A Successful Full Day

Our first full day went off without a hitch.  The kids did a great job making lunch choices, turning in lunch money and getting to work on their morning writing.  I was very impressed.  They also turned in their parent's homework from last night.  Thank you to everyone who read and signed the survival guide.  We know it is a lot of information to take in at one time.

The students took a math pretest this morning over our first chapter.  We stressed to all the third graders that this was a PRE-test and they were not expected to know everything on the test.  We were simply trying to get an idea of what they already know and what they still need to learn.  This was a challenging concept for some of the children, but they will get the hang of it when they realize how much more they know after the unit is finished.  We will begin Unit 1 tomorrow.

We also began learning about the Daily 5 in reading today.  There are five activities the students work on during the Daily 5: Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, Word Work, and Work on Writing.  Today we introduced the activity of Read to Self.  We discussed what it should look like, sound like, and feel like when students are reading to themselves.  We also began building our reading muscles and stamina by practicing Read to Self in small 3-4 minute increments of time.  We will slowly build up the reading time as their stamina increases.  This allows each of the students to become successful at the task.  The other concept we discussed in reading today is that there are three ways to read a book.  We discussed the first two ways today: reading the pictures and reading the words.  We learned how reading both the pictures and the words can increase our understanding of a book.

The students enjoyed going to their first two specials today, PE and music.  In the students' red take home folder should be our tentative weekly schedule for this school year, including when we have our specials.  One special I would like to highlight is library.  We will have book check out on Thursdays.  Please make sure your child's books come back to school on Thursdays if they choose to bring them home.

We also had our "Rules Talk" with Mrs. Daoust today where she explained the Amberly High Five (respect, responsibility, honesty, caring and self-discipline) and went over her expectations for the students.

Tomorrow (Thursday) will be another fun day of learning.  Please remember that the Amberly BBQ sponsored by APT is from 5-7pm tomorrow evening.  I will be doing time in the dunk tank from 6:00 - 6:20.  You'll recognize me because I will be the wet one with the blue lips shivering as students throw softballs at me.  Wish me luck!