Last post of 2013!

As we enter our last school week of 2013 and I reflect back on all that the children have accomplished already, I can say that I'm really proud of them and I look forward to seeing what 2014 brings!

One big focus for us these past several weeks has been improving our multiplication fact fluency.  The children have been charting their progress as they tackle each set of times tables.  It's been really wonderful to see the pride on each of their faces when they see that they have beaten their previous day's score or are ready to move on to the next set of times tables.  The children have become really great at the routine- we spend only a few minutes at the beginning of math class practicing their facts and the payoff has been well worth it.  It's my hope that these third graders will knock the socks off their fourth grade teachers when they see how strong they are with their multiplication facts!

In ELA we've been exploring literal and non-literal language.  The children enjoyed learning idioms and reading Amelia Bedelia books- if you are not familiar with Amelia Bedelia, she's a housekeeper who takes her instructions very literally and hilarity ensues.  This week we will be reading some poetry, which is also full of non-literal language!

I hope that your families have a safe and happy holiday season!

Sneak Peek of 3C (Devin)

It's been a while since we've updated, but the children and I are here to catch you up on what we've been doing.  When you see a student's name next to part of this post, you will know who contributed that idea!

Math- As we started using the textbook for math class we saw that we could use number lines to show a multiplication problem.  When you look at a multiplication problem, like 10x3, you can show that on a number line by making 10 skips of 3 to get to 30. (Leo)

We also learned the 9's finger trick- when doing a multiplication problem by 9 you can use your fingers to help you get the answer.  For example, when solving 9x3, you would put your 3rd finger down and look at how many fingers are up to the left of that finger (2) and how many fingers are up to the right of that third finger (7) and then you know your answer is 27. (Cooper)

Students are continuing to use their personal white boards to solve problems from the math book at their desks.  Students can't write in their brand-new textbooks, so it's important for them to have these white boards to show their work. (Lauren)

Science-  Students got Mineral Identification cards and had to read about the properties of specific minerals and then match the mineral described on the card with a sample of the mineral they had been studying during this unit. (Devin)

We finished our Rocks and Minerals packet and then had a test about it.  The students had to study minerals that they had never seen before and use tools to perform tests on them.  They described their minerals on new Mineral Profile Sheets. (Bella, Kassidy, Cooper)

Social Studies- As many people finished their Australian books they have been writing more about Australia in their writing notebooks. (Tyler)

Students finished their Australian Animal books and read them to second graders and fourth graders- and Mr. Bordick and Mrs. Yodis stopped by as well! (Missy)

Students also read about sports in Australia and the United States and filled out a Venn Diagram comparing and contrasting sports in these countries. (Samantha)

Students took a quiz about what they had learned in class about Australia.  (Cooper)

Reading- Students filled out lots of Read One, Win One slips and put them into the box in hopes of winning a prize.  Mrs. Curran drew a slip out last Monday and Riley won a new book, Fly High, Fly Guy. (Lauren)

Students were working for two weeks on a green independent work packet.  They had to complete activities about the books they were reading independently during reading. (Kaya)

We have been learning how to describe characters from the inside, which is called Character Traits.  (Leo)
We've been reading different books and trying to describe the characters in the books using the list of character traits in our reading notebooks. (Lauren)

Stay tuned for the next report!

Read One, Win One

We have a contest going on in our classroom...it's called Read One, Win One!  For the month of November the children have the chance to write a summary for any book they read in school or at home and enter the summary into our Read One, Win One box.  Each summary is an entry to win a book and some other miscellaneous prizes.  And...bonus...the more entries a student puts into the box, the better they will become at writing summaries!

Entry forms are available in our classroom, and I'm working on getting the forms uploaded onto my teacher webpage.  Hopefully that will be available soon!

Keep reading...and summarizing!!!!

What We've Been Up To...

Math- We have come to the end of our Engage New York module on Multiplication and Division.  Our final lesson involved solving two step word problems involving all four operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) by using the Read, Draw, Write method.  The children worked in small groups to solve one such problem and to create a poster with their solutions.  They then used their posters and taught the rest of the class how to solve the problem. Their posters are hanging up in the hallway outside the classroom- take a look when you come in for Parent-Teacher conferences!

              

We will be reviewing the module on Monday and then our end-of-module assessment will be on Wednesday.  We will then move into our Math in Focus textbook and workbook to work a little bit more on multiplication.  

Social Studies and Writing- We've been continuing to work on our nonfiction writing project on Australian animals.  Some of the skills we've been working on related to this project are highlighting important information, note-taking, turning notes into coherent sentences, and writing a topic sentence.  

Science- We are still working with the Rocks and Minerals kit.  The children performed two more tests on their set of minerals and recorded the results of those tests.  They observed the luster of each mineral and recorded whether each mineral was metallic, glassy, waxy, or dull.  They also tested the hardness of each mineral by trying to scratch each of the minerals with a penny and a steel nail and recorded whether the mineral was soft (scratched by the penny), medium (not scratched by the penny, but scratched by the nail), or hard (not scratched by either the penny or the nail).  

Reading- We've been continuing to examine types of Folk Tales- myths, fairy tales, and fables.  The children have a chart in their reading notebooks on which they've taken notes on the characteristics of each type of story.  As I've read examples of each type of story to them the children have used their notes to identify the specific type of story.  

We had a great Halloween party.  Thanks to everyone who sent in snacks and/or stopped in to help us celebrate.  Don't forget about Parent-Teacher Conferences this Tuesday from noon until 7:00 pm.  I'm looking forward to meeting with each of you!

Reading Like Writers

Have you ever heard of the Blue Tongued Skink or an Echidna?  How about a Quoll or a Blue Ring Octopus?  If you aren't familiar with these animals, don't fret!   Our class is hard at work becoming experts on these unusual animals because we know that writers of nonfiction are experts on the topic they write about.  I'm certain that as your child becomes an expert on his or her animal they will look forward to sharing interesting facts with you!

This week we continued to read nonfiction, but we were reading like writers.  We paid careful attention to the nonfiction text features in books and magazines and discussed why authors would include those text features.  We also noticed that nonfiction writers use specialized vocabulary, or special words related to the topic they write about.  We started to think about specialized vocabulary that might be in a nonfiction book about an Australian animal.

Coming up next week:
The children will continue to research their Australian animal in school.  If you wanted to do some research at home or go to the public library and check out helpful books, you are certainly welcome to do so!

In Science the children are continuing to examine their 12 minerals and perform tests on each in order to identify which mineral is which.

In math we are still working on multiplication and division.  The children are using the commutative and distributive properties of multiplication and drawing arrays and tape diagrams to model multiplication and division problems.  There will be a quiz on Wednesday 10/23 on tape diagrams and the distributive property.

In reading we are continuing to learn about the genre of Folktales.  The children learned this past week that folk tales are stories that have been passed down over time in which the characters often have to overcome a challenge or obstacle. Myths, Fairy Tales, and Fables are types of folk tales, each of which has its own distinguishing characteristics.  It can be difficult for young readers (or even experienced readers) to determine whether a story is a general folk tale, a myth, a fairy tale, or a fable, so we will continue to read examples of each and discuss their characteristics.

Somebody...Wanted...But...So...Then

Third graders have been working hard this week learning how to recount stories, which is another way of saying that they are learning to summarize.  A great trick they learned was to use the key words "Somebody" (Who is the story about?) "Wanted" (What is the main character trying to do?) "But" (What is the problem in the story?) "So" (How is the character trying to solve the problem?) "Then" (How is the problem solved in the end?).  It was amazing how expertly the children were able to summarize fiction stories using this technique.  They are bringing home fiction stories in their Book-in-a-Bag this weekend and should be able to demonstrate this new skill for you!

In Science this week the children continued their observations of Rocks and Minerals.  They are getting really good at using descriptive words as they record their observations!  They learned that there are different types of rocks called Igneous, Sedimentary, and Metamorphic and each type of rock is formed in a different way.  Next week they will be observing 12 different minerals and recording their observations of specific properties such as the mineral's luster, magnetism, and hardness.

Did you know that Australia served as a British Prison Colony back in the 1700's?  In Social Studies we read a book called You Wouldn't Want to be an 18th Century British Convict: A Trip to Australia You'd Rather Not Take by Meredith Costain.  This book was both informative and amusing, as the author mixed history with funny cartoons and speech bubbles.  The children recorded a fact they learned, a question they were wondering about, and their thoughts about what they heard in this book.

Next week we will begin integrating Social Studies, reading, and a non-fiction writing unit as the children will research an unusual Australian animal and create a non-fiction book about their animal. Their writing pieces will include non-fiction text features, which we started learning about last week.  I look forward to being able to share more with you about these books.  We have wonderful writers in third grade, so I know their published books will be amazing!

We've headed "Down Under"

Here's what we were up to this week-

Science: The children examined 12 different rocks and came up with descriptive words for each using their 4 senses (we elected not to use our sense of taste on this one- licking the rocks didn't seem like a good idea!)  Next, the children worked on sorting the rocks and describing the groups they made.  Two groups sorted the rocks into categories of big and small, one group sorted by shiny and dull, another group decided to sort by color, and still another sorted into a heavy group and a light group.

Social Studies:  We started studying Australia this week!  We read an online picture book full of interesting facts about Australia.  The children learned three new vocabulary words: aboriginal, outback, and marsupial.  We also learned that the population of Australia is about the same as the population of New York...and that there are ten times more sheep than people living in Australia!  

Math: The children learned about the commutative property by writing a multiplication sentence to match an array and then rotating the array 90 degrees and writing a new multiplication sentence to match.  They discovered that the order of factors in a multiplication sentence can be switched and the product will remain the same.  

ELA: After talking about where writers get their ideas, we determined that writers write about things they know a lot about or have an interest in.  The children started a list in their writer's notebook of topics they know a lot about or are interested in and used the list of topics to help them write each day.  We've got some great authors in third grade!  In reading we started talking about how readers can ask and answer questions about a text to demonstrate they understood what they have read.  We also started putting together our Reading Notebooks, which will hold our notes about Common Core reading skills.   This week we asked and answered questions about fiction texts, and next week we are going to start practicing the same skill with non-fiction texts.  

Arrays and Factors and Quotients...oh my!

We've been cruising right along with our first math unit...from multiplication right on into division.  On Monday morning I gave them the real-world scenario that my friend, Mrs. Gilooly, bought a package of 18 markers and wanted to share them with me.  She was going to split her 18 markers into 2 equal groups.  We needed to figure out how many markers Mrs. Gilooly and I were each going to get.  The students used counters to represent the markers and the fair-share strategy ("One for Mrs. Gilooly, One for Mrs. Curran, etc") to solve the problem.  They easily determined that Mrs. Gilooly and I would each get 9 markers by counting the number of counters they had placed in each group.  It was so easy, the children were shocked when I told them that they had just done division!

Moving on from there, we've been examining fact families- multiplication and division problems that use the same numbers- and determining which numbers represent the whole, the number of groups, or the size of the groups.  We also learned that the term factor means numbers being multiplied together to get a product, and a quotient is the answer to a division problem.

As we continue on with this unit next week we will learn about the commutative property by examining arrays vertically and horizontally to see that, for example, 3 rows of 5 or 5 rows of 3 gives us the same answer!

In Science we have started our hands-on Rocks and Minerals unit.  The students used hand lenses to examine three different types of rocks and recorded their observations.  As they shared their observations we discovered that each group had a rock that had imprints of seashells in it as well as a rock that had little pieces of smaller pebbles stuck to it.  One group had a rock shaped like Mount Everest, another had one shaped like a heart, and another had one shaped like a stadium!   The students looked through some books on rocks to try to see if they could find any rocks that looked similar to the ones they were examining, but I think we were left with more questions than answers.  I enjoyed seeing their curiosity as they examined the rocks and talked with classmates about their observations.

Next week in Social Studies we will be heading "Down Under" and start learning about Australia.  Be sure to ask your child about how life in Australia is the same and different from our lives here in the United States!

We Are "Rockin' and Rollin'"

Week two has flown by...at least for me!  I hope the children feel the same way.  We have jumped right in to multiplication, as you've probably noticed from the math homework coming home.  This year we are using the Math In Focus textbooks and workbooks, but also integrating modules released by Engage NY, which help to support the Common Core Curriculum.  The multiplication unit comes from one of these modules.  Your child should bring home classwork with problems very similar to the questions on their homework.  If your child is stuck on the homework, ask them to take out their papers from class and see if looking over these practice problems helps jog their memory.  I don't want the homework to be frustrating or so difficult that your child cannot complete it without help from you.  Please let me know if your child is having a hard time!

We've started our first Science unit on Rocks and Minerals.  I asked the children to share with me the background knowledge they already have about the topic, and I recorded their thoughts on a K-W-L chart.   As you can see, third graders already know a lot about Rocks and Minerals.  We also started generating questions that we hope to have answered as we delve into this topic.  Next week we will start doing hands-on activities involving Rocks and Minerals, so be sure to ask your child about that.

I am looking forward to seeing all the interesting and amazing facts the children can share at the end of the unit when we complete the "L" part of our chart (L is for "What We Have Learned").

I hope to meet you on Wednesday, September 18th for Open House!

Our First Week

Our first week was chock-full of important discussions and learning, and hopefully you've heard all about it from your child.  But just in case the answer to "What did you do in school today?" was "Nothing"...I'll fill you in.

We spent time every day this week discussing community, especially our classroom community.  The students brainstormed they would like our classroom community to be like, what a great classmate would be like, and what our classroom rules should be.  I read aloud a great Dr. Seuss book, Oh, the Places You'll Go and then we talked about setting learning goals for the school year.  The children thought about something they would like to improve on this year and something new they hope to learn.  We also read and discussed Salt in His Shoes about Michael Jordan's dream of becoming a great basketball player and the hard work, practice, and determination that it took for him to achieve his goal. Afterwards, the children reflected on their learning goals and thought about what they needed to do to achieve their goal, as well as what help they would need from others in order to achieve their goal.  We determined that our classroom community needed to be conducive to helping each student acheive his/her goals- we need to be respectful of one another, allow others to concentrate on their work, and encourage one another.  We are responsible to ourselves and each other when it comes to our learning.

We all have a hand in our learning!

Ask your child about his/her goals.  Talk about how you could work together on achieving those goals at home as well.  Several students are eager to learn cursive and multiplication this year, and they practice (at home and at school) the more likely they are to meet their goal!

Speaking of multiplication...

After spending the first three days practicing our foundational math skills, we are jumping right into multiplication this week.  Be on the lookout for math homework each night now that we are starting new material.  And, as always....READ, READ, READ!!!