Read Across America Day!

Today we celebrated Read Across America Day and Dr. Seuss' birthday!  We began the day with an assembly that celebrated books and reading.  We listened to a book read by SCS teachers and watched a music video with pictures of SCS children reading and our third graders singing!  We also had a visit from Champ and he delivered a book to each classroom! Each class then used its book to do a art project to decorate our school!  Be sure to ask your child about the book that his or her class received!  We also had a many different guest readers stop by our class today to read aloud.  It was a fantastic day of reading fun!

In math, we continue to work with multiplication and division; however, most of our work this week focused on division.  We learned two math games that involved division:  Line 'Em Up and Division Capture.  Line 'Em Up encouraged the use of an array as a model for division which helps deepen understanding of the operation.  Division Capture offered practice with basic division facts.  Ask your child if he or she can tell you about these games!

In Reader's Workshop, we continued to read Because of Winn Dixie and discuss our theories about the character Opal.  Just like strong readers, we used the information we know about Opal to make predictions about what actions Opal might take further along in the book.  We learned that Opal is the kind of child who opens her heart to everyone and is kind and friendly.  This has helped us to predict that she will continue to make more friends in her new town of Naomi, Florida and that she will not be lonely any more.  After practicing this strategy as a class, the children tried to make predictions about their characters in their independent reading books.


In Writer's Workshop, we had another visit from Susanna Olson, a Flynn teaching artist.  This week she helped us story tell the fairy tale, Little Red Riding Hood.  Through actions, movements, and voices, the children had many chances to retell this well-known tale.  We then read adaptations, different versions, of Little Red Hood to prepare us for Susanna's next visit.  What adaptation might your child make to the original tale?

Have a great weekend!

A Very Short Week!

Storm Stella and the snow days it created made for a very short week for Team Esprit, but we still managed to pack in some great learning experiences.

Susanna, from the Flynn, returned on Monday to help us generate ideas for adapting Cinderella.  We discussed adapting the characters, the setting and the motivation.  We practiced moving around the classroom as the adapted characters we pulled from our imaginations and talked about how those characters are different than the characters in the original fairy tale.  We spent the rest of the week creating story boards for our own adaptations of Cinderella and look forward to beginning our writing next week.  The next fairy tale we will be adapting will be Little Red Riding Hood.

We have continued reading Because of Winn Dixie during Reader's Workshop and have been looking very closely at the character Opal.  We have been looking for patterns that support our ideas about her character traits and using those to come up with theories about her.  We are also practicing these skills in our own books.

Miss Niles' class enjoyed a Hands On Nature lesson about Trees in Winter. This month, we were tree detectives learning about twigs and branches and how to looking at their characteristics can help identify a tree. We also learned about how trees survive harsh winters!  Since it was a beautiful day, we had a chance to go outside and explore the trees in our school yard as well.  Can your child identify any trees in your yard? Miss Deb's class will learn about this on Friday, March 24th.




In Math, we continued to learn about division through division story problems and fact families. We also played a game of "What's Missing?" Bingo to become more efficient at solving our multiplication and division facts.

Lastly, Miss Niles' class had Fiber Art Friday with Bradie Hansen, Jacob's mom.  I loved the creativity of their new sock puppet friends!  Thanks Bradie!

 Have a great weekend!

Adapted Fairy Tales With Flynn Artist Susanna!

Esprit Third Grade kicked off our first week back with several new units.  One of those units is our Adapted Fairy Tales writing unit and we have been so lucky to have Susanna, from the Flynn, join us to support us with this unit.  Susanna will be joining us once a week for the month of March.  This week, Susanna helped us create a story board of the fairy tale Cinderella.  We practiced retelling the story of Cinderella several times using a variety of voices, gestures and movement.  We even practiced adding in sound effects.  We are working hard to gain a strong understanding of this story and the story elements so we can create better adaptations of this story.


We began reading Because of Winn Dixie during our Character Studies unit in reading.  We have been paying attention to what the main character, Opal, says and does to try to learn more about her and her character traits.  We look forward to getting to know Opal and the other characters in the book better as we continue to read this book.

We have been learning about the relationship between multiplication and division in our new math unit.  We have been practicing identifying two interpretations of division, sharing and grouping.  We have been using the array model and equal groups model to highlight the connection between multiplication and division.  As you can imagine, this has cause some disequilibrium with many students, but as the week has moved on and we have continued to explore these ideas through problem solving students have become more comfortable and their understanding is growing.  This is a good experience for them to develop their perseverance and learn that new learning sometimes takes time.

If you haven't already done so, please visit the Esprit conference schedule to sign up for your spring conference.  Conferences are just a couple weeks away!
Have a terrific weekend,
Deb and Jenn