The Weber Weekly

Wowie ka-zowie, what a busy week!  The kids did a great job following the alternate ISAT schedule this week.  We will resume our regular schedule on Monday & Tuesday and then follow the 5-hour schedule for Wednesday & Thursday of next week.  Next Friday is an Institute Day, so there is no student attendance.  

I’m happy to announce that the kids have learned ALL of their lowercase cursive letters.  We moved onto uppercase this week.  Please encourage your child to practice cursive writing at home as often as possible.  I will be assigning a lot of cursive for “Writing Wednesday” during the fourth quarter.  Everyone seems to catch on to the individual letters pretty quickly, but struggle with joining the letters to form words.  Practice makes perfect, so we will be doing a lot of practicing!  :)

I’m very pleased with how well everyone did on the measurement/telling time assessment.  I will be sharing your child’s scores with you at conferences next week.  This week we moved onto money.  Your child should be secure with counting coin combinations, showing different ways to make the same amount, and writing in dollar and cent notation.  Next week is all about making change.  We will be taking the money assessment before spring break.  

Our focus during reading this week was character traits.  We read a wonderful story by Ezra Jack Keats titled A Letter for Amy.  The children shared their opinions about the characters and made several text-to-self connections.  We’re also using a graphic organizer to summarize the key story elements.        

Science has been all about life cycles of living things.  Next week we will finish off our science unit by exploring food webs and food chains.  

Now that we're in fourth quarter, we will be reviewing ALL of the second grade sight words.  You will see that the homework sheets have review words listed.  Your child should enter third grade feeling secure with the second grade words.  Our 4th quarter language arts test will assess students' understanding of these words.  The district's expectation is that students will correctly read, write, and spell the word wall words with an 85% or higher.  Words written backwards, reversals, and letters written backwards will be marked incorrect.  We will be practicing a lot here at school, but I encourage you to have your child practice at home as well.     

School Announcements:

• Yearbook order forms are due Friday, March 15th.  The yearbooks cost $16.00. 
• Conferences are next week.  Please email me if you need a reminder of your scheduled time.
• March 22nd - Institute Day (No student attendance)
•  April 2nd - classes resume after spring break
• Market Day orders can be placed online until 11:00 pm Monday.  

District Announcements:

• Have you had a chance to take the 5Essentials Parent Survey?  The survey can be found by clicking here:  https://survey.5-essentials.org/illinois/  The deadline for completing the survey is March 31st. 
• District 202 is in the process of implementing a new student information system for next school year.  The new "eSchool" student information system will significantly improve our student data collection and reporting processes.  The form can be found here:  http://psd202.org/ParStu/student_info.php?p=form  The deadline for completing the form is March 22nd.
• The district is currently accepting registration of Kindergartners for the 2013-2014 school year.  Please see the district website for more information.