Third Grade Week 8

Before your read more, don't forget that this week on Thursday is our annual field trip to the pumpkin patch.  If you haven't received a permission slip yet, please let me know and I will send another.

So this week, I think we all had a great time.  Due to the benchmark testing and the hard review days, I decided to do a bunch of science.  We launched a 50 hot air solar balloon into what seemed to be space.  We built and flew paper airplanes and we shot tennis balls out of the tennis ball cannon.  The Lobo came to visit as well, reminding us that this week is homecoming week.

Here are images of some of the critters that were brought in this week.

I had a training this last weekend on how to teach kids how to read and diagnose reading problems.  This is a four weekend class so I am not finished.  Hopefully this type of class will allow me to gain insight into how students read and how to help struggling readers.  I will admit though that a recurring theme of the class was, that students need more reading time than what they can get in a class hour.  So please, please, please, help your students become better readers, by letting them read to you out loud.  Not only will it make them better readers, but it can also be a good bonding time for kids and parents.  If after listening to your child read, you find that it wasn't very good, they need to read more, more, more.  The temptation is to tell ourselves as parents that our kids will get better over time.  Let's help them now, so that next year any struggles they have will be less, less, and less.  Together as a team, we can build fluent readers.

Because of this training I have not been able to grade all of the homework for last week.  I have graded all tests and updated the AR points.  I will be getting the other homework graded soon.

This last week was filled with benchmark testing.  A benchmark test lets us teachers and parents see where a student is at after the first 8 weeks of school.  These tests should not be taken lightly.  If a student is still struggling after 8 weeks in specific skill, we should all be motivated to help them overcome this weakness.   We also will be trying to decide if a student just struggled understanding how to read the test itself, if there are any skill deficiencies, or did they just have a bad day.  As a whole class on both test, reading and math, we scored better than we have been scoring.  This is exciting news, but we still have our work cut out for us. 

Below are two graphics that demonstrate where our class is.  My goal is to move everybody forward.  Even if a child is in the red, if he/she move to a yellow I consider that a huge success.  If we move forward students will end up being successful.  Standing still is never what we want.

The first set is our English benchmark data.  The right side are the standards that we have been working on.  You can see that the last standard is the one we are struggling as a class on.  This standard is all about reading comprehension, but there were only 4 questions about this standard so struggling on even one would have lowered our score.  I will continue working with students, helping them understand what they are reading.

This next set of graphics come from our Math Benchmark. You can see we did better with the math, but are not where we should be yet.  This is the best we have performed so far, so we are progressing and that is always good.  The right graphic will also show you what skills we struggle most with.   The two worth mentioning is word problems, which would also be an issue with those who struggle with reading.  The surprising one, is that we are still struggling with subtraction.  I believe this is an issue with learning to borrow still.

Even though, we have some deficiencies we have to move on, which I really don't like because I would like to make sure our skill is tighter.  That being said though, I will constantly review previous standards from these lists working on them as best they can.  You can see your child's overall scores on FamilyLink.  On the Reading Benchmark:  20 to 22 points is advanced, 18 to 19 points is Proficient, 16 to 17 points is on target but we still have some improvement needs, 14 to 15 points are students on the bubble which means they are getting there, but could use extra review time, and if your student scored below 14 points, they either had a bad day, didn't understand how to take the test, went through the test faster than they should have, or they truly have some struggles which we are working with and will get there, if the student works hard.

On the math Benchmark: 28 to 31 points is advanced, 25 to 28 points is Proficient, 22 to 24 points is on target but we still have some improvement needs, 19 to 21 points are students on the bubble which means they are getting there, but could use extra review time, and if your student scored below 19 points, they either had a bad day, didn't understand how to take the test, went through the test faster than they should have, or they truly have some struggles which we are working with and will get there, if the student works hard.

I am teaching students about data, graphs, test scores and hoping that I can teach them not to take offence or feel bad about their scores, but take their scores as a challenge.  Again, moving forward and improving is what we should be looking for.

Congrats to two of my students.  One of them got the only 100% on the Math test, AB, and one student got Advanced on Both Tests, EL.  Good job to them.  Congrats to the whole class because we earned 20 marbles for beating 2 other classes district wide in the math test.  The class won 10 more marbles for beating one other class in the Language arts test.  Remember instant party if we are the best.

I am proud of where we are at and am hoping the next benchmark in December will show even better scores.  We can do it.

AR has been updated.  The AR party is next Friday.  As an entire class we have all almost achieved the 100% mark, so this is exciting news.  Good job.

This week we will be learning about and our main focus will be about fractions and about character traits when reading.  The spelling words are from week 7 still.  We did not take any spelling tests this week. 

Thanks for all you do.  Please let me know if you have any questions.