This week we tried listening to the dictado using prerecorded audio. The file is available for practice below.
Hello, Families!
Quick Updates:
Book Group Assignments: Book groups continue to meet and students are still working on making sure their answers connect back to the text specifically. Math: This week, we finished up Muffles Truffles by designing our own truffle and truffle box. We will be completely finished after Monday when we have our very own Muffles coming in to talk with third grade. We will be sending home pictures after our Monday activity with Muffles! Also thanks to the Pum family for sending in some truffles for the students to enjoy as they worked on their math! :) Next week we will start another investigation talking about our very own community. We will be solving problems about the constantly expanding Verona District. Students will solve fictional problems about class sizes, school supplies, and classroom materials for the new Verona school. We will continue focusing on multiplication while also introducing division. Students will then be taking their division pretest on Friday so we can sign up for math seminars the following week. When we get back from winter break, we will start up with seminars. Social Studies: Students have been researching in class an animal discovered in the polar regions. We are now busying turning our information into paragraphs. We will hold a class lesson based on how to write a paragraph following the same format as the structured paragraph. The students will write their rough draft of their paragraphs on colored strips of paper to help remind them of the structure. The paragraph is as follows: Green - Topic Sentence Yellow - 1st detail based on topic sentence Blue - Supporting evidence from previous yellow strip Yellow - 2nd detail based on topic sentence Blue - Supporting evidence from previous yellow strip Yellow - 3rd detail based on topic sentence Blue - Supporting evidence from previous yellow strip Red - Concluding sentence Students will be required to write at least 5 paragraphs with one paragraph on their animal's physical description, what their animal eats, where their animal lives, their animal's behavior, and their animal's lifecycle. We will be continuing to work on this when we get back from winter break. Dictado: This week we used shaving cream on our tables in order to practice our dictado words. It was a lot of fun and a big hit as seen by the huge smiles in the picture attached! Science: The mother crayfish's eggs are about to hatch! We took time out of our morning Friday to go take observations on the mother crayfish, since we think her eggs will be hatching this weekend. We have attached pictures and a video below. The students are very excited! We continuing to take data on where the crayfish prefer to be in our crayfish pond. We will be finishing collecting this data next week, and then discuss our findings. We will be saying goodbye to our crayfish pond before winter break. **Momma Crayfish has had some of her babies. She and the babies will be staying longer so that we can observe the full lifecycle. Please let me know if you have any questions! Hope you have a wonderful weekend, Amy Quick News
Reading: Continuing Book Groups Writing: New In Class Assignment Math: Muffles Truffles Unit Science: Crayfish Man Made Habitats Social Studies: Africa done, Antarctica Animals Homework: Free Write Journal (2 pages skipping lines) Due Friday Read 20-30 minutes nightly Dictado Words In more detail: Writing The snow has inspired us to begin working on our next writing project. Unfortunately, it is a bit of surprise for families so all we can tell you is that the learners have been working hard and we look forward to sharing more with you soon. Math Beginning this week and stretching into next, we have been working on a new math unit that requires learners to solve problems regarding a baker named Muffles and all of his truffles! The district wide math team has asked us to begin implementing some curriculum tools that will be used district wide. The unit plan, which was written by Catherine Fosnot and Antonia Cameron, asks learners to use many concepts from our multiplication study (as well as other background knowledge) to answer real world problems. Muffle and his Truffles have captured many kids attention and will continue through next week. There is a video on the blog to help with discussion. Ask your student about what they have helped Muffle do for his chocolate shop. Science We still have 6 crayfish and a momma still alive and providing us with a ton of data. Students are charting crayfish preferences in our man made environments and will hopefully do so until Christmas break. The momma's eggs are beginning to get translucent, so hopefully we will be able to see the full lifecycle. Attached to this email is a flyer for a wonderful STEM Science Fair opportunity put on by VAHS. If you have time it would be a great event to take your child to. Social Studies Having finished with our Africa projects, we are already moving on to our next continent! For the next few weeks, our kids will be learning about Antarctica and the polar regions. We are asking that each learner focuses on one animal from this area. Then using the facts they gather, we will begin teaching more directed lessons about paragraph writing in the coming weeks. Homework Please notice that there is NO structured paragraph for this week. We are starting some lessons in class in the next couple of weeks that will focus on paragraph writing, so we are taking that off of the homework agenda for this week. Homework for the week is listed below. * Journal Entry - two pages skipping lines free write (NO structured paragraph this week!) Due Friday 12/11 * Read 20-30 minutes nightly and record on December reading log * Dictado words to study: in, our, most, unit, we, have, been, and, how, can, be, used, real, world, setting, the, coming, weeks, will, those, ideas, as, well *Challenge words: recent, math, exploring, discussing, explaining, multiplication, strategies Reading: Reading groups are still working on the same books. We are really focusing on deeper connections and relating our connections back to the book. Book group discussion dates are listed below: Trins: pp. 50-70 for Wed 12/9 Marty Digs Worms: ch 10-13 for 12/11 Humphrey: pp. 110-124 for 12/7 Flora and Ulysses: pp37-52 for Tues 12/8 Mercy Watson: ch. 10-12 for 12/10 The coming week: The food drive will continue next week. Tues is PE/music. Wed is Art. Friday is a community Gathering featuring 2nd grade. Attached is also a flyer for an upcoming STEM night through the High School. It looks like an exciting night of science and engineering if you have time as a family. Thank you to those parents that were able to come watch presentations today. The students were really excited to see you all there and to have an audience.
Some students remembered their November reading log - a few forgot. There is one more day of November when we return from break, so if you still have it at home, please help your student make sure that it comes in with them after break. Remember reading groups and journals are due the week after break. Journals on Friday, December 4 and book groups are listed below. -Flora and Ulysses due 12/1 -Trins due 12/2 -Marty due 12/4 -Watson due 12/3 -Humphry due 11/30 The new Math Unit will start when we come back. This unit will be structured a bit different in that students will be working only in homerooms. It will be a wrap up of multiplication and an intro to division. Look for more details and timeline as we come back from break. Enjoy the extra family time and have a safe holiday! This week in third grade was super eventful. We skyped with a friend from South Africa, were visited by a friend from the Ivory Coast (and even danced with her), finished up our Unit 2 Math and worked hard on researching Africa. Here are some things you should know...
1.Math: There is a math test on Monday for Multiplication. Students who are still missing sheets were sent home with what they were missing stapled together in a packet (look for a packet with an index card attached) and a few others had sheets almost done, but needed a few finishing touches. Please ask your kiddo about their math and see if they were finished - we celebrated each kiddo who finished, so they know if they are done or not. 2. Lit groups are not due until the week after we come back from break - students have a sheet to do and pages to read. Things to focus on: In the discussion director portion - this should be open ended questions about the book, NOT statements. Students are posing a question about the reading/character to their group in this section. In the Illustrator section- this SHOULD NOT be a picture from the book. This is a place for students to show their mental image of something that happened or someone that is in the story - not just copy a picture from the book. Clever Connector section - we are working on deeper connections. This means that a connection should be related back to the story in some way (even stronger if they can mention a specific section or page number), so, "In my story the mom grounded the child on p. 23 because she didn't do her homework and it reminded me of last month when my mom grounded me because I didn't come home from the park when I was supposed to..." -Flora and Ulysses due 12/1 -Trins due 12/2 -Marty due 12/4 -Watson due 12/3 -Humphry due 11/30 3. Journals were given out today. If your child hasn't turned in their Thankful writing piece, please help them make sure that it is here for Monday as we will be working on it some more. Journals for this week will not be due until the Friday that we come back from break (12/4) and are "Something I am proud of" for the structured paragraph and a free write. Please keep encouraging your student to use their best writing and add details. We are working hard in class on using our best descriptions to help the reader picture what we are writing about. 4. Reading: The reading log that went out at the beginning of the month should be coming back to school by 11/24. This was a brownish sheet, looks like a calendar, to keep mins of reading on. You will get another one for December Reading. 5. Projects: Africa projects are in full swing. Projects will be presented on Monday. Please help your student remember to bring their items back - many took them with today to add finishing touches. Some students are doing an poster, some a google presentation, etc. Projects should have their sources documented somewhere. 6. Behavior: Students in third grade have been talked to multiple times this week about making sure that they are lining up when asked, are practicing safe behavior for recess and making sure that they are following lunchroom rules. We took some time to reflect on this, but if you would add it to your discussions at home that would be appreciated. 7.Crayfish: this week, students took time to think about what crayfish prefer in order to construct the best man-made habitat. They then worked in small groups to design what their group would put in their section of the crayfish pool. Currently, our pond is filled with fake plants, yogurt containers, washers, PVC pipes and more! It looks beautiful! Students will then be collecting data regularly about which section the crayfish prefer. The challenge will be trying to find the crayfish in their creative, heavily covered habitats. Dates to remember:
Thats it for now. Please let me know if any questions arise. Have a great weekend! Good evening families!
A reminder that this week is the last week for Math in Unit 2. Playbooks are being updated tonight and will be available again tomorrow. There are many more kiddos who are having success in being close to completion. Thanks so much for your reminders and chats with them about math! Research projects on Africa are underway. If you haven't talked to your child about their project yet, please ask them. Many are very excited about the research. If they are working at home on their work, please remind them to bring in what notes adn things they complete so that they have them the next day at school. Also, we have discussed that they should be writing down their sources as they use them. For websites, this is the name of the website and the URL. For books, its the Title, Author and page numbers (or whole book). Please refer to the links on Friday's email for good sites for the kids to use - we are really looking for helping them choose quality sources and not just google searching and using the first thing that pops up. Last update is dictado for the week. It is below. Teaching point this week is the commas that set up the beginning phrases and as always, the normal spelling. As we research Africa, we need to remember many things. First, we need to look at good sources. Second, it is important to take notes about what we learn. Finally, we will use this information to create a project. Remember the yellow are the no excuse words - words that 3rd graders should know cold to be successful as they go through the year and into 4th. Some of the students have traveling word walls - as your student if they have one. These should come out each time that they write and any yellow word in the dictado should be added to the orange page on the wall. This will be a great resource to have as they are editing journals and working on spelling things. If they are adding the yellow words from dictado each week, they will have access at home to the same words that they have on the wall at school. As always, let me know of any questions that arise. Have a great night.
This week has been exciting for crayfish... with eggs, worms and pond learning, the critters sure keep us busy! Homework is a little different this week. To celebrate the crayfish, we are working on a writing project. It should be coming home tonight - Look for a book with a green cover and white pages. The project is called "Diary of a Crayfish" and should document the travel of the crayfish from the crayfish point of view. Students have been working on this book in class and should be working on it at home this week instead of journal entries. There is a rubric in the back of the book to give students goals to shoot for as well as a word bank to help them with the academic vocabulary to include in the book. We have talked about the crayfish shouldn't be playing ipad, running a marathon, etc... It should be things the crayfish would typically experience. Math so far seems to be going well. We took an informal survey of the kiddos and they seem really excited about the changes that have been made. Keep asking for those playbooks and to see updates on google classroom - there is even some new multiplication songs to help with facts! Literature circles have new books (for most students) and they have a reading assignment due on Monday. Each child has a cloth pouch that should have their reading group book and their lit circle sheet in it. They have a reading assignment listed at the top of the sheet and the sheet is to be completed as well- due Monday. Groups will be meeting to talk about their book so it is imperative that readers have finished their work so that they can participate. This pouch should come back and forth with the student every day so that they can work on their reading/sheet at home or at school. This would be a great thing to work on during the read for 20-30 mins! Speaking of the reading - hopefully you all got a November Calendar that came home yesterday. Its on a brownish colored paper. Some kiddos are not getting their planners signed, so we are trying to make it easier for families. This calendar can be kept at home through the whole month and should be returned before Thanksgiving Break. Hopefully this streamlines your signing - your child should be filling in any mins that they read on the chart and your signature is needed at the bottom. The reading goal is listed at the top. We have started researching a new continent this week. Today we flew to Africa and got our passports stamped. Students will get to go to seminars on topics of their choice supporting their study of Africa and its culture. They will then work towards a research project of their choosing - more info on that later. There is strep going around third grade. Please help your kiddo remember to get plenty of sleep, wash hands and dress for the weather. Food Drive is happening. If you would be willing to send in things, please do. We will be keeping track of items brought in per class. Items for this week's collection items are chink pineapple, macaroni, condiments, shampoo and diapers. Money and other food items are always welcome as well. We will be doing some things with the crayfish next week as well. Students will begin a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) project and be asked to work in groups to design a portion of their habitat in our pool using man-made materials. Examples of these materials include PVC pipes, yogurt containers, plastic plants, 2 liter bottles - anything that can withstand water and be washed before use. We will also be looking for some old washers/nuts/bolts to help items sink. |
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November 2017
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