We have been hard at work in science learning about Rocks and Minerals and in Social Studies learning about Australia.
In science the children are wearing the hat of a scientist (figuratively speaking) and are performing tests on their set of 12 minerals in order to observe some of the properties of the minerals. They have used flashlights to test whether their minerals were transparent, translucent, or opaque. They have also used black and white tiles to see whether each mineral left a streak when scratched across the tiles, which tested the minerals' identifiable color. This week they will be observing the luster of each mineral to determine whether they are glassy, waxy, or dull. The children are recording all of their observations as they perform each test, and will use these observations to try to identify each mineral at the end of the unit.
In Social Studies our third graders are wearing their author hats. Each child has chosen an Australian animal to research and will be writing a non-fiction book about the animal. Before Miss Smith left she taught the class about writing an informational paragraph, which must contain a topic sentence and supporting details. We are now building from that to write longer informational pieces about these unique animals. The children will also think about non-fiction text features, such as headings, pictures, captions, bold words, glossaries, etc and decide which text features would be helpful in teaching their readers about their animal. The children are already getting excited as they research their animals and find out amazing facts and they are looking forward to getting to the Rough Draft part of the writing process where they can put their notes into sentences!
Be sure to ask your child about their amazing animal at home. I know they will be able to tell you many fascinating facts!
Monday, October 27, 2014
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Farewell September!
It's hard to believe that we are almost into October already! The children (and teachers) have settled into a routine and things are running smoothly in third grade.
We are almost finished with our second unit in the Journeys program and I am already seeing the benefits of using a program that integrates the components of our Balanced Literacy framework. Students are introduced to new vocabulary words on the first day of a new lesson and hear those words in the context of a short read aloud, a fiction story, and an informational text. They see those same words in Guided Reading books at their instructional level as well. The target skill for the lessons- Summarizing in Lesson 1 and Drawing conclusions in Lesson 2- are also carried over into students' Guided Reading lessons so that each child has an opportunity for more practice of that particular skill as it relates to his/her Guided Reading book. The children are doing a great job!
In word work students have studied short vowel sounds and the long vowel sound that comes from words that have a Vowel-Consonant-final e. They sorted simple words that had these patterns, and then learned how to look at words with more than one syllable like confuse, pollute, and amusement and use what they know about the vowel sounds to break those longer words apart and read them correctly.
This past week we also had visitors from the Troy Lodge of Elks come into our classroom and donate a personal dictionary to each student. The Elks members spoke of the importance of Learning to Read so that you can Read to Learn, and it was wonderful for the children to hear this message from members of their community. By coincidence, a segment of our Journeys lesson this week also began to teach students the skill of reading dictionary entries and selecting the most appropriate meaning of a word, so this visit from the Elks was well-timed!
Check back soon for more updates!
We are almost finished with our second unit in the Journeys program and I am already seeing the benefits of using a program that integrates the components of our Balanced Literacy framework. Students are introduced to new vocabulary words on the first day of a new lesson and hear those words in the context of a short read aloud, a fiction story, and an informational text. They see those same words in Guided Reading books at their instructional level as well. The target skill for the lessons- Summarizing in Lesson 1 and Drawing conclusions in Lesson 2- are also carried over into students' Guided Reading lessons so that each child has an opportunity for more practice of that particular skill as it relates to his/her Guided Reading book. The children are doing a great job!
In word work students have studied short vowel sounds and the long vowel sound that comes from words that have a Vowel-Consonant-final e. They sorted simple words that had these patterns, and then learned how to look at words with more than one syllable like confuse, pollute, and amusement and use what they know about the vowel sounds to break those longer words apart and read them correctly.
This past week we also had visitors from the Troy Lodge of Elks come into our classroom and donate a personal dictionary to each student. The Elks members spoke of the importance of Learning to Read so that you can Read to Learn, and it was wonderful for the children to hear this message from members of their community. By coincidence, a segment of our Journeys lesson this week also began to teach students the skill of reading dictionary entries and selecting the most appropriate meaning of a word, so this visit from the Elks was well-timed!
Check back soon for more updates!
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Third Graders Can Do Amazing Things!
We are off and running here in third grade! The students have done a wonderful job making the transition from the comfort of the K-2 wing up to the 3-5 wing with all of the "big kids".
A big idea that we have been talking about in these first days of school is all of the things that we can do as individuals and as learners that we are proud of. Outside our classroom is a list of "I Can" Statements that celebrate the many achievements of third graders. We have singers, athletes, dancers, jewelry makers, and more! Inside our class, posted on the front board, is a chart listing all of the academic "I Can" Statements that we are proud of.
This week we are celebrating the following "I Can" Statements:
In ELA- We can ask and answer questions to show that we understand the stories we read, and use evidence from the text to support our thinking.
In Math- We can find patterns in addition and explain them using what we know about how numbers work. We can also count by 1's, 10's, 100's, and 1,000's to 10,000.
In Science- We can think and write like a scientist by describing what we see, feel, hear, and smell.
And in Social Studies- We can identify our continent, country, state, and town.
Aren't these wonderful accomplishments? Be sure to congratulate your third grader for achieving these goals!
Please be in touch any time if you have any questions about what we are learning in class.
I hope to meet you all at Open House on September 17th at 7:00 pm.
A big idea that we have been talking about in these first days of school is all of the things that we can do as individuals and as learners that we are proud of. Outside our classroom is a list of "I Can" Statements that celebrate the many achievements of third graders. We have singers, athletes, dancers, jewelry makers, and more! Inside our class, posted on the front board, is a chart listing all of the academic "I Can" Statements that we are proud of.
This week we are celebrating the following "I Can" Statements:
In ELA- We can ask and answer questions to show that we understand the stories we read, and use evidence from the text to support our thinking.
In Math- We can find patterns in addition and explain them using what we know about how numbers work. We can also count by 1's, 10's, 100's, and 1,000's to 10,000.
In Science- We can think and write like a scientist by describing what we see, feel, hear, and smell.
And in Social Studies- We can identify our continent, country, state, and town.
Aren't these wonderful accomplishments? Be sure to congratulate your third grader for achieving these goals!
Please be in touch any time if you have any questions about what we are learning in class.
I hope to meet you all at Open House on September 17th at 7:00 pm.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
News From Third Grade
Dear parents,
I asked the children to let me know what they thought you would like to know about our learning. Here are a few entries I received...If I'm being honest, they are the only entries I received. Hopefully I get more student input in the future! Here is what they wanted you to know...
"In math we finished up division with a test. Then Mrs. Curran found out we needed some more help with division. When we finally got it we started fractions. Now we are continuing fractions."
by Cooper
"We are getting better and better at math facts." by Melissa
"We are learning in science about chemicals. We are mixing chemicals so we can see what happens to it. We are observing it. One looks really cool. My partner is Bella. We take turns. It is really fun." by Kaya
Here's what I can add to what the children wrote...
In math we are learning about fractions. We have done several hands-on activities to explore the idea that fractions are equal parts of a whole. Recently the children partitioned a piece of paper into equal parts by folding it. They then shaded in one of the equal parts to represent the unit fraction. Next, they cut out each of the equal parts and arranged them into a piece of art. We displayed each work of art in our Fraction Museum and as the children toured the fraction museum they recorded the unit fraction and the fraction of unshaded pieces in each piece of art hanging up.
We have a quiz this week on what we've learned so far about fractions. Next week we will continue exploring fractions as spaces on a number line.
Before our winter break we did an author study of Tomie DePaola. We compared three of his popular picture books- Strega Nona, Strega Nona's Magic Lessons, and Tony's Bread. We discussed similarities and differences between the characters, settings, problems, and solutions in these stories. Since Tomie DePaola writes and illustrates his books we were also able to discuss they way his illustrations add to our understanding of his stories. We are now moving our focus to reading informational texts!
I asked the children to let me know what they thought you would like to know about our learning. Here are a few entries I received...If I'm being honest, they are the only entries I received. Hopefully I get more student input in the future! Here is what they wanted you to know...
"In math we finished up division with a test. Then Mrs. Curran found out we needed some more help with division. When we finally got it we started fractions. Now we are continuing fractions."
by Cooper
"We are getting better and better at math facts." by Melissa
"We are learning in science about chemicals. We are mixing chemicals so we can see what happens to it. We are observing it. One looks really cool. My partner is Bella. We take turns. It is really fun." by Kaya
Here's what I can add to what the children wrote...
In math we are learning about fractions. We have done several hands-on activities to explore the idea that fractions are equal parts of a whole. Recently the children partitioned a piece of paper into equal parts by folding it. They then shaded in one of the equal parts to represent the unit fraction. Next, they cut out each of the equal parts and arranged them into a piece of art. We displayed each work of art in our Fraction Museum and as the children toured the fraction museum they recorded the unit fraction and the fraction of unshaded pieces in each piece of art hanging up.
Before our winter break we did an author study of Tomie DePaola. We compared three of his popular picture books- Strega Nona, Strega Nona's Magic Lessons, and Tony's Bread. We discussed similarities and differences between the characters, settings, problems, and solutions in these stories. Since Tomie DePaola writes and illustrates his books we were also able to discuss they way his illustrations add to our understanding of his stories. We are now moving our focus to reading informational texts!
Monday, January 13, 2014
New Year, New Learning!
Happy 2014! After our vacation and two extra snow days off from school we jumped right back into learning last Monday.
In math we are learning about division. We touched on this earlier in the year, but we're back at it and taking it a bit further than we had in the beginning of the year. An emphasis of this chapter is that multiplication and division are inverse operations (although we haven't used that term...we talk about "fact families"). Students need to see that if they know the multiplication fact 6 x 8= 48, they can also work backwards to find out that 48 divided by 8 equals 6. We are also learning division with regrouping and a remainder. This is brand new learning for third graders, but they have been focused and persistent and they are doing great!
In ELA we have been reading some poetry. The students can identify stanzas and lines within a poem and use stanzas and lines as a reference to provide evidence to support their thinking about the poem. We have emphasized that when reading a poem, just like when we read any type of text, we read for meaning and need to be able to talk and write about what we've read. Be on the lookout for a new "Book in a Bag" this week, although this week it will technically be a "Poem in a Bag". In writing we are starting to immerse ourselves in biographies so that the children can write their own biographies. Each child has been given the task of finding a biography about a person they are interested in learning about and which is at an appropriate (easy) reading level for them. Before they can write a biography they need to read a biography!
This week we are starting a new science topic with a hands-on kit. We will be studying chemicals- don't worry, they aren't hazardous chemicals! The children will be performing scientific tests on various unknown chemicals and recording their observations in order to later identify the chemicals. The kids are excited to get started!
We have finished learning about Kenya in Social Studies and our next stop is Japan!
In math we are learning about division. We touched on this earlier in the year, but we're back at it and taking it a bit further than we had in the beginning of the year. An emphasis of this chapter is that multiplication and division are inverse operations (although we haven't used that term...we talk about "fact families"). Students need to see that if they know the multiplication fact 6 x 8= 48, they can also work backwards to find out that 48 divided by 8 equals 6. We are also learning division with regrouping and a remainder. This is brand new learning for third graders, but they have been focused and persistent and they are doing great!
In ELA we have been reading some poetry. The students can identify stanzas and lines within a poem and use stanzas and lines as a reference to provide evidence to support their thinking about the poem. We have emphasized that when reading a poem, just like when we read any type of text, we read for meaning and need to be able to talk and write about what we've read. Be on the lookout for a new "Book in a Bag" this week, although this week it will technically be a "Poem in a Bag". In writing we are starting to immerse ourselves in biographies so that the children can write their own biographies. Each child has been given the task of finding a biography about a person they are interested in learning about and which is at an appropriate (easy) reading level for them. Before they can write a biography they need to read a biography!
This week we are starting a new science topic with a hands-on kit. We will be studying chemicals- don't worry, they aren't hazardous chemicals! The children will be performing scientific tests on various unknown chemicals and recording their observations in order to later identify the chemicals. The kids are excited to get started!
We have finished learning about Kenya in Social Studies and our next stop is Japan!
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