Hello, 2012!

I hope you all had a delightful Christmas break and are ready to begin 2012!  Did you make a New Year's Resolution?  One of my resolutions is to make a positive observation every day!  As I reflect on the first half of the school year I can make several positive observations and I'd like to share them with you!  

• Our third graders are on their way to becoming great non-fiction writers.  By using Time for Kids and other non-fiction resources, students are becoming proficient at early research and note-taking skills!  
• Our class saw great growth in the Communication Arts benchmark, raising our class average by almost 20%!
• In math, our students are mastering the problem solving strategies of making a picture and using tally marks, and are beginning to learn some more sophisticated strategies.
• By doing Math Daily Review, nearly 80% of our class is proficient at subtraction with regrouping, a huge challenge for us at the beginning of the year!

These are just a few celebrations as we begin the second semester.  It's hard to believe the year is half over already!  I look forward to continuing to see growth as we press on toward the MAP test later this year!  We are on the right track, so let's keep "chugging along" together!