Volunteers and Halloween Brunch Sign Ups

Hello families!

As Fall is upon us and the weather is changing each day, (sometimes several times within a day) please send your student with appropriate clothing. I tell my children to bring it, even if they don't want to wear it at that moment. They might change their minds later. When the temperature is above 20 degrees, we will still be going outside for recess and students will wait outside classroom doors before school.

I would love to have some parent volunteers help out in the classroom and support our classroom's needs. I have created a sign up genius. Please follow this link to sign up to volunteer. Our needs include cutting and trimming paper, sewing, Friday Folder help, holiday parties and more! We would love to see some familiar faces helping out around our classroom.

This Thursday is Halloween! After the costume parade, we will have brunch in the classroom. I have put together a sign up for this as well. If you are able to donate food for our little party, please follow this link to sign up.

Thank you so much for your support!

Mrs. Reeder

Unit 2 Math Review

3rd grade students will be taking a math test for Unit 2 on Thursday. They came home with their Unit 2 Math Review today. After they have completed all of the questions, have them check their answers with mine. Make sure to have labels for the units on all answers! Because we will be taking the math test on Thursday, there will not be regular math homework until Friday night. 

Have a great night!

Mrs. Reeder

Volunteers

Hello Parents!

I really enjoyed meeting you all at conferences yesterday. Thank you so much for coming! I just love seeing how much your kids look like you and being able to connect with your kids in a new way. I'm very excited to continue to partner with you to help this year be the best for your child!

There are a variety of ways that you can get involved and help out our classroom this year. If you or your family are interested in volunteering, please follow this link to sign up. Thank you in advance for any help you can provide!

Mrs. Reeder

Snacks

Each morning, we eat snack around 9:15 because we have about four hours in between school starting and lunch. Many of the students in Room G come to school without a morning snack. Personally, I don't have the funds to provide snack for the students as some teachers do. If possible, please remember to send a healthy snack with your child in the morning.

In the cases where this is not possible for some families, I'm looking for donations.

The students and I have come up with a great idea! The cafeteria encourages the students to take a fruit with their hot lunch, but often, the students don't touch it and it gets thrown away. We have started to put uneaten, untouched foods in our lunch tote so that the we have a few extra snacks for the next day. For example, on Friday, the cafeteria was serving bananas. A couple of students didn't want their banana, so they put them in the lunch tote and put it in a basket in the classroom. Now we have 2 bananas for snack on Monday! This has been great so far, but we don't have enough food to go around. We often have 6-8 kids without a snack, and they end up arguing over who should get the left over food.

This is where we need your help! If you are able to pick up an extra package of snacks next time you are at the store, we would greatly appreciate it.

Healthy snacks are appreciated - fruit such as bananas, cuties or apples, applesauce cups or pouches, crackers, granola bars, fruit leather, pretzels, rice cakes, beef jerky, pre-popped popcorn, etc. We have no method of keeping snacks refrigerated or cold in our classroom, so I ask that you please refrain from sending yogurt, cheese, and the like.

Thank you so much for thinking of our class!

Conference Sign Up

Parent Teacher Conferences are on Wednesday, October 9, 7:40-8:00 p.m. I have created an online sign up using the website Sign Up Genius. Please visit the attached link and choose a time that is most convenient for you. If there are no times that fit with your schedule, please email me and we can work out a time that works with both of our schedules.

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/8050a44a8ab23a5fe3-parentteacher

Composting, Second Step and Classroom Jobs

Composting

Watching the interesting video

A couple of weeks ago, the school had an assembly to learn about composting. The district's waste pickup company, Alpine, picks up compost waste in addition to trash and recycling. We learned what composting is, how it helps the environment and how we will implement it at Tarver. We watched a short video about composting and then a few teachers demonstrated how to sort our waste after lunch. 

Mrs. Palte and Paws showing
our students how to sort waste.

Second Step

On Friday the 20th, we began our weekly lessons with Ms. Dietel and our Second Step curriculum. Second Step is our social and emotional curriculum. We welcomed Mrs. Palte's 3rd grade class into our room and learned about how listening helps us learn. We played listening games and listened to the song, "Be a Learner."

Classroom Jobs

On Wednesday of this week, we discussed classroom jobs and brainstormed ideas for jobs that would make our classroom run smoothly. The students had GREAT ideas! We will have jobs such as Nurse, Document Distributor, Librarian, Custodian, Collections agent and more. Since we don't teach math on Wednesdays (due to our Science and Social Studies rotations on an already short day), our Wednesday homework will be to fill out a job application for the next week. Please don't stress about this too much. The purpose of this is two-fold: 1) It helps the students learn their address and phone number (or your cell phone number). This will prepare them in case of emergency. 2) To get the classroom job that they want. I am looking for neat work and that the student knows the requirements of the job and is able to communicate that well. Some jobs are more popular than others, so students won't always get the job that they apply for. They can try again the next week, writing neatly and adding details to their job application. I keep track of who does which jobs so that new students have a chance to get the job they want. Please help your child fill out the address and phone number section (if they need it) and check to make sure they did their neatest work. Please let me know if you have any questions about this. 

Power Outage and Math Review Homework

We had another great day in Room G! The students are still learning about appropriate times to talk and we are practicing restraining ourselves from blurting out by raising our hands. Please speak with your children about this at home this evening.

We had an unexpected power outage this morning during math. It lasted about 30 minutes. We were just about to start our math test, so we took our tests outside and worked on them in the sunshine. The students did great with this! Every single student worked hard on their test outdoors. I was so proud of them. The power came back on a few minutes later, while we were enjoying our snacks.

Part of our homework this evening is to finish the math review and check it against the key, which is posted below. Students should have the entire packet finished. We will be finishing our math test tomorrow, so there will be no math Home Link worksheet to complete tomorrow night. 

Have a great evening! See you tomorrow

Mrs. Reeder 

ree025043@adams12.org

Our First Week in Room G

We've had a great first week in our new classroom. At times, the transition can be a little hard, but the students are hard workers and willing to be patient as we get through some bumps in technology, sorting supplies, and learning new routines. I have really enjoyed getting to know them and their sweet personalities. They are funny, creative and love to talk! 

As we reflected on our first week, the students helped me come up with some highlights to share with you. 

• The students got to choose their own seats this week. This was fun at first, but eventually we learned who is a good friend for classwork and who might be better to play with just at recess. We will have assigned seats starting on Monday, 9/16.

• SPECIALS! This was one of the most exciting parts of our week. The 3rd Grade got to add an additional specials class, called 'Specials.' This new class will be taught by a variety of professionals in the building, including Mr. Trujillo, Ms. Adler, Ms. Dietel, Ms. Samson and more. Students will be doing a variety of activities throughout the year including using the new Maker Space when it's open, learning our Social-Emotional curriculum with Ms. Dietel, keyboarding, coding, team building activities and more. Due to our specials schedule, we had our new Specials class twice this week - on Monday and Friday. 

• Our new specials rotation is SPAM. 

• A Day: Specials

• B Day: P.E.

• C Day: Art

• D Day: Music

• We will not follow the rest of the school's specials schedule. Here's the LINK to the 3rd grade specials schedule. Monday, 9/16 will be a B Day/PE.

• We had a fire drill on Monday, our first day in our new classroom. Once the students quieted down, they did great!

• We got our document camera, computer and projector to work together properly, thanks to Mr. Trujillo's hard work and the IT Department in the district.

• We have been doing some leveling out with our class work in each subject. While all of the 3rd grade teachers teach the same things, they do so at different paces. For example, one teacher was on Chapter 9 in our read aloud and another teacher was on Chapter 16. We will soon get all on the same page.

 Other notes for this first week:

• Please look for your child's Friday Folder this weekend. It came home with them Friday afternoon. It includes some graded work, notices from the school, school pictures and more. Please return it on Monday.

• More than half of the class did poorly on this week's spelling test. We will be doing more work with our words in class, but please make sure they are studying their words each night. Practicing spelling can be fun! Here's a great RESOURCE with lots of ideas for practicing those spelling words. This week's spelling pattern is the long /i/ sound spelled with i-e (silent e) as in kite, and igh as in light.

• nine, line, while, write, life, high, sigh, fight, night, bright 

• HFW: too, two, might, again, least.

• This week we have two fun events coming up.

1. The first is Chick-Fil-A Spirit Night on Thursday night, 5:00-8:00.  Students will sign in at the welcome table and the class with the highest attendance wins a Chick-fil-A reward! We would love to win! The address is: 1301 E. 120th Avenue in Thornton.
2. The School Carnival is on Friday night, 5:30-8:30. There will be carnival games, a bounce house, a cake walk, and a Ninja Nation Warrior course! I will be there with my family, and hope to see you there!

I think that's about it! Thank you for being so gracious during this transition. I have absolutely loved being your child's teacher and I look forward to a great year.

Mrs. Reeder
ree025043@adams12.org