Weekly Kickoff - April 2

Wow! I can't believe it's April already! Where has this year gone?! Our mild winter and this beautiful spring weather have been such a treat.

Last week the class enjoyed working with John Coy on Thursday. Mr. Coy is an author from Minneapolis, and has written some great books for kids. We were able to learn more about the process of writing and publishing books from an author's perspective, and the kids were very surprised to learn that his picture books took around 6 years each to complete. Students will have one more opportunity to order autographed books from John Coy. Watch for information to come from the library or in our weekly Westside newsletter! Some titles you may want to check out are Night Driving, Love of the Game, and Two Old Potatoes and Me. Love of the Game is part of the series 4 for 4, which are books written for boys in grades 3-5.

Click here for John Coy's website!

In addition to meeting John Coy on Thursday, the third graders were privileged to attend a performance by Concordia's Percussion Ensemble on Friday afternoon. The concert was fantastic, as always! Often times students are anxious to learn percussion in middle school when they begin band. If your son or daughter came home expressing this interest, you may want to consider piano lessons (if you aren't already taking). I've been told that percussion students are required to have 2 years of piano lessons prior to beginning band.

Now on to this week! We will have a mix of review and new skills covered this week. In reading we're on Lesson 25, which is a review week. Students will be working on readers theater, reviewing cause and effect, and using Be Verbs (am, is, are, was, have, has, do, been, etc.), and have a list of 15 review words in spelling. We'll also be introducing some exciting new topics: idioms, similes, metaphors, and working with extending our multiplication and division skills. In addition, we'll be working on a project to help get ready for our continents, oceans, and 10 states quiz at the end of the week.

Upcoming events:
* Book order due Wednesday
* No school Friday, Monday, or Tuesday due to Easter break
* Book Adventure due Thursday, April 12 (this counts for our Redhawks Reading Program)
* April Packer Pride Day is Friday, April 13

Have a wonderful week!!!