Most students have written a few small moment personal narratives.  Next week, students will continue writing small moment narratives and will eventually revise, edit, and publish one of their narratives.

Math: This week we continued to work on multiplication and division. Your child has now been introduced to the multiplications/divisions for 2, 3, 5, 9, 10. Please continue to encourage your child to spend 5 minutes a day practicing these facts. Our expectation is that our third graders will be fluent with all the facts through 10s by the end of this year. The more practice, the easier it gets.

This week we started working on a new computer program called MobyMax. This program starts off with a placement test and then sets lessons for students based on skills they are missing according to their placement test. We are sending home your child’s login information today in Friday folders so that you can work on this at home. We will also continue to work in class on this program.

Social Studies/Science: We have been working on a unit about our community. This week we talked about who works in a community and the difference between public and private services. The kids even had a chance to think and write about what job they might be interested in when they grow up. Next week, we will be exploring who works at City Hall and talking a little about how the government works in a local setting. We will have special guests to talk to the kids about their jobs in the City of Broomfield.

Homework Ideas for next week:

• Check in with your child about their Mystery State assignment.  These are given on Mondays and due on Fridays. The kids did a great job this week learning about Colorado.
• Help your child practice their Dictado sentence.  This should be written in their homework notebook each week.
• Practice math X and / facts 2, 3, 5, 9, and 10.

Here are a few websites for math fact practice:

   https://mathfactspro.com/#/home

   https://www.factmonster.com/math/flashcards

• Have your child use MobyMax to practice math, reading, writing, social studies, science and more!  We have used this site once in class and will continue to use it at least once a week at school.  It is a great resource as it adjusts content and pace for each student’s level and needs. Your MobyMax letter with child’s username and password is in their Friday folder.

https://www.mobymax.com/signin

Mark Your Calendar:

Saturday, September 16th Broomfield Days Parade :The Broomfield Days Community Parade begins at 9:30 a.m. at Main and Midway Boulevard.

Monday, September 18th is a Professional Development day.  No School for Students

Enjoy the long weekend!  

Sincerely,

Aisha Galt

Friday, September 8th           

Dear Parents,

We had a great week in third grade.  We are excited to share that Kohl has a school counselor this year.  Her name is Tiffany Kerr, and she will be meeting with the entire third grade once a week on Tuesdays.  She will work with our students to provide education, prevention, and intervention in academics, career, and personal/social development.  Please visit her website if you are interested in knowing more about the work she will do at Kohl.  https://sites.google.com/bvsd.org/kohlcounselor/home

Please be sure to check your child’s Friday folder. Each child is bringing home a coupon book to sell. You are not required to do this fundraiser. If you choose to keep the book please send in the money for it. If you would like to sell some books to friends and family, take orders on the envelope, collect the money and return it to the school for the books. This is a fun and easy way for Kohl PTA to make money to support our school. Thanks for your help.

Literacy:

This week students continued to build understanding about complete sentences, fragments, and run-ons. We will use this knowledge to start writing small moment paragraphs and practice editing for complete sentences.

We started Dictado this week. This is one method we use to teach students about spelling, vocabulary, punctuation, and writing complete sentences. Each week your child will be given a sentence that they will work on in class and at home. At the end of the week we will have a quiz to see if students have learned the sentence. Your child’s grade will reflect the percent of the sentence correct, including all spelling, punctuation, and capitalization.

Math:

This week we continued working with multiplication and division of 5s and started 2s and 10s. Your child should have come home with a study sheet to help them practice. Starting around the beginning of October we will begin doing timed tests on each of the facts that we have learned. Next week we will be learning facts for 9s, 3s and 4s.

Social Studies:

We spent time investigating what makes our community diverse. In small groups and as a class we explored how different cultures contribute to our cultural diversity through food, languages, holidays, types of shelter, clothing, and traditions.

Homework Ideas for next week:

• Practice x and / facts for 5, 2, 10
• Keep reading 20 minutes or more per day
• Next week a homework book/folder will be coming home with a Mystery State and the Dictado sentence to work on. This will be in your child’s backpack each Monday. We will go over Mystery States in class on Friday.

Mark Your Calendar:

Next week we have PE on Tuesday and Friday

Monday, September 18th: Teacher Professional Development/ No School for Students

Have a wonderful weekend.

Sincerely,

Aisha Galt

Friday, September 1st, 2017

QUICK REMINDERS:

1. NO SCHOOL ON MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4th - LABOR DAY

2. Individual Picture Day-Thursday, September 7th  Don’t forget to turn in your order form, if you would like pictures.

Dear Parents,

We completed our second full week of third grade! Your children worked hard and did a great job keeping up with the new expectations. Here is a recap of our week and a look at what is coming up in our classroom.

Thank you to those of you who have had a chance to pay our $8 third grade fee.  This money is used for project supplies and supplemental reading materials.  If you have not had a chance to turn this money in, please send it to school with your child as soon as possible.  You can also drop it off at the front office.  Thank you!

We are excited to have a Chromebook cart for the third grade this year!  We should have a Chromebook for each third grader in the next month or so, thanks to our generous PTA! Chromebooks greatly improve our access to technology and ability to have all students use computers as learning tool on a regular basis.  Students are encouraged to bring a pair of earbuds or earphones to school.  They will keep them in their desk for the school year. We have earphones available for those who do not bring their own to school.

Literacy:

Next week, we will start Dictado. This sentence dictation activity is one element of our spelling and writing instruction.  The weekly Dictado sentence will contain some words from the BVSD 3rd grade Must Write word list. The list contains 100 words third graders must master by the end of the year. I put a link on my website with all 100 words so you can help your child practice these words at home. https://docs.google.com/a/bvsd.org/file/d/0B539GG5UwPlvSTU3ck45bEgzTlk/edit

Next week, we will continue to review sentence and basic paragraph structure.  We will use these tools to begin writing small moment personal narratives.  Please ask your child to tell you short stories about their day to strengthen their storytelling experiences.

Math:

We started our first math unit on Multiplication and Division. Please review multiplication/division of 5s (0-10) with your child and discuss talk with your child about when you use multiplication in your daily life. For example, at the store you might talk about calculating the cost buying multiples of one item: buying 4 boxes of cereal that each cost $5.

Your child has a study sheet from their math book in their homework folder. This sheet has both multiplication and division facts for 5s, 2s, 10s and 9s. Please help your child practice this for at least 5 minutes per day.

Social Studies:

This week we started our first unit in Social Studies, Our Diverse Community. We worked on understanding how communities are similar and different around the world and the things communities share- people, language, culture, food, holidays or special events. As the unit develops we will also be studying about our local government and how it works.

Homework Ideas:

• Online math fact practice: https://www.factmonster.com/math/flashcards
• Talk about special events in your day/week/life. Use many details that can help your child when they have to write about small moments in their lives.

Enjoy the long weekend!  

Sincerely,

Aisha Galt

Friday, August 25, 2017

Dear Parents,

Thank you so much for coming out on Tuesday night for our Back to School night presentation. It was great to meet so many of you. If you were not able to attend, your child should have brought you my back to school letter and survey.  Please look it over and let me know if you have any questions. Also, please pay your classroom fee of $8 if you have not done so.  This money helps us support many projects that extend our learning in the classroom.  Thank you!

Volunteers: Thank you to those of you who were able to sign up to volunteer for our classroom.

• Room Parent: Chamisa Logemann
• Friday Folders: Mary Beth Burke and Nancy Saha (when needed)
• Reading in the classroom-  M-Th from 11:55-12:25. (Start the week of September 5th if you have completed your background check)

           Monday: Stephanie Schwab

           Tuesday: Megan West

           Wednesday: Sadee Schilling

• Clerical help: Nancy Saha

Homework: If your child has not had a chance to bring in photos/pictures for our Writer’s Notebook project, please help them gather these over the weekend.   Please only send in pictures that are okay to cut and paste onto a notebook- these will decorate the front of his/her Writer's Notebook for the year and provide a starting place for ideas and drafts that will grow into great writing pieces. It also will make their Writer's Notebook very personal and very special to them. We are going to decorate our notebooks on Monday. Thank you!

Birthday Treats: If your child is celebrating a birthday during the school year (or a ½ birthday for summer kids) you are welcome to send in treats for the class. We have 24 kids in our class.

Math: This week we were able to get all the math screeners completed.  This information gives me a snapshot of where your child is in math.  We are now ready to jump into our first math unit, Multiplication and Division 0-5, 9 and 10, on Monday.

Literacy: This week we worked on writing “seeds/small moment ideas” for personal narratives. We are getting those writing muscles warmed up and in shape for a lot of writing this year! Next week we are going to start working on understanding and writing complete sentences.

Next week, we will also be completing a reading assessment using i-Ready with students. We started using this reading assessment a few years ago Kohl, so your child should be familiar with the format. After the testing is complete I will have an assessment report, which shows me how your child is reading, their strengths, and areas to work on. I will share this information with you at Parent Teacher Conferences in October.

Social Studies: As we get ready to begin our first unit on Communities, we have been working to build our classroom community. This week we continued to get to know each other better and to understand the expectations in third grade.

Mark your calendar:

Monday, September 4- NO SCHOOL, Labor Day

I hope you have a safe and relaxing weekend.

Sincerely,

Aisha Galt

Friday, August 18th

Dear Parents,

We had a great first three days together in third grade! We spent a lot of time getting to know one another and familiarizing ourselves with classroom procedures and expectations. It was fun to learn about each other through the sharing of the All About Me bags.  Building community is an important part of these first few weeks of school.  This sharing assignment allows us to realize some of our similarities and differences. I am excited about the months to come in third grade.  It will be a year of new experiences and new adventures in learning.

I strive to create an environment in which students feel safe and secure so that they can take the kinds of risks necessary for deep and sustained learning.  Relationships are the foundation of learning, and it is my intention to establish respectful and collaborative partnerships with parents as well as with students. From day one, I would like to establish open, two-way communication with parents. I invite you to share feedback and any information that would help me provide better support for your child. Thank you for your support!

I will be writing newsletters to update you on what’s happening in our classroom, give reminders about upcoming events, and to share any news we might have.  I plan to email the newsletters as well as post them on my website so you will be able to access them at any time during the year if needed.  www.mrsgalt.blogspot.com

I look forward to meeting all of you at our third grade back to school night. This is an informational meeting for parents only.  We will meet in our classroom  on Tuesday, August 22nd at 5:30.

Reminders:

Snacks:

Students can have snack each day in the morning, and they can have another snack in the afternoon if they would like. I do not provide snack so please be sure to send a healthy snack with your child. Water bottles are encouraged.  Please label bottles with your child’s name.  Thank you!

Important Dates for Your Calendar:

Tuesday, August 22rd-Back to School Night 5:30-6:30

Monday, September 4th - NO SCHOOL- Labor Day

Thursday, September 7th - Picture Day

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns. You can contact me by email aisha.galt-theis@bvsd.org or by phone 720-561-8616.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Aisha Galt

Friday, May 19th, 2017

Dear Parents,

It is hard to believe that we only have 5 days of school remaining. We have been busy writing and publishing many poems and would like to invite you to our poetry reading on Thursday, May 25th at 12:00.  Each student will share two poems aloud.

On Friday, May 5th our 7th grade writing buddies visited our classroom to share a draft of their story.  All of the students were excited to see each other and share their work.  Our last meeting will be a walking field trip on Tuesday, May 23rd.  Thank you to everyone who has returned the permission slip.  We do not need any chaperones for this trip.  Thank you!

Ms. Pam, from the Fire Department visited our class this week to talk about bicycle safety. Be sure to ask your child what they learned about how to properly fit a bicycle helmet and the rules of the road while bicycling. We always love having her come to visit us.

Please be sure to look in your child’s Friday folder today for the order form for next year’s school supplies. PTA is trying a new system where you can pre order all your child’s supplies. Then, they will be waiting for your child in their classroom next year. I think it sounds like a great plan! All order forms need to be turned in next week, so you’ll need to act quickly to take advantage of this offer.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.  I will be sending a letter home with the report cards next week suggesting different websites for summer learning.  As always, thank you for your continued support.

Important Dates to Remember

Tuesday, May 23rd- BHMS Writing Celebration at Miramonte Park

Friday, May 26th-  Last Day of School-Report cards come home.

I hope you have a great weekend.

Sincerely,

Mrs. Aisha Galt