Monday Memo
March 3, 2014
Dear Parents,
I hope everyone had a nice
weekend! We enjoyed the Olympics Reading Incentive program that we had through
the month of February. We made Olympic rings with the third graders, and we
played Bingo with the Olympic athletes names, throughout the month. It was a
tough month, due to the absences, the late starts, early outs… The nice thing
was that it did give them a lot more time to read at home. I will let you know
next week how many students in our class received the gold, the silver, and the
bronze. The bronze expectations were exactly what our monthly expectations are.
That is to pass two reading counts quizzes a month. To get the silver, they had
to pass 3 and to get the gold they had to pass 4. It was great how many did
that!! I am having them all read two books of their own choice through the
month of March. The books have to be reading counts books, however.
I will be having some
surgery up at Mayo Clinic, in March. I will need to take some time off, so I am
planning to be only gone for three weeks. It is my hope that is all I need to
miss. I put the kids in the wonderful hands of Mrs .Lovgren. She does a great
job!! The biggest problem with my absence is that it coincides with
conferences. I will be here on Tuesday, March 11. I will be staying until 8:00
that night and try to get most of the conferences scheduled for that night. I
will also be calling others to have conferences with me on Wednesday, March 12th.
I will stay as long as I need to that night. I have a prior commitment on that
Monday night, so I will be trying to get the conferences in on March 11-12. So,
if you get a call/email from me, that will probably be what I am going to be
asking you. Otherwise, you will get the usual red note letting you know your
conference time on that Tuesday. Just remember, I am going until 8:00 that
night, whereas everyone else is going until 6:00. I just want to avoid any
confusion… thank-you for your flexibility in scheduling!!
We are starting a new story
today entitled “Sing to the Stars”. We will be working on vocabulary,
comprehension, and using a graphic organize to summarize a story. Our grammar
lessons this week are continuing our discussion on adjectives, except now we
are comparing with them. The spelling words for this week are attached to this
memo. Our hope is to test on those words, Friday. We also have the SRA lab this week, so we
will be spending some time with those stories as well.
In Math, we are on our
division chapter. We will be working on writing a number sentence, learning the
divisibility rules, finding averages, dividing by multiples of 10, and dividing
with two digit divisors. It will be a busy week in Math this week!! Knowing
their math facts have greatly helped them succeed with this chapter!! Thank-you
for all the time and effort you put into helping your child know them!!
We are working on Science
this week. We are starting on our Earth Science unit. This week and last we are
working on earthquakes and volcanoes. I hope to be able to send home a study
guide Thursday night, with a test on Friday. Things don’t always work out as
planned, but it is the plan for now.
I want to thank our
wonderful room mothers for the awesome party they put on for us for Valentine’s
Day!! Thanks to Mrs. Dockstader, Mrs. Willms and Mrs. Meyer for their time and
effort! The kids had a great time!!
I appreciate that you sign the planners
verifying that they read at least 15 minutes a night! That is one of the best
things we can do for the kids!
I hope everyone has a great
week! As always, please feel free to call me with questions/concerns.
Sincerely,
Chris Mallen
Phone: 444-3093 (Home) 444-4300 ext. 336 (School)
Email: chris.mallen@bkcsd.org
