Magnets and Motion!

We ended the week with some excitement as we started our first science unit of the year: Forces and Motion.  During this unit the students will do investigations, collect data in their science notebooks, design models, and make claims based on the following focus questions:

• What happens when magnets interact with other magnets and with paper clips?
• How can we change the motion of wheels rolling down a ramp?
• What are some important features of a cart that will roll from here to there? How can you improve the design of your cart?

Today we experimented with magnetic force through a variety of magnet activities. What did your child notice about the magnets and how it interacted with paperclips and other magnets?

During Reader's Workshop, we have begun working on comprehension strategies. These strategies help support independent thinking and understanding of a text.  This week we practiced the strategy of making connections to books.  We read aloud several picture books through the week and looked to make text-to-self, text-to-text, and text-to-world connections.  The children then practiced this strategy independently using their thinkmarks.

In Writer's Workshop, we tackled learning how to write paragraphs! This is something brand new for third graders!  Most of their writing thus far has not been organized into paragraphs.  We talked about that a paragraph is a group of sentences about the same subject.  There is a topic sentence, three sentences with detail, and a closing sentence.  This week the children have use a four-square graphic organizer to help plan their paragraphs before writing.  What did your child write about this week in a paragraph?

We finished Unit 1 in math this week by working on developing strategies for subtracting double-digit numbers.  Many of these strategies were similar to the work we did with addition.  We used number lines to subtract friendly numbers (ex. fives or tens).  We also learned two new Work Places: Target 100 and Anything But Five.  Both encouraged us to use addition and subtractions strategies to play the games.

Just a reminder that there is no school for students on October 9th and October 12th. Please make sure you also sign up for a parent conference on our Esprit Google Site. Thanks