Happy Holidays!

You can tell the holidays are right around the corner! The energy in our classroom is palpable!

      This week we will continue with our regular schedule of academics with a few holiday twists thrown in. We will have a party on Friday with hot cocoa, cookies, and a winter craft. The students are allowed to wear their pajamas to school on Friday. Please no stuffed animals or slippers. We will still go outside for recess (weather permitting) so their pajamas must be playground appropriate.

    Our classroom is in need of pencils and kleenex, if you can help us out I would greatly appreciate any donation. Also, I am still collection clean, empty 2 liter plastic soda bottles and cardboard 1/2 gallon juice containers for our engineering unit. We will use these supplies immediately upon our return from the holiday break.

   If you have not signed-up for a January conference please click the following link to sign-up. If these times/dates do not work for you, please let me know so we can make arrangements.

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0945aaac2aa6ff2-january?scrlybrkr=3b8a7bac

Happy Thanksgiving

We only have two days of school this week, but they will be packed with learning!

Reader's Workshop

     We have just begun a new unit in reading. We will be working on a nonfiction unit. Our focus will be on grasping the main ideas of a text, and using text structures to help us read to learn. The students are off to a very strong start with this work. Last week we worked on "revving" up our minds to prepare to read a nonfiction article. We looked at the text features to help us create an idea of what we might learn while reading. 

Writer's Workshop

    We will begin a nonfiction unit in writing this week as well. We will be writing informational texts on a topic the students are experts on. We will work on organizing our work, and learning how to use nonfiction text features to help make our work interesting.

Math

    Multiplication!!! We learned about the concepts behind multiplication. The students took a test last week on this first unit, and their scores were outstanding! We worked on relating repeated addition to multiplication, and we used arrays to help us solve problems. This last Friday we began learning some facts. We will being by learning the facts that can be solved with patterns the students are very familiar with. This week we will work on multiplying by 2, 5, 9, 0, and 1.

   After we have learned strategies for solving all of the facts 0-10 I will send home a sheet that shows how each set of facts was taught (to help you study at home). We will also begin multiplication timed tests after all of the facts have been introduced, and the students have had some time to learn, practice, and memorize facts. Flash cards make a great holiday gift :)

Social Studies

    We have spent the last few weeks learning about the Ancient Egyptian culture and people. We have read a nonfiction chapter book about Ancient Egypt, and we have had fun making some crafts to go along with our learning. We will complete this unit this week!

Science

    I am so excited to begin a brand new science unit to third grade, and Elsmere. We will begin a unit on packaging engineering. During this unit the students will work in small groups to design and build a package to meet a certain set of requirements. I had the pleasure of attending a training on this unit through The Museum of Science in Boston. Please look for a letter coming home tomorrow explaining more about our learning, and a request for some materials. 

Spelling

    We will not have a spelling list this week, but we will resume spelling Monday after Thanksgiving break.

The students working on figurative language posters...

Thank you to our mystery reader, Mrs. Perrotto!

The students learning how to code...

Anton read us one of his favorite books.

Thank you to our mystery reader, Mrs. Donohue!

Halloween and the Book Fair

   We will visit the Book Fair this week. Thursday we will go in the afternoon to preview the books for sale. Students will make wish lists which will go home with them that day. We will return to the Book Fair at 2:30 on Friday afternoon to make purchases. If you would like your child to purchase a book, you should send their money in a marked envelope or baggie.
   The students are very excited for Halloween! We had a great party on Friday. Thank you to everyone who sent in a treat. I spoke with the class last week about saving candy for a treat at lunchtime. We eat our snack at 10:15 in the morning, and I would prefer that the students not eat candy for snack. Thank you in advance for your help with this!

What's new...

    We have begun learning about Ancient Egypt. This is a fun unit surrounding a nonfiction text. We will explore this ancient civilization, and sharpen our nonfiction reading skills.  This Monday we will do our first Word Work homework assignment. The students will be writing a short story using their vocabulary words. We did this together last week, so each student has an example in their notebooks. Current Events begin this week. This is a homework assignment that came home two weeks ago with an example that we completed in class. The students will be presenting their report in front of the class, so it would help to practice a bit at home first. Each night we will write who is due the next day in our steno pads. Be on the lookout for this daily addition.
   This is our last week working on addition and subtraction concepts in math. We will move onto multiplication next week!!!

Thank you to Zoey's grandmother for being our Mystery Reader!

Last Week of October

   We have an exciting week of learning ahead of us!

Reader's Workshop
     The students have been working with a reading partner for a few weeks, and they have been allowed to choose the book they read during reader's workshop. On Monday, the students will be assigned a book on or slightly above their reading level. Their partner will have the same book. Our instruction this week will revolve around how to figure out unknown words, figurative language, and how to support a partner through book talks. We will also talk about "grit", and how we can all become better readers by applying some extra effort, or grit, when we read.
    Please encourage your child to choose appropriate books when reading at home. Also, I would love to see the students choose to read more than the assigned 100 mins a week.

Writer's Workshop
     The students have organized their stories, and we will be drafting this week. As the students draft we will work on revising when our storyteller voice becomes a news reporter's voice. We have been working on learning to write in paragraphs. Last week we worked on writing topic sentences with a subject (the big idea) and a focus (a small topic within the big idea). We will continue to work on topic sentences, and also writing cohesive paragraphs. Hopefully, our Friday Letters will begin to look much more organized over the next few weeks.

Math
    Our new unit is Adding and Subtracting with regrouping. We will spend a few days working on adding 3-digit numbers, and 3 or more numbers. Then we will work on subtracting 3-digit numbers. This will include regrouping over zeroes. Please continue to practice addition and subtraction facts to increase your child's speed and accuracy. Multiplication is just around the corner!!!

Science
   Our plant unit is wrapping up. The students pollinated their flowers last week with real bees! This week we will observe our plants as they grow seed pods. We will continue to record our observations in our plant logs.

Social Studies
     We are beginning a unit on Ancient Egypt. This week we will learn about the geography of Egypt and how it led to the development of this ancient society. We will be reading a nonfiction chapter book about Ancient Egypt to support our learning during this unit.

Vocabulary
    I have begun to introduce 4 vocabulary words per week to the class. We are discussing the meaning of these words in class, and using them in sentences. Our homework on Mondays will be to use the 4 words in a paragraph. This homework will begin tomorrow night. We will go over how to complete the homework in great detail tomorrow in class.

Other Important Reminders:
    -A current event calendar went home last week. We did one together as a class last week. If you have any questions about the assignment please contact me. The assignment is due on the day your child's name appears on the calendar. We will be writing who is due each day in the steno pad.

    -Our last math test (chapter 2) came home last week for a signature. This was corrected in class. The scores overall were fantastic, mostly just silly mistakes. 

     -Our spelling list this week is a cumulative list of our first four units. The students will not need to write sentences for the quiz. Any word misspelled on the quiz will become a spelling word again. 

     -Our class Halloween party will be this Friday at 2:15. If you signed up to bring in a treat Mrs. Mash emailed you a reminder last week.

Last week we used a gigantic traveling map of NY state to find landmarks in our state. The students had a ton of fun!

Thank you to our Mystery Reader Caitlin, Emilie's sister!

Welcome Fall

     It looks like the beautiful Fall weather is here to stay! This week we have school on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Each day will be packed with learning.

Reader's Workshop
      We are wrapping up our first unit about building a reading life. This week we will explore how to make meaning, and figure out words in more complicated texts. I will send home a new reading calendar tomorrow. I am challenging each student to spend their 20 mins each night reading a chapter book this week.

Writer's Workshop
     The students have chosen a topic to write their first published piece this year. We will be using a storyteller's voice to write our small moment. This week we will try out different leads, and write a discovery draft.

Math
      We are working on our second unit. We have learned how to round numbers to the tens and hundreds place. We are working on using our rounding skills to estimate sums and differences. Please continue to practice addition and subtraction facts at home. We need our facts to be automatic for the more advanced math we are doing in third grade.

Science
     We have planted our Wisconsin Fast Plants, and we are observing their growth. This week we will observe our plants grow true leaves, and begin a growth spurt. The students are amazing scientists!!

This week we will also complete our Dictionary Skills unit.

We spent a fantastic morning with George Steel learning about mammals.