Hi,
We enjoyed indoor recess today and some rainy weather. We also had a great week!
FCE Service Club meets on Monday, September 23 from 2:45-3:45. All 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders are welcome.


Reading and math logs are due on Monday. Homework packets are also due.
Monday is our library check-out day.

This week is Education Go Get It Week! Wear a college shirt on Monday! Scroll down to read about the rest of the week.

Be sure to return your registration form with a signature and any necessary corrections.

Early Release on Wednesday, September 25 at 12:45

Bring Dads to School Day is on Friday, September 25 from 7:15-8:15 in the classroom then Dads move to the cafeteria for donuts. Research shows that having an involved Dad is a big indicator of student academic success. We look forward to seeing you!

Pen Pals will be here on Friday!-We wrote letters yesterday for our pen pals and introduced ourselves. On Friday, September 27, our pen pals will be at our school in the library from 10:00-10:45. We will be interviewing them and playing games. You are all invited to come and meet these amazing friends from The Court at Round Rock Assisted Living Facility.

Read about our week:

In reading, we read and responded to our book club books and met as a group to discuss questions, predictions, tricky words, characters, and our thoughts about the chapter and the book as a whole. We also read and responded to some non-fiction articles in our weekly Time for Kids publication. We read about the 50 year anniversary of the March on Washington, a newly discovered mammal, and many other interesting articles. Next week we will continue reading and discussing our book club books. We are examining the basic story elements (setting, characters, problem, solution). We will also be looking at non-fiction text and examining different structures that an author uses in expository text. (compare/contrast, problem/solution, sequential, etc…)

In writing, many of the children published their personal narratives! All of the children are doing a great job drafting, conferencing with me, making revisions, and editing their pieces. We will share our narratives and begin gathering entries for our first published essay of the year. We also worked on the spelling and usage of the homophones there, their, they’re, your, and you’re and using correct capitalization and punctuation in all of our writing.

In math, we took an assessment on place value, ordering, estimation, as well as adding and subtracting with regrouping. Most of the children did very well. We are now working on multiplication and division strategies. We played games to practice these strategies and used a multiplication chart to look for patterns. Thank you for working on automaticity of facts with your child at home. Vocabulary is a big part of math and we worked with the words addend, sum, factors, product, multiple, dividend, divisor, quotient, and minuend, subtrahend, and difference. We will continue to work on these and add more math language throughout the year.

In science, we took an assessment on tools and safety and wrote an essay about why scientists need tools. The multiple choice section and the content of the essay was not a problem for most students but many needed to remember to always use correct capitalization, punctuation, and spelling in anything that they write. Thank you for helping your child be accountable for these conventions of writing. Matter is our next topic and we had fun with some investigations this week. We talked about the three states of matter and how energy is either added or subtracted to a substance to change the state of matter. We put blue food coloring in cups of water then added ice cubes to water and used a white paper towel to wipe off the condensation. There were no blue marks on the paper towel so we knew that the water droplets on the outside of the cup didn’t come from the inside blue water and through the plastic but appeared when the cold temperature of the cup changed the water vapor in the air from a gas to a liquid. We also investigated three balloons with mystery substances inside. We measured the mass of the balloons in grams using a triple beam balance, observed them, touched them, smelled them, and predicted which balloons would sink or float. The density of the mystery substances determined whether they would sink or float. Dishwashing liquid had the greatest density and was denser than the water, so it sunk. Air was least dense and was less dense than the water, so it floated. Baby oil bobbed a little bit under the water so its density was in between that of air and dishwashing soap. We will learn more about density in matter this week.


In Social Studies, we learned about freedom, equality, and democracy because this was Celebrate Freedom Week! We learned about the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. We also learned about Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. We will learn more about maps this week.


Education Go Get It Week!
Round Rock ISD will celebrate Education Go Get It (EGGI) week from September 23-27 as a way of providing students with information about higher education. At Forest Creek, our goal is for every student to make college their choice. We will be celebrating all week with the following activities:

Monday: College Spirit
Wear your favorite college/university t-shirt or jersey
Tuesday: Be All You Can Be – Say College is for me!
Wear Camouflage
Wednesday: Step up to Education
Wear tennis shoes
Thursday: Hats Off to College
Wear your favorite college hat
Friday: Dress for Success
Wear clothes that represents your future profession of choice

Have a wonderful weekend!
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew