These past two weeks have been filled with excitement in third grade. I am so proud of the hard work the students put into the circus performance. It was wonderful to see them show off their work to everyone! This week in math we have wrapped up our review of addition and subtraction of two digit numbers and have moved on to our new unit of multiplication. I ask that if you give extra practice to your student at home, make sure they are explaining what they are doing to get to their answer. So far we have defined multiplication as a certain number of equal sized groups. For example, if we are making four pitchers of lemonade and need three lemons for each pitcher we will need 12 lemons total because there are 4 groups of 3. We learned how to draw groups with equal amounts in each group to show what we are doing to solve a problem. On Friday we were also introduced to arrays (pictures drawn as rows and columns). We found that arrays are the more efficient way to represent multiplication problems. In reading we have been discussing how readers will always encounter tricky words in their reading lives. Even though this statement is true, we should never just skip over words thinking that we do not need to know what they mean. Authors leave us clues in the text to help us figure out what a word means. When we find a tricky word when we are reading, we can write it down on a post-it note and think about how the author is using the word to come up with a definition for it. In writing we continue to work on our personal narratives. We have been spending a lot of time talking about adding details that show the reader what is happening. We also are starting to type up our first drafts in our Chromebooks. Upcoming Dates: Thursday and Friday October 18, 19 No School Monday October 22 Picture Order Forms are due Friday and Saturday October 26, 27 Common Roots Tag Sale at Orchard Gym Monday October 29 Picture Retake Day Classroom Requests: The students (and school) have been going through cold season. We have already used many of our donated tissues from the beginning of the year. If you are able, please consider sending in tissues as a donation to our classroom! Thank you!
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This week was our first time having a word of the week. Our word of the week will be based off of various character traits. The word of the week this week was determined. We discussed what it means to be a determined person and talked about how one of the characters in our read aloud, Little Willy, was very determined. This week we also talked a lot about what it means to write a story. Authors tell stories bit by bit giving the readers details about what the characters hear, say, do, and feel.Students are working towards expanding their story by adding many specific details that make a movie in the reader’s mind. We also had our first STEM activity. Students had to save a gummy worm by putting him through his life jacket (a gummy life saver) which was under his boat.. Students had to design a plan on a flowchart describing what they would do first, next, and last. They had to work hard at being very specific about their steps in order to obtain their materials.They used teir plan to problem solve the situation. This Monday we will debrief about the activity talking about the challenges students had faced when they had to solve the problem and what they would change for next time. Upcoming Dates: October 2 Field Trip to Sam Mazza’s Farm October 5 Half Day Release 12:30 October 1-5, October 8-12 Troy Wunderle will be at Orchard to teach students during their Gym and Music times. This week we had two new students join our classroom! We were so excited to invite them into our third grade family! This class amazes me with their kind and helpful hearts.
In Math we have been focusing on what it means to subtract numbers. We are also practicing various strategies for solving subtraction problems.We have been using number lines to solve and break apart strategies to make numbers easier to subtract. We have also been finding certain patterns in subtraction problems that we recognize (for example: any number subtracted from itself is 0). In Writing we spent the week brainstorming memories we have of important people in our lives. We also spent some time mapping out somewhere special to us and writing memories we have of that place. We then took one idea from our brainstorms to make into a story. As the next couple weeks continue we will be focusing on refining one of the stories we wrote into an effective small moment piece. In reading we continue to practice making a mental movie in our minds of what is going on. We are also continuing to practice keeping track of important events in our mind as we read. Upcoming Dates: Thursday September 27th Sam Mazza’s Farm Field Trip Form Due I am incredibly excited that this week is going to be our first whole week of school! This past week was packed with fun activities! Picture day was a success and students enjoyed playing a class game, Coseeki, when waiting for everyone to finish their individual pictures. I cannot wait to see how our class photo will turn out! The Fun Run was also a great amount of ...fun! It was great to watch the teamwork and kindness that the students demonstrated when cheering for other members of the Orchard community. In reading we have been practicing envisioning what we read as we read it. In second grade, our mental movies were combinations of information from the pictures in the story as well as text. In third grade, we are moving towards looking specifically at the text to create our mental movies. It is fun to watch the students react as we read our read aloud, Stone Fox. They are very engaged with Little Willy’s story. Every once in a while ask your child, “What’s happening in read aloud?” In Writing, we have been working on writing paragraphs. We compared a paragraph to a hamburger because a paragraph has many important parts to make it complete. It needs a topic sentence, which tells what the paragraph will be about. It needs many great details to show our topic sentence. Lastly, it needs an effective closing sentence. This past week we practiced the character trait of having self-control. We talked about what this means and looks like inside the classroom, as well as what this looks like when Mrs. Thibault isn’t around. Throughout the year we will have mini-lessons on different character traits--what they look and sound like in the classroom, and in our larger community. Upcoming Dates: Thursday September 27th Sam Mazza’s Farm Field Trip Form Due It has been another great week in room 13. This week, we practiced many more academic expectations and routines. In morning meeting we talked about what it means to be active listeners and successful speakers. This lesson will be prevalent throughout the year as much of our best learning and growth happens through discussions with others. Many of my lessons include students turning and talking, or turning and teaching about what they have learned.
In math we have begun practicing rotating stations while reviewing some second grade content. Math typically will involve three rotations--teacher table (introducing new third grade content), independent practice (reinforcing the skill from teacher table) and extra practice (reviewing a previously taught concept or enrichment). In reading we talked about what it means to find a just right book. We want books that we can fluently read and can read with expression. We want to also be able to talk about what happened after we finish reading. One way we can check our understanding of a book is by asking ourselves, “Who is in this part?” and “What are the important things that have happened in this section?” We also talked about reading for a longer period of time. We ask for students to read 20-30 minutes at home every night! We began exploring our Chromebooks and practiced using classroom.google.com. This will primarily be used in school. I will inform you if they need to complete something at home! Upcoming dates: September 12 2:00 pm, Picture Day September 14 Fun Run 3rd grade will start running at 10:00 am. Have your student wear comfortable clothes and sneakers! September 14 12:30 dismissal, please pack a lunch for your student or let me know they will need a lunch Wow! What a busy week! We reviewed many of the classroom routines and expectations. Morning meetings have involved us getting to know each other and connecting as a group. We were also able to connect with the other third grade classrooms for some team time. Ask your child about our scavenger hunt with the rest of the third grade or the hula hoop activity that helped us build teamwork.
We read a lot of great books that taught us important lessons. The first day of school we read All are Welcome by Alexandra Penfold. This helped us to discuss how we are all a part of a community and our job is to look out for one another, making each other feel welcome. We talked about how we can include others and encourage each other. We read The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spires to discuss how making mistakes is okay and welcomed in our classroom. Adding on to the lesson of making mistakes we read, What do you do with a Chance? by Kobi Yamada. This book showed us to take risks, because you may never know what opportunity you may miss out on. On Friday we discussed our daily reading procedure. We were able to explore our classroom library. We talked about how our reader’s notebooks are like precious silver and our books are gold. Your child brought home the excerpt from Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson. We practiced reading this excerpt in class. After reading this chunk, the students were so interested in what was going to happen next we ended up reading the book! The book helped us teach us an important lesson that we have the opportunity to make an impact on someone else by being kind to them. This is a sweet group of students and I am excited to continue working with them on Tuesday! This next week we are going to be practicing using our chromebooks according to our chromebook agreement that was sent home to sign. Students will be needing headphones/earbuds for the end of the week to keep at school. Please send some in with your students by September 6th. |
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December 2018
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