Weekly Update

Whew... another week already gone?!? Where is the time going?
Thank you all for the wonderful donations for the Water Fun basket for Cougar Fun Fest... we had three boxes worth of stuff for the basket! Our fabulous PTA has already collected the items and will be putting the basket together. I can't wait to see all the baskets for raffle at Fun Fest next week!
Thank you for everybody that helped to cover books for the classroom library. I feel very blessed to have such wonderful caring helpers! Hopefully this will help our classroom library books hold up to the everyday wear and tear that comes with students loving to read!
ANOTHER big thank you to the parents that came in to help us get our Cooperation Flag ready. You ladies absolutely ROCKED! It was a quick and smooth process getting all 130ish Third Graders' hands painted and stamped on the flag. I will post a picture once it is hanging in the commons. It looks amazing!
If your child sold the Passport books, those are coming home today.
Fun Fest is Friday, October 3rd. Check your e-mail for a volunteer opportunity (sent out on Wednesday, I believe).
Please return Friday folders to school each Monday (or Tuesday if no school on Monday). Also, be sure to respond to your child in their Family Communication Journal.

NO SCHOOL on Monday!
We will have library check out and Media on Tuesday, PE on Wednesday, Music on Thursday, and Art on Friday.

See below for an update of our week from our student blogger: Morgan!

Dear Parents,

     

         This week was a really great week. We did some sience observations for our classroom ecosystem. We also started work on writing in daily 5 so know we can do read to self, read to partner, and work on writing (in work on writing we get to do school mail, free write, and story writing). This week we got our pass port books and I hope we got our total of pass port books so we can have a special party! We have read a lot of The Tale Of Despereaux by Kate Dicimillo and suprisly we haven’t used our Yacker Tracker witch is a stop light that can hear you making sounds and if you are too loud it makes a siren noise and you go to red. We also made work on writing posters to hang up on our Writer’s Way bored witch by the way has a lot of posters, we have 9 posters on it so far and when Miss. Baxter covers them we will have 2 posters and 1 blue piece of paper that shows how it should a letter look like. On September 25^{th 2014} we moved table spots. There is 1 group of 10 and 2 groups of 8. If you doughnated money for Change For Change THANK YOU it was do on September 26^th 2014  . In consiler we traced Louis (or Louie) and drew words that you want a friend to have and Eddie, Tess, and Connor cut it out and we named it Louie Jr. As you can see this week was really, really, really good!

Your Writer,

Morgan

Student Update

This week are class learned how to if a number is like 65 it goes to 70 if a number 43 it goes down to 40. We also did a round the world round the world is a math game that you try to answer as fast as you can to move on to the next person and when you get back to your seat you win. In writing we did show not tell. At reassess we had to walk a round the black top be cues in the cafeteria we did not stop talking when we were a post to and the lunch lands told the reassess super viziers that we had to walk for five minuets. Then we did better the next day I thank.

By: Zackary 

Homework Explained

Want to know about my view on homework? Aside from daily reading, I do not assign much homework, but when I do, it has purpose.

The purpose of the homework is two-fold: extra practice on tricky concepts and becoming more responsible citizens. A student must be responsible enough to not only complete their homework, but also responsible enough to turn it in. But when should they turn it in?

My expectation is homework should be returned the following day unless stated otherwise. I know kids are busy in the evening with extracurricular activities, and I encourage that involvement! That  is why I do not assign homework often. Students that do not have time to finish their homework at home may finish it before the start of school bell at 8:20 or during their recess time. There simply isn't enough time in our jam-packed day to do homework at school. And that is kind of the opposite of HOMEwork, anyway.

At home, you can give your child as much or as little help as needed as they complete their homework. I will only take a completion grade on homework which will later be reflected on the Work Habits part of our report card.

Another important comment I should make about homework: I do not send home homework ahead of time. Homework should be a reflection and expansion on something done in class. Not new information. If I haven't taught it yet, I do not expect kids to do homework on it yet. If I send home a sheet on adding three digit numbers in a packet on Monday, but we spend more time than planned on another concept and don't even get to three digit numbers in class, then the homework isn't truly extra practice on something we've learned. My schedule and plans are flexible to go with the learning flow of the students. Assigning homework before the week doesn't work for us.

Thank you.

September 12, 2014

Good afternoon!
Please read below for a student update of what we've been up to this week! I have a couple of reminders for you, too.

If your student is still selling the Passport coupon books, please make sure they turn in their orders next week.

If you care to make a donation for our Water Fun themed Fun Fest raffle basket, we need all donations by Friday the 19th. The Fun Fest committee members will be collecting items from classrooms to begin assembling the baskets. Thank you to the Hauser, Adams, Frerking, Cockrell, and Schulte families for donating already!
If you were at Mill Creek last year, you may remember our Change for Making a Change United Way campaign that we had. Students may bring in change on September 26th for this philanthropic fundraiser. More information will be coming. Please do not send in change before September 26th as I do not have anywhere safe to keep it.

Specials for next week:
Monday - Music
Tuesday - Art
Wednesday - Library Check Out and Media
Thursday - PE
Friday - Music

As always, please feel free to e-mail me if you have any questions!

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September 12 2014

Dear Parents,

This week we have done some math and it is about addition proportys. Also on Wednesday we had a sub named Mrs. Franklin because Miss Baxter was doing a reading test to everyone. We also Tamia was our classes Coroperating Cougar because she was doing her work all the time. We finished our manuscript writing and are on cursive.Also our Mill Creek Cougar Fun Fest is coming up and our rafle basket is water fun. And we did math games on computers and on Miss Baxter’s ipad. We played Sushi Monster,Streach,andFastt Math.and we played around the world it is where you have a math fact and the two of you try to say the answer and who ever says the answer first get to move on to the next person.and we did student counsel speaches and Eddie and Kristen got picked for it and we will have another round in January or Feburary.We did something called criticks corner and it is when you pick a book and you dicied if you liked the book or not. And for read aloud Gaines did the cover of Heidi.And on read aloud we started our readers response journals and you respond to the book in any way.

Sincerely,

Ashley

Cougar Fun Fest Raffle Basket

Hello!
For families new to Mill Creek, let me take a minute to explain what the Cougar Fun Fest Raffle Basket is all about. Each year at our Cougar Fun Fest (this year on October 3rd), each class has a themed basket for the raffle. Students bring in donations to create and fill our basket.
Our class chose our basket theme for our raffle basket for the Cougar Fun Fest this morning! They had a lot of good ideas, but the final vote came down to WATER FUN!

Some ideas they had for the Water Fun basket are things like water balloons, squirt guns, bath toys, beach toys, pool toys, etc.... We will accept any and all donations of fun water themed items to add to our basket. Please send in any donations by Friday September 19th so we can put our basket together and have time to purchase any necessary additions.

Thank you!

Weekly Update

Student Council Elections – September 10^th
Book Order Due – September 12^th
Fundraiser Turn-In – September 17^th
Cougar Fun Fest – October 3^rd 5:00 – 8:00 PM

Our first reading logs have been turned in (or should have been) and new ones passed out. Please encourage nightly reading.
Please help your child practice their letter writing skills by responding to them in their Family Communication Journal each weekend. These should be brought home on Friday and returned on Monday.

Our class will elect two students to represent us in Mill Creek’s Student Council.

Students will need to alert me of their intent to run and have their speeches prepared by September 10^th. That is when our class will hold elections.

We will be putting together a basket to raffle off at Cougar Fun Fest! We have not voted on a class theme yet. I will let you know once we’ve decided.

Please see below for the student blog post of the week, written by Dhanush!

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Dear families

This week we had Grandparents Day  we also read Howard .B Wigglebottom learns to listen  , How full is your bucket ,Come on rain by Karren Hesse we did our morning work we did Read by ourselves and we read with a partner we also did problem of the day and we used Our writers journal and we did math and we did our diamond poems and we did our critics corner and the power went out and we wrote about small moments in our life We also we also practiced manuscript in handwriting  we wrote about rules how to carry Laptops and we made pinch pots in art class and we made a record to say peter piper in seven seconds.