Dear 2014-2015 Parents,

Welcome to 3rd grade! I began my teaching career in 3rd grade, and after spending the last four years teaching 1st at Zukeran, Im incredibly excited to get back to my roots! I started teaching in 2005 and have worked as a substitute, paraeducator, and teacher in both elementary and middle schools. I have a Masters in Teaching with a concentration in Educational Technology. I love learning new tech tools and tricks to engage and empower students for the future. I am a Marine Corps wife of 11 years and weve enjoyed living in Okinawa for nearly five years now. My husband Chris and I love this island and spend our time together learning about the Asian culture, eating delicious cuisine, running, reading, golfing, and traveling.

Third grade is an exciting year for children, full of incredible growth and development, and very much a transition year from the primary to intermediate grades. I take very seriously my responsibility to facilitate powerful and engaging learning opportunities for each child in my class. Here are a few things to think about as we partner together concerning your childs education.

Stay Informed: Ask your child what he or she is learning and look in the daily folder every night. This daily folder is where you will find newsletters and notes that are sent home, as well as any homework that needs to be completed. Our classroom blog will also help keep you informed of important happenings in our classroom.

Ask Questions: If you have any concerns, please feel free to call or email me at any time. I welcome all concerns, ideas, and feedback that affect your child and our classroom. We can work together to create a solution if you feel that something is not working for your child at school or at home. I welcome all feedback.

Please complete and return the student information sheet. It is very important that we have your current phone numbers in case of an emergency. Also, I frequently request classroom volunteers, so please fill out the volunteer interest survey!

You may contact me by email: christine.frost@pac.dodea.edu or by calling the school office number 645-2576 to leave a message for an appointment. I look forward to seeing you again at Open House. This is going to be a wonderful year, full of growth and excitement for all of us. Thank you in advance for all you do!

Sincerely,

Christine Frost

"Educating today's youth for tomorrow's challenges."

"We're not too small, we're not too tall, but we Toucans can do it all."

Christine Frost Gail Hanks Jen Henry

Gary Smalls Mary Goldsborough Music Kent Grubbs PE Diane Jackson - Guidance Michelle Ruksc Art Marti Smith Information Center Alice Tasaki- Culture

Mr. Reynaldo Toquero- Principal Edgar Perry- Administrative Officer Kronika Peters- Office Manager Julie Devor- Office Automation Registrar TBA

Office Hours: 0700-1530 School Hours: 0730-1340

Lunch 11:15-11:35

Recess 11:35-11:55

CAMP Specials Daily from 9:55-10:40

Day 1: Culture- Ms. Tasaki

Day 2: Art- Ms. Ruksc

Day 3: Music- Ms. Goldsborough

Day 4: PE- Mr. Grubbs

Edublogs: This year, we will be using Edublogs as a platform for not only a class blog, but student blogs as well. The blogs are private and secure, requiring a username and password for access. I will update the class blog frequently to provide resources and information for students and parents. This will essentially be our online classroom newsletter. Please check the calendar for events, use the website links provided to access fun activities related to our curriculum, and enjoy pictures and narratives of our class engaged in learning. Heres a snapshot from our Blog Guidelines page.

Continuous School Improvement (CSI) is an ongoing process that helps our Zukeran community focus our efforts in support of our school mission and goals. Student performance and school/community data is analyzed and used to develop plans to ensure all students are learning and progressing toward achievement of academic standards. The following goals reflect our current CSI focus:

Purpose Statement Educating today's youth for tomorrow's challenges.

Motto We're not too small, we're not too tall, but we Toucans can do it all!

Goal 1: All students will show an increased level of proficiency in writing in all curricular areas. Interventions: Reading Street's Traits of Writing

Goal 2: All students will show increased proficiency in number relations and communication in mathematics. Interventions: Curriculum-based games

Science Scientific Inquiry, process, and the Scientific Method, safety procedures, habitats, plant and animal adaptations, life cycles, food chains, Earths composition, natural resources, and changes, heat, changes in matter, motion and sound, gravity

Social Studies Government, rules, laws, consequences, citizenship, constitution, branches, local, state, and national government, history of landmarks, symbols & documents, geography, natural resources, communities, contributions of American heroes, economics, goods/services, wants/needs, supply/demand, division of labor, human capital

Reading Prefixes/Suffixes, synonyms/antonyms, context clues, dictionary skills, text features, connecting prior knowledge, asking questions, compare/contrast, predict, main idea/details, problem/solution, sequence, fact/opinion, character traits, authors purpose, and genres including classic/contemporary literature, historical fiction, fantasy, folklore, mythology, poetry, songs, plays

Writing Writing process, graphic organizers, topic sentences/supporting details, research process/tools, proofreading and editing, writing formal/informal letters, narrative, descriptive, & persuasive writing, word variation, responses to literature, cursive, types of sentences, punctuation, subject/verb agreement, verb tenses, pronouns, adjectives, compound nouns, articles, commas, contractions, compound words, onomatopoeia, prose, poetry

Math Place value, comparing numbers to 10,000, numerical order, inverse operations, related math facts, multiplication, fractions, estimation, patterns, quantities with numerical expressions, commutative, associative properties, data predictions, patterns, & organization, attributes, properties of 2D/3D shapes, angles, coordinate systems, symmetry, measurement, temperature, area, perimeter, time, graphing, probability

Health Personal and community health, safety and injury prevention, nutrition and physical activity, mental health, alcohol, tobacco, drug abuse, family life and developmental changes, preparing for adult roles in family and society

All DoDEA academic standards can be found at: http://www.dodea.edu/curriculum/

Our daily reading routine will include a whole group mini-lesson, small group strategy and skill instruction, and independent/partner activities. We will utilize the Daily 5/CAFE systems described in further detail below.

CAFE

CAFE is an acronym used to describe the habits of good readers:

Comprehension: Readers use strategies to help them understand what they are reading.

Accuracy: Readers use strategies to help them solve unfamiliar words.

Fluency: Readers use strategies to help their reading flow smoothly and sound like talking.

Expanding Vocabulary: Readers use strategies to learn more words that will help them read and understand increasingly complex texts.

Daily 5

Daily 5 is the term used to describe the activities that students choose to do when they are not participating in a small group with the teacher. These activities are purposeful and focus on helping each child develop literacy abilities through the use of good fit texts and materials that are usually chosen by each student. The Daily 5 activities include:

Read to Self: Research has shown that sustained independent reading with good fit texts is the best thing a learner can do to increase his/her reading abilities!

Work on Writing: The same goes for writing! The more a student writes independently, the more growth will occur.

Word Work: Research has shown that spelling practices are most meaningful when the focus is NOT on memorization. Students who are given spelling words and patterns that closely align with their current literacy abilities experience the most success. Analyzing words and making connections between words leads to more growth as a speller.

Read to Someone: It is helpful for students to practice reading out loud, listen to their peers read, and discuss their feelings and opinions about texts. This activity gives partners the opportunity to help each other grow as readers!

Listen to Reading: Its true that the best thing parents can do to nurture a childs literacy abilities as early as infancy is to read to them! Children can learn many new words and develop their listening comprehension through hearing texts read aloud. Students also better understand the concept of fluency when they hear what it sounds like for good readers to read out loud. CDs and online websites will be used for these purposes.

As the year progresses, you may notice that our classroom doesnt run like other classrooms. We will be learning through Whole Brain Teaching, a research based system that utilizes all areas of the brain, keeps children engaged throughout their lessons, and helps them retain much more information than the standard lecture-discussion model.

Whole Brain Teaching is a highly interactive form of instruction that delivers information to students in short chunks. Kids then teach what they have just learned to their partners, using hand-gestures to help remember specific vocabulary. While students teach each other, the teacher walks around the room to discover who understands the lesson and who needs more instruction.

Research shows that children retain more information when they have an opportunity to put it into their own words and use gestures to emphasize key instructional units plus, its amazingly fun! For more information about Whole Brain Teaching please contact me, come by for a classroom visit and/or go to www.WholeBrainTeaching.com.

The Super Improver Wall is a motivating and rewarding piece of the Whole Brain Teaching system. This approach allows us to recognize and reward individual student improvement. Students are challenged to set their own academic, behavioral, and/or social goals based on their needs as learners. These goals are completely tailor-made and each student will work to improve in his or her goal areas. The Super Improver Wall is a way to acknowledge and positively reinforce students efforts and successes.

How It Works: There are 10 color-coded levels from Beginner to Genius and corresponding color star tags for each student displayed on the wall. Whenever improvement is noted in ANY area, students are given a star. When a student receives 10 stars, he or she is given special recognition, and moved up to the next level on the wall.

The idea stems from The Super Improver Story by Chris Biffle: Two students have a foot race. The faster student wins and she gets an "A" from the teacher. The slower student loses and gets an "F". Every day, they have the same race. Every day, the result is the same. After a while, the fast student loafs and the slow student quits. Of course! The grading system is unfair and doesn't motivate either kid! The teacher creates a new race. Now, the fast student only gets an "A" when she beats her previous best time. The same system applies

to the slower student. Now, each student always runs as hard as possible! Moral: The only fair race is the one you run against yourself.

This year, we will be using a new classroom management tool called Class Dojo. Class Dojo is a web based program which allows teachers to track students behaviors (positive AND negative) easily and efficiently. The program is based on points, and students can be given positive points for things like being on task, being respectful, participating, or working hard. On the other hand, points can be taken away if students are off task, talking out, or unprepared. Our goal is to fully implement the program right away and use it in conjunction with the Super Improvers Wall, but please bear with us as we are learning as we go!

After parent permission slips have been signed and students have been added to the system, there is a student access code we will give to each student so that they can log on to the website. On the site, they are able to see how many points they have, which positive behaviors were noted, and which negative behaviors they need to work on. Monthly, students will be able to cash in on their points for different reward coupons.

One of the greatest features of Class Dojo is that it allows us to send parents a behavior and skills report every Friday by e-mail. All you need to do is use the parent access code to get signed up. Our hope is that this will help you better understand the progress of your students behavior on a week-to-week basis.

Please contact us if you have any questions!

Students at Zukeran Elementary are granted many rights as learners.

Along with these rights come many responsibilities.

When we all take care of our responsibilities, we can truly enjoy our rights.

I promise to be fair and respectful to all students in my classroom. You (student) reserve the right to explain your actions and behavior. I promise to listen. Together we promise to make this room a safe

and positive place.

This plan will be used alongside Class Dojo and Super Improvers. With so many positive plans in place, I hope these next steps will rarely become necessary. However, this plan is in place for any incidences of excessively disruptive or inappropriate behavior.

The First Warning Hopefully, this is the only warning necessary. You may lose Class

Dojo points but no other action will be taken. We all make mistakes. Life is about learning from those mistakes and moving

forward.

The Second Warning I will place a Think Sheet on your desk. Look over the questions and

think about how you can make better choices.

The Third Warning You will take the Think Sheet to the Safe Seat and fill it out. I will

meet with you to talk about your feelings and behavior.

The Final Warning You will be sent to a Buddy room with your work.

* Mrs. Frost reserves the right to skip steps or involve school administration based on the seriousness of the offense.

* This plan is reviewed with students during the first week of school.

School Attendance Policy:

Students absent from school should bring a note from home, signed by the parent/guardian, explaining the absence. Excused absences are granted for the following reasons:

a) Illness b) Family emergency (severe illness, death, local hardship, etc.) c) Medical necessities that cannot be taken care of during non-school time. d) Religious observances Pre-Planned Absences: 1. Assignments and materials given out during the student's absence will be placed in a folder and given to the student either before they leave or upon his/her return depending on how much lead time we have when notified of upcoming absence. 2. The student will be allowed a number of school days equal to his/her days absent to complete and turn in assignments missed during absence. 3. It is understood that many in-class activities (example: science experiments, participation in discussions, lectures, films, demonstrations, tests) are impossible to make up so alternative assignments will be provided. 4. Request forms may be picked up at the school's office and completed requests must be returned to the school office PRIOR to the first day of the absence to ensure that assignments/materials and requirements may be determined as noted. IN ORDER TO RECEIVE GRADES ON A PROGRESS REPORT, A STUDENT MUST HAVE BEEN IN ATTENDANCE AT LEAST 20 SCHOOL DAYS OF THAT QUARTER.

Tardiness: Students arriving at school after 0730 are considered tardy. If you know that your child will be late arriving to school, please make certain that a note is sent explaining the tardiness. He/she should take this note to the main office to sign in before reporting to class. A signed appointment slip from the dentist or doctor may be used in lieu of a note from parents. Parents should come in to the office to sign in students; or a signed note is requested from parents. Students who are tardy due to government transportation or delayed by a medical appointment are excused. A tardy student should report to the office for a Late Slip before going to his/her classroom.

Exciting news! This year, not only will we be using VocabularySpellingCity in our classroom, but thanks to our Premium Membership, both students and parents will benefit from the many advantages VocabularySpellingCity reserves for its Premium Members.

Every week, I will put up a new spelling and/or vocabulary list directly on our classrooms VocabularySpellingCity homepage, which students can conveniently access from home. There, they may review their words and play spelling and vocabulary games to reinforce the learning process.

Simply go to http://www.spellingcity.com to help your child log in with his/her assigned username and password. Space is provided below to record this information when it is given.

Username: P ssw rd

Once logged in, students will be automatically redirected to our classrooms homepage, where their spelling and vocabulary lists will be clearly visible just below my Welcome Message & Daily Instructions. Please be sure that every time your child accesses VocabularySpellingCity, s/he is logged in properly and completely finishes each game or activity to ensure that all activity is recorded and credited in my online gradebook.

For your convenience, you can access your childs student records at any time by selecting My Records from the menu in the upper right hand corner. My welcome message will give daily/weekly instructions.

I ask that you please encourage your child to spend about ten minutes each night working with his/her assigned words over the four consecutive nights preceding our weekly test. Working together as a team will go a long way toward not only guiding our students to academic success, but also ensuring that they become independent, lifelong learners.

Homework: You should expect students to have 30-45 minutes of homework most school days. I encourage you to set up a scheduled time and place for homework completion. Students should be able to do most assignments independently, but do help if its completely necessary. If you notice that your child is unable to complete an assignment on his or her own, please send a note or e-mail. I will contact you if your child is falling behind or turning in poor work.

All students may bring a nutritious snack and spill-proof bottle of water to school each day. Protein Boost Try to get kids to eat a snack that is filled with protein at snack time instead of one that is sugary. Try a few of these ideas and judge for yourself. Please note: While some of these require a bit of preparation ahead of snack time, they will keep in the refrigerator for several days. Many are great with your choice of whole grain, rice-or-nut crackers, or as a dip for raw vegetable sticks.

Egg salad Tuna salad Sliced hard-boiled eggs (or deviled eggs) String cheese, cheese cubes and slices - dairy or non-dairy varieties Yogurt dairy or non-dairy varieties Natural nut butters: try spreading on sliced apples or bananas Nuts almonds, cashews, peanuts, pecans, pistachios, walnuts Seeds pumpkin, sunflower, sesame

Sweet Favorites Feed a sweet craving with naturally delicious fruits and vegetables. Many are great mixed with nuts and seeds or spread with natural nut butters. Applesauce Fruit bar cookies Raw vegetable sticks Fruit leather Fresh fruit Dried fruit Sliced tomatoes Whole cherry tomatoes Sliced cucumber Pickles

All about the Crunch Many of these crunchy foods are excellent with cheese slices for a boost of protein.

Pretzels Low-fat or baked chips Rice or popcorn cakes Popcorn (already popped) Granola bar Graham crackers Dry cereal Snack crackers Soy or rice crisps Trail mix Sources: Iowa State University Extension, Cooperative Extension Service, Kansas State University, and University of Illinois Extension Service, and Whole Foods Market. Retrieved from http://www.uaex.edu/depts/FCS/EFNEP/Lessons/Healthy_Snacking_Children/healthy_snacking.pdf

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