Happy Holidays!

We have had a busy week and half on Team Esprit!  We've been learning a lot and having  lot of fun with our varied activities!

We began the week with our last visits from Susannah, our Flynn Theater teacher.  She chose one the Red Clover picture books called Lindbergh: The Flying Mouse and helped us bring it to life through movement and sound effects.  This is a story about a mouse who needs to get away all the troubles and mouse traps in Germany and he decides to create a flying machine to fly to America.  After many attempts, he finally makes it!  It is a great story of perseverance!  With Susannah, we made a sound track with sound effects to go along with a bad dream that Lindbergh might have had prior to his flight.  The sound effects included cats meowing, owls screeching, and traps snapping.  It was quite a production!  The next day we acted out Lindbergh's flight.  It was fun to watch the children's interpretations of the story and his flight.

During science, we finished our weather unit with an engineering project.  We challenged our students to create a structure that could withstand hurricane force winds. The structure had to have four walls, 2 windows and a door.  The materials they could use were index cards, pattern blocks, tape, string, plastic wrap, and popsicle sticks.  In partnerships, the children first created a design plan for their structure and had to submit a list of materials.  Then we tested it out using our hurricane winds (a leaf blower!)!  Be sure to ask your child about his or her structure.  Did it stand up to the wind?  What allowed it to stay standing?  How could have his or her design be improved?

We are so glad that so many of you could attend our Publishing Party and admire our hard work with our nonfiction books.  After two months of work writing, re-writing, illustrating, editing, and revising, we were happy to finally have an audience. We hope you enjoy our books and learned a lot! Next up, we will be writing opinion speeches about something we want to change here at school or in the world!

Lastly, we spent some time crafting and wrapping gifts!  We hope you enjoy the two small gifts your child is bringing home. Wishing you and your family a wonderful holiday season!  Please note school resumes on January 4th. Here's to a healthy and happy new year for us all!  Happy 2016!

What's the Weather?

We certainly haven't had typical December weather recently!  However, please make sure your child comes to school each day with appropriate clothing to wear outside during our outdoor recess.  Speaking of weather, WPTZ News Channel 5's Chief Meteorologist visited the third graders at SCS on Tuesday.  He talked to us about how he decided to become a meteorologist and gave us inside tips on how he forecasts the weather each day.  We even got to see a video about how the "green screen" works!  Be sure to ask your child about his weather forecasting secret with the green screen!  We also had a chance to ask him several questions and most of questions focused around when it might snow.  He said it won't be any time soon!  Did you happen to see us on the news Tuesday night?  Here's a link to a video Tom Messner posted on Twitter...  Tom Messner Visit



We continued with our weather study with a project related to climate. Last week we studied five different climates: mountain highlands, polar, temperate, tropical, and continental.  In a group of four, the children read articles about each of these climates and recorded some important facts about and characteristics of each of the climates.  This week they used their background knowledge of to create a paper doll with clothes and items that would fit in a suitcase for a trip to this climate.  Be sure to ask your child which climate he or she was "sending" the paper doll to!  What did your child pack?

This week our school participated in the Hour of Code.   The Hour of Code is an introduction to computer science and an opportunity for the children to try coding through various online activities. Computer science helps to nurture problem solving skills, creativity, and logic.  Check out Hour of Code to learn more and try out coding yourself!

Our nonfiction books are almost done!  So we have decided to have a Publishing Party on December 22nd at 2:15pm in our classrooms.  You are invited to join us and read your child's (and other children's) books!  Please let us know if you are able to attend our Publishing Party! The children are very excited to share their work with you!

SCS Weather Station Link

Due to a grant from the PTO, our school was able to purchase a Weather Station for our school. It is hooked up on the roof and we can go to the library to check the weather. This is perfect for our current weather study!  Here is the link if you would like to access it at home:   SCS Weather Station

See you at the Craft Fair tomorrow!

Esprit Third Grade had a quiet week back from the Thanksgiving Break, with no extra activities happening.  It was a good chance for the children to get back into the routine of school and of our classroom and school expectations. We spent the week working hard and learning many new things.

We are still working hard writing our non-fiction teaching books during Writer's Workshop.  This week we spent some time peer editing and finalizing our rough drafts.  During peer editing, the children read through each other's work and filled out a rubric, commenting on the organization of the piece and making suggestions on how to enhance the writing by adding more details and facts. It was fun to watch them have these conversations with each other.  They were like little editors!  We are now beginning to publish our work and hope to have our final copies completed in time for the Holiday Break.

This week, our Reader's Workshop focused on comprehensions strategies strong readers use when reading information text.  We are practicing these strategies using Scholastic News and other non-fiction texts.  We are working hard to become better at finding the main idea and paraphrasing it, as well as finding evidence to support it.

Our Math learning focused on three-digit subtraction strategies this week.  We practiced using the difference and removal strategies, and compared them to determine when it is most efficient to use each of these strategies.  We also learned about "constant difference".  Constant difference is a strategy mathematicians can use when subtracting numbers.  This strategy is used to make combinations easier to solve by adding or subtracting the same number to or from both the smaller number and the bigger number. For example, 63-39 has the same difference as 64-40; however, 64-40 might be a friendlier equation to solve.  We will continue learning about constant difference next week.

In Science, we worked in groups to learn about the five different climates.  We read articles and shared important learning about those climates.  We will use our knowledge of climates when making a travel suitcase project next week.  Tom Messner, Channel 5 Chief Meteorologist, will be joining us this Tuesday to teach us more about weather and answer questions we have.  Be sure to tune into the news on WPTZ that night and look for Shelburne Third Grade!

This week's Friday Folder will include a School Spelling Bee Study List.  Third graders are invited to participate in the Scripps Spelling Bee, which will take place in January.  This is an optional activity. If your child is not interested in participating, you can disregard the list that is coming home.  If your child would like to participate, please use the list to help him/her prepare for this event.  There is an informational meeting in Christine Hertz's room after school on Wednesday, December 16th, that will give details about the Scripps Spelling Bee.

In two weeks, Susannah, from the Flynn Theater, will be visiting our team with some more Words Come Alive activities for us to participate in.  This week's activities will be connected to this year's Red Clover books.  We look forward to this coming week's activities.



We hope to see everyone at the Holiday Craft Fair tomorrow.  Our soap dishes, soap, and lavender sachets will be displayed and ready to be sold at the Esprit table.  Your children created some beautiful clay pieces that would be a terrific addition to any home.  Stop by and see how talented your children are!
Have a great weekend!

More Words Come Alive!

Esprit Third Grade started off our week with another fun filled visit from our Flynn Visiting Artist,
Susannah!   This week we used our learning about elements of natural disasters to make connections to Fairy Tale characters and their traits.  We moved around the classroom like a tornado and hurricane in character as the Red Riding Hood and the Wolf.  We also became Red Riding Hood's Grandmother and moved with characteristics of a drought and a typical sunny day.  We also explored several other characters and made connections to a variety of weather events.  Can your child act out for you how Red Riding Hood's Grandmother if she possessed the same character traits as a drought?  Susannah will be back again in December to do more acting and movement with us!

 In Science, we spent some time graphing the data we collected during October. Although we collected data for humidity, precipitation, and temperature, we only graphed October's temperature.  We graphed our temperature data on a Line Plot, then made observations about trends in temperatures. We noticed that we had quite a few days in the 50s in October! We will be using this data in the future to compare and contrast temperatures in Shelburne with other areas of the country and the world.

During Writer's Workshop, we have been finishing up our non-fiction pieces and are now editing them.  We will be working toward publishing these pieces during the month of December.  Everyone has been working hard to include strong introductions and conclusions to their teaching pieces.  Next week, we will continue with the editing and revising process and work on adding nonfiction features to our writing, such as diagrams, labels, maps, and charts.





We have been practicing finding the main idea and details in non-fiction texts during Reader's Workshop.  As we are reading, we stop and think about what the section is mostly about or what the big idea is in each section.  We are really working hard to identify the main idea and then talk about it in our own words...not the author's words! This is something you could practice with your child as well at home when you are reading nonfiction.





In math, our focus has been on rounding two and three digit numbers to the nearest ten and rounding numbers to the nearest hundred.  Three new Work Places, Round Ball Tens, Round & Add Tens, and Round Ball Hundreds provided opportunities to practice this rounding skill.  We also discovered how rounding can help mathematicians determine the reasonableness of their answers when adding.  Ask your child about these new Work Places.

Our soap dishes have been fired and are looking beautiful.  Sherry Senior is now getting little bags for our team to fill with lavender.  So we will have those to sell at the Craft Fair in addition to the soap dishes and soap.  We are still looking for families to cover our booth from 12:00-1:00 and 1:00-2:00. Please visit our google doc and sign up if you are able to help our team out.

Lastly, if you are interested in happenings in our SCS Art Department, please visit their Facebook Page at:  https://www.facebook.com/ShelburneArt

Have a great weekend! Happy Thanksgiving!

Words Come Alive With Weather

This week we collaborated with the Flynn Theater to provide a "Words Come Alive" experience for our third graders.  The theme for this hour of dramatic activities was weather, and this was a wonderful way to "kick off" our Weather Unit.  We discussed various natural disasters that are related to weather.  Some of these included tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, droughts and blizzards.  We brainstormed adjectives that we could use to describe each of these and ideas to keep ourselves safe during these kinds of events.  We then took on the role of each of these natural disasters and used our bodies to move the way each of these disasters would move.  Next week we will enjoy another opportunity to participate in "Words Come Alive" and will continue our learning about weather by making connections between weather and fairy tale characters.  Ask your child to share how he/she would use his/her body to show a natural disaster.

We also enjoyed another wonderful Hands On Nature lesson this week.  This month's focus was rocks.  We enjoyed a play, and explored igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks and learned about the characteristics of each kind of rock.  We also pressed shells into clay to explore the ways fossils are formed.  Finally, we worked in groups to create rock sculptures or go on a rock search in our school yard.  A big thank you to our Hands On Nature parents for providing this terrific learning opportunity for Esprit students.

This week we finished our second unit of study in math and we will begin our third unit on Monday.  This unit will focus on multi-digit addition and subtraction.  Students will have opportunities to review and extend their thinking about place value, practice multi-digit addition and subtraction, and will be solving 2-step story problems and equations.  They will be rounding to the nearest ten and hundred, and will be working with a wide variety of invented algorithms as well as the standard algorithm for adding and subtracting multi-digit numbers.

Our non-fiction units in both Reader's and Writer's Workshops will continue through the month of December.  We are currently learning about writing introductions and conclusions in Writer's Workshop and will be using that learning to write our own introductions and conclusions in our own pieces of writing.  Ask your child what makes a good "hook" in an introduction.  During Reader's Workshop, we continue to learn about and practice strategies good readers use to understand non-fiction text.  This week we practiced determining the main idea and finding topic sentences when reading.  We are connecting and using many of the strategies we are learning in Reader's Workshop to our writing during Writer's Workshop.
We finished reading The Year of Billy Miller this week, and will begin a new read aloud next week. We have enjoyed connecting with another class and sharing our ideas and thoughts about this book online in a variety of ways.

 Lastly, we are still in need of volunteers to help at our table for the SCS Holiday Craft Fair.  An email went out to all families this week to share a google doc sign-up.  If you are available to help out at this event, please visit the google doc and sign up for a time that works well for you.  We will be selling our soap balls and soap dishes we created at the Shelburne Craft School, and look forward to this fun community event.

Happy weekend!

Winter Clothes Drive

Dear Members of the SCS Community,

As we all realized this morning, the cold Vermont weather is on its way.  In preparation, the SCS staff together with the PTO, would like to begin our winter clothing drive.  We want to ensure every child (and their family members) can embrace our wonderful winter season, regardless of economic status.  

A large donation box will be placed in front of the main office.  We are seeking the following items:

• Winter coats and fleece jackets
• Snow pants
• Boots
• Hats, scarves, mittens, and scarves

We are accepting all sizes from infant to adult.  As the clothing is collected, school staff will make sure the items are disseminated to those in need.   

If you or your child is in need of winter clothing, please contact Katie Tyler via email atktyler@cssu.org, Rachel Petraska at rpetraska@cssu.org or Sue Schaefer at sschaefer@cssu.org.

Thank you on behalf of the Shelburne Community School and the PTO!

More Crafting!

We had another great week on Team Esprit!  We continue to work very hard, but we also had some time to get creative this week.  Sara Ahrens, a teacher at the Craft School and Ella's mom, came back to visit our classrooms.  We worked on a special clay project that will be coming home next month as a family gift. It was so nice to have an opportunity to be creative, work with different materials, and learn new art concepts. We think you will love the final product!  

This week in math, our focus has been on gaining experience with different types of graphs and using them as a way to organize and represent data.  We participated in two different surveys: an ice cream survey and a book genre survey. We then took the data and created picture graphs in partnerships. We transferred the information from the picture into a bar graph as well and analyzed the data.  Which type of graph does your child prefer: a picture graph or a bar graph?  Ask him or her why!

During our word study time, your children have been working very hard to notice spelling patterns in their words.  Each week they receive a list of words and sort them to find what is the same about the words in the group.  This becomes the spelling rule for the week!  During the rest of the week, the children do speed sorts, blind sorts, and closed sorts with a partner to practice the spelling the words and learning the spelling patterns.  Be sure to ask your child about his or her words for the week.  What's this week's spelling pattern?  Often the children bring home their words on Friday so they could demonstrate some of our different sorts for you!

In Writer's Workshop, we are up to our elbows in informational writing!  This week our focus on was on elaborating with details.  We looked at several mentor texts by nonfiction authors to see how they add more detail in their writing.  We noticed that authors elaborate using facts and imagery, providing examples and descriptions, and even telling small stories to teach about the topic.  We practiced using these strategies to tell more in our books.  How's your child's nonfiction book coming along?  Ask them about the different chapters they are writing and how their books are organized!

Reader's Workshop also has us immersed in nonfiction text.  We really love reading informational books and are amazed at the interesting facts we are learning!  This week we talked about reading and thinking about new information. To better understand and remember what we are reading, it is important to merge our thinking with new information we encounter.  We spent a lot of time reading informational text this week and looking for facts or ideas that were new learning.  We like to call these "WOW" facts. They are facts that might cause you to say "I never knew..., I learned...., I was surprised..., Wow..., I didn't know..." as you read. We jotted our new learning on sticky notes and had a great time sharing amazing facts!  Then we moved on to talking about our background knowledge (what we already know) and how that helps us to understand new information.  As we read, we filled out a t-chart with information we already knew and new learning.  Be sure to ask your child about his or her new learning this week.  What book was he or she reading at Reader's Workshop? What "WOW" fact did he or she learn?

Have a great weekend!

A Busy Week!

This week the Esprit Team walked to the Shelburne Craft School to create crafts for the upcoming SCS Holiday Craft Fair.  We rolled pieces of soap into soap balls and created soap dishes to hold them.  We were able to participate in the process of creating soap dishes from beginning to end.  We rolled the clay out using their big rolling machine and then experimented with textures.  We then each created a textured soap dish using a slap of clay and used glaze to paint our soap dishes different colors.  We are very eager to see what our soap dishes look like after they are fired in the kiln.  Many thanks to Sarah Ahrens for making this experience possible for us! The PTO Holiday Craft Fair will be held on December 5th from 9:30-1:30pm.  We will be sending out an email in November looking for volunteers to run our table that day.

This afternoon we participated in Mix It Up Day.  This is an opportunity for cross-grade collaboration and community building at SCS.  Deb's class mixed up with the Winton House middle school students and had fun learning about drums and doing some drumming with their middle school partners.  Mr. Buckingham, our Middle School Instrumental Music teacher provided this experience for us.  A big thank you to Mr. Buckingham.  Miss Niles' class mixed it up with Mr. Brunvand's middle school students.  We challenged each other to a mancala tournament.  It was so much fun to watch middle school students and third graders strategize together!

We finished our Forces and Motion Unit during Science this week with an Engineering component that allowed us to use our learning to problem solve and create rolling carts.  Each group of 5 students was given 30 minutes and a bucket of materials to create a cart that could roll when pushed or pulled.  On the second day of this task, each group was asked to improve upon their cart to see if they could get it to roll farther than the day before.  Group work can be very challenging at this age, but all groups worked hard to share ideas, collaborate, and produce a final product.  Be sure to ask your child about his or her cart.  Did it roll? How many centimeters did it go and what features allowed the cart to travel a far distance?

In both Reader's Workshop and Writer's Workshop, we started an informational text (non-fiction) unit.  In reading we explored the text features in informational text, such as headings, charts, graphs, maps, labels, diagrams, captions, and glossaries.  After finding these in many non-fiction books in our room, we wrote about the purpose of those features.  As you read informational text with your child at home, see if he or she can identify a text feature and tell you why the author used that feature.  In writing, we looked at different ways to structure our non-fiction writing and learned that this can affect how we think about our topics. For example, the children were asked to take their topic and think about pros and cons, comparing and contrasting, and cause and effect.  Several students are writing about dogs and thought about how they could structure their writing in different ways: pros and cons of having a dog as a pet, comparing and contrasting dogs with cats, or even writing about problems there may be with dogs and how those problems could be solved.  After thinking about these different structures, the children began to write!  We continue to encourage building stamina in our writing:  writing long and strong!  Ask your child this weekend about his or her non-fiction topic.  How is your child going to structure his or her paragraphs?




In math, we continue to focus on multiplication and looking at new ways of seeing multiplication.  We have explored drawing a picture, using repeated addition, using facts you already know, and skip counting as ways to see multiplication.  This week we were introduced to a ratio table.  A ratio table is a model that encourages the children to explore proportional thinking.  For example, if a 1 pound of rabbit food costs $1.50, how much would two or three pounds cost?  We also explored a multiplication table and the relationships between the facts.

Lastly, please remind your child to turn in his or her reading log on Monday.  Children who have met the reading goal will be invited to a literary lunch in the near future.  Happy Weekend!

Puppets In Education

Esprit Third Grade dove into our non-fiction writing unit during Writer's Workshop this week! Even before we wrote about our ideas for a table of contents, we acted as teachers and taught each other about our topics orally.  We found out that writers are like teachers and can borrow ideas that teachers or experts use: staying on a topic, giving details and information, breaking topics into smaller bits, and using descriptive words.   Then we chose topics, created a table of contents for our writing pieces, and learned about different structures writers use.  We tried out various structures (boxes and bullets, pros and cons, cause and effect, same and different, problem and solution) to decide which structure works best with our topics.  Ask your child about his or her topic and the way he or she tried to organize the table of contents.


We continued our learning about patterns of motion during our Science Inquiry Block this week.  We  worked in groups doing an investigation using cups and ramps to see how cups roll down ramps.  Our focus question was, "What rules help predict where a rolling cup will end up?"  and we used our observations during our investigation to answer this question.  Ask your child what he/she discovered about what determines the direction a cup will roll and how weight affects it.

This week we continued to focus on a variety of comprehension strategies during Reader's Workshop.  We listened to several stories and practiced asking questions, visualizing and synthesizing together, then practiced using these comprehension strategies when reading independently.  It's important for children to ask questions as they read because it encourages them to continue to read and want to find out more information.  We like to call them wonders.  When readers visualize they make mental images and create a movie in their minds.  This helps us to better picture and understand the story.  We also worked on synthesizing.  This means that as you read your thinking changes.  You gather more information to help better understand the story. As you read with your children at home, ask them to tell you about what they are visualizing as they read; encourage them to ask questions or generate wonders; and encourage them to tell you about how their thinking changes as they read and gather more information.

Our current Math Unit is an introduction to multiplication.  We have been learning about real life situations when people use multiplication and learning how to multiply using arrays and number lines. As we worked on multiplication problems, we generated strategies that could be helpful when multiplying.  Drawing a picture, using facts you already know, repeated addition (ex. 3+3+3=9) or skip counting (ex. 3, 6, 9) are three strategies we explored.  We will begin using ratio tables and multiplication tables next week and will practice solving story problems using graphs and multiple operations.  This unit is a nice introduction to multiplicative reasoning.

Next week the Esprit team will be walking to the Shelburne Craft School to create a craft to sell at the SCS Holiday Fair.  Miss Niles' class will be walking over on Monday, October 26th and Deb's class will be walking on Wednesday, October 28th.  Both classes will be gone from 9:30-11:30am.  In November the Craft School will join us in our classrooms to help us create another special project.  Many thanks to Sarah Ahrens for making this wonderful experience possible for the Esprit Team.

Lastly, Puppets in Education visited our school this week to share programs about various topics with our K-5 students.  Third graders enjoyed two performances.  The first performance addressed learning disabilities and differences and the second performance was about bullying.  Students had an opportunity to ask questions and share ideas during and after each performance.  Ask your child what he/she learned about bullying and learning differences.  Thanks to Dan Bokan and Shearer Chevrolet for sponsoring these performances.
Have a terrific weekend,
Deb and Jenn

Typing Club

Thanks to Jeff Badillo, our Tech Integrationist, for creating this tutorial!
Click here for a video tutorial on how to access Typing Club

Wheels and Motion

It was another busy week for the Esprit 3rd grade team.  We have continued to read The Year of Billy Miller and participated in "Write About" this week as part of the Global Read Aloud.  It continues to be a wonderful experience having the opportunity to connect to other classrooms around the country and world.
We are continuing to practice our keyboarding skills through the use of Typing Club and all our friends are very excited about this.  A group email including a short video with instructions for getting onto typing club at home was sent home today to all families today.  If you did not receive that email, please contact your classroom teacher.  Our time for practicing in school is limited so any additional practice at home would be terrific.
Both classes are now beginning "Book Buddies" with  Kindergarten classes.  Miss Niles' class is buddying with Mrs. Hazen's class.  Deb's class is buddying with Ms. Elia's class.  This will be a wonderful opportunity for our classes to take on a mentor role with younger students and practice our skills reading aloud to others.
We have continued practicing paragraph writing during Writer's Workshop this week.  Next week we will begin a unit focused on informational writing and will begin to use our new skill of writing paragraphs to write our informational pieces of writing.   Our first focus will be on teaching others something through our writing.
Both classes have also enjoyed another Hands On Nature lesson about Erosion during the past two weeks.  We learned about different kinds of erosion and ways to prevent erosion.  We watched a presentation showing land formations all over our country and discussed how those land formations were created.  We also enjoyed an interesting puppet show presented by our Hands On Nature parents.  Beginning next month students will begin presenting the monthly puppets shows that support topic of learning each month.  Many thanks to our Hands On Nature parents for making Hands On Nature an engaging learning experience for us.
During our Forces and Motion Inquiry time we did an investigation about wheel and axil systems and we explored how we can change the motion of wheels rolling down ramps.  Ask your child about the pattern of motion for their wheel system.
Have a great weekend,
Deb and Jenn

Author Dave Pilkey Visits

Esprit has had another busy week filled with many exciting activities!  Today, we enjoyed a visit from Dav Pilkey.  Dav is the author of the Captain Underpants Series and the Ricky Ricotta Series, as well as many other books.  We all enjoyed a talk with Dav about his life, overcoming dyslexia and his experiences as an author.  It was an exciting surprise to receive capes to wear as we left Dav's presentation!  Any books your children ordered for this visit, from The Flying Pig, will be delivered on Tuesday to SCS.  You can expect them to come home on Tuesday afternoon.

This week was also the kick off for the Global Read Aloud.  We began reading The Year of Billy Miller and participated in a Google Hangout with other 3rd Graders who live in Columbus, Ohio. We spent some time asking questions of each other about our classes, schools and communities.  What can your child tell you about our new friends in Ohio? The next time we connect, we will be talking about The Year of Billy Miller and sharing our ideas and understandings about this book.

Esprit 3rd Grade has been learning about Forces and Motion during our Science Inquiry Block.  This week we did an investigation about magnets.  We learned about magnetic force and investigated if magnetic force only works when a magnet is touching another magnet/object or if the magnetic force can also work at a distance.  Using just magnets, a paper clip, string, tape, and a classroom chair, the children were able to demonstrate power of the magnetic field and make a paperclip float!  Ask your child about this experiment!

This week we also had a visit from our Technology Integrationist Teacher, Jeff Badillo. He showed us how to access Typing Club, a program to help us learn keyboarding skills. Your child can access typing club at home via the link below or through our Esprit google site.  They can login using their Google Account (their google email address and password). Just click on the button that says "Sign in with Google".
Typing Club

Lastly, please note that there is no school on Friday, October 9th and Monday, October 12th.  Next week, we will be holding parent conferences. Please check back to our Google site to check the date/time of your parent conference.  Parent Conference Schedule

Have a wonderful weekend!