Reading Calendars

A reminder that the October Reading Calendars will be do when we get back on Tuesday, November 3. Students who turn in a reading calendar will get their Pizza Hut personal pan pizza.

I will also hand out the November Reading Calendar tomorrow (Friday). That way the students can get a start on it over the weekend.

Have a Happy Halloween!

Updates and Reminders

Parent/Teacher Conference Sign Up

If you have not signed up for parent/teacher conferences yet there is still time! Go to this link to sign-up: https://ptcfast.com/schools/Iowa_Grant_Elementary_Middle_School or you can contact me to set a time. 

Conference Times

Thursday, November 5 and Tuesday, November 10

Halloween Party

We will have our Halloween Party on Friday morning from about 8:15 to 8:45. We'll have a morning snack to go with it. There are also games planned for the event.

Students may dress up for Halloween but must not cover their face with a mask or face paint. They also must come to school with their costume on and wear it throughout the day.

Half Day Friday and End of the Quarter

The end of the first quarter is this week! Amazing that we are already 1/4 of the way through the year. The students will have an early release on Friday. 

No School Monday!

Also, there is no school on Monday, November 2. Hopefully the kids have a relaxing fall break!

Report Cards

Report cards will be sent home or e-mailed on Wednesday, November 5.

Montfort Halloween Party
Montfort Halloween Party

Where: Montfort Community Building
When: Saturday Oct 31st 6:30pm-8pm

Costume judging at 7:30pmGames and Candy 

FREE for everyone

Common and Proper Nouns

Today we spent some time discussing common and proper nouns in language arts. The students knew what a noun was without much difficulty, but were a little more rusty on what a common and proper noun were.

Here is the Schoolhouse Rock video for nouns that we started with:

Science Test

Ms. Hrubes will have a test for science this week. Our class will have their science test on Wednesday, October 21.

Good Luck!

Parent/Teacher Conference

There is a sheet going home tonight for parent/teacher conferences. There is an online sign-up. You can also write in or call to put your time in place.

Here is the link:
https://ptcfast.com/schools/Iowa_Grant_Elementary_Middle_School

You can also go to the districts website and find the link. The school website is http://www.igs.k12.wi.us


Have a great weekend!

Halloween 2015

Halloween lands on a Saturday this year, and Friday is a half day as it is the end of the quarter. We will have a Halloween party in the morning of October 30 though. Students will be able to dress up in their Halloween costumes on that Friday, but there are a few rules.

Student costumes need to be school appropriate with no blood or fake weapons. Students cannot cover their faces with masks or face paint either. Any costume that kid’s wear they need to wear to school and home again. They should not need to change in the bathrooms. Overall, the costumes need to be rated G or PG and we need to see their faces while they are in the classroom and going through the halls. Several students have talked about wearing something different to school than they wear trick-or-treating, which would work great. If you have any questions about the costumes feel free to e-mail me at avanovermeer@igs.k12.wi.us or send a note before the party.

Party Committees

Here are our party committees for this school year. The halloween committee will be meeting this week to come up with ideas. When we have parties some students will bring in snacks and others will organize games. Your child will be able to pick which they are doing.

Snacks - When we do the parties I try to focus on more healthy snacks. The kids will get plenty of sugar treats on the three holiday parties anyway. I try to reinforce to the students that because they are healthier snacks it doesn't mean that they have to be boring. Some ideas are yogurt and granola, cheese, sausage, and cracker; fruit kabobs; or simply fruits.

Games - The games can be simply or more complex, but they need to include all twenty students. Students will often come up with games like checkers, but unless we have 10 boards that leaves a lot of students out of the fun. We can do things like relay races; quiz type games with two teams; small arts and craft projects; pin the tail on the donkey; and more!

Language Arts Test

We have our Unit 1 Language Arts test this week. We'll spend today (Monday) reviewing then break the test up into three smaller pieces on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We'll still do a little bit of writing and language arts around the test, but a large portion of our language arts time will be working on the test.

Because of the language arts test we will NOT have spelling words this week. There just isn't time to do both on weeks like these.

There isn't anything for the students to study for the language arts test. It is to measure their comprehension on writing skills.

Badger Banner Ceremony

The UW Badgers Athletic Department is having a cool contest for students must be in 4th, 5th, or 6th grade. I'm sure there will be lots of kids around Wisconsin signing up, but it's probably still worth a shot.

Badger Banner Ceremony



I hope you had a great day off!

Basketball Forms

Basketball forms for girls were sent home last week on purple paper. Boys' basketball forms were sent home yesterday. Mrs. Hill will collect the boys' forms in the office; Mrs. Barr will collect the girls' forms in the office as well. If your child is interested, please send back the filled out forms at your earliest convenience. Thanks!

Xtra Math

If you are looking for a place for your child to get some extra math practice at home you can do Xtra Math. We do this on the iPads about once a week, but the students can definitely spend more time working on it at home. It goes through the four functions of math beginning with addition, then subtraction, multiplication and division.

Here is the link to the login page: XtraMath Login

From there you need three pieces of information:
My e-mail address: avanovermeer@igs.k12.wi.us
Student Name (first name and last initial): Jane D for Jane Doe
Four digit number for their password: Students have this at school and can write it down on their take home folder.

Upcoming Events

There are a couple of things coming up this week that I wanted to remind students and parents of.

Tuesday, October 6 - Picture Retakes - This is only for students who didn't get pictures or returned the pictures that they had originally taken. Many students got their pictures taken care of during open house.

Wednesday, October 7 - PBIS Assembly - The students meet in Room 100 to have a brief presentation about one of the Six Pillars of Behavior.

Thursday, October 8 - Golden Ticket Luncheon - I believe we have three students from our homeroom who got a Golden Ticket and will join the luncheon on Thursday. Students are recognized for the Golden Ticket when they have behavior that is above and beyond what is expected.

Friday, October 9 - NO SCHOOL!!! - We have a teacher work day on Friday.

Math Test

We had our first math test on Thursday, October 1st. The students did very well and they should be coming home with their test tonight.

The next unit will focus on longer multiplication problems. We will be working on two digit times two digit numbers, which can be confusing at first.