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.