Another busy week!

The Esprit Team has spent the past two weeks learning about Google Classrooms with Jeff Badillo, our Technology Coach.  Both Miss Deb's and Miss Niles' classes have their own google classrooms where in classroom work projects can be completed online.  This week we used it to respond to a prompt about The Wild Robot.  We are also creating timelines of Shelburne history using Padlet through Google Classrooms. In Padlet the children are creating slides with dates and facts about Shelburne history.  They will also be creating pictures to illustrate historic events.  We will take pictures of these and load them onto Padlet to complete their timelines. We will continue to house online projects and other online classroom assignments on Google Classrooms for the remainder of the school year.

Our UVM Sophomore interns taught a lesson about an aspect of Chinese Culture this week.  They taught the children about the twelve Chinese Zodiac.  They discussed the characters and personalities of Chinese Zodiac and how to find your own Chinese Zodiac.

In Math, we spent the week exploring "Wally the Window Washer" multiplication array problems.  Students represented their thinking through multiplication and repeated addition.  We also learned a game called "Frog Jump Multiplication" which gave students opportunities to increase their understanding of multiplication and become more fluent with multiplication facts.

In Reader's and Writer's Workshops, we continue to learn about nonfiction text features and how they support our understanding of main idea and details.  We are practicing comprehension strategies in reading, and are using that learning to guide us in writing our own nonfiction books.

Have a great weekend,
Deb and Jenn

Shelburne Story

We had another great week on Team Esprit!  Please note that we do not have school tomorrow, Friday, October 20th.

During our theme time, we continued with our study of Shelburne's history and the Abenaki Native Americans. This week we focused on what it would be like to be settlers moving to a new land, like Shelburne.  The children worked in partnerships and had to first create a list of twelve items that they could bring on their walking journey to settle in a new land.  Then they had to create a diary entry, comic strip, or skit to show how they would deal with a specific challenge along the way (ex. running out of food or one of the family members getting sick).  Lastly, they created a diagram of their newly settled home in Shelburne and labeled all the items they might have inside and outside of their homes.  Ask your child about his or her settler "family's" home and what it looks like!

In math, we are continuing our work with multiplication.  The children learned a new game called Loops and Groups in which they roll a die twice in order to create a certain number of loops and certain number of shapes in the loops.  They then create a multiplication equation to match their picture.  Each player takes five turns and adds up the products, or answers, to the multiplication problems.  The child with the highest sum is the winner.  This was a fun game and some students challenged themselves by using higher numbers on the dice!  We also practiced skip-counting by threes, sixes, and nines explored how skip-counting is related to multiplication.

During Reader's Workshop, we started our nonfiction text study.  We began the unit by talking about how reading fiction is different than reading nonfiction.  Before reading nonfiction, we have to rev our minds!  This means we should preview the text and text features and think about what the book or sections will mostly be about.  We continued with our nonfiction study in writer's workshop as well.  Nonfiction authors are experts about topics.  These are topics they either know a lot about, care about, and can teacher others. Each child brainstormed his or her own expert list.  We will use these topics to write nonfiction books during this unit!

Finally, we have been enjoying reading The Wild Robot the past few weeks and have had the chance to connect with another third grade class in Illinois.  We have used a online, collaborative site called Padlet to share about our predictions and ideas about the story.  Be sure to ask your child about his or her favorite part of The Wild Robot so far!

Have a great long weekend!

Nearby Nature

This week our Nearby Nature parents taught us about trees.  We made observations of trees, created leaf rubbings and interviewed trees.  Many thanks to our Nearby Nature parents for a wonderful, engaging lesson about trees. Ask your child what is special about the tree "General Sherman".

We continued to learn about how we can search for clues in our reading to figure out what hard words mean.  We practiced finding context clues and figurative language in Stone Fox.  We also talked about questions we may have as we read and practiced revisiting earlier parts of the story and pushing ourselves to think and rethink about characters to imagine something about their motivations.

In Writer's Workshop, we continued to practice writing paragraphs this week.  Next week, we will begin an informational writing unit.  We will review non-fiction text features and begin writing our own information texts about a topic we are experts about.

We finished Unit 1 in Math this week and are moving into our second unit which will be an introduction to mulitiplication.  Students will be solving problems that are embedded in different contexts and be invited to think of multiplication in different ways.  They will make use of a variety of models for multiplication, including equal groups, arrays, the number line,and ratio tables.

We continued our learning about Shelburne history this week.  We watch a video about the Eastern Woodlands and created a Venn Diagram comparing hunting from long ago with hunting today.

Finally, thank you to all of our parents for meeting with us for conferences this week.  We appreciated the opportunity to share all of the terrific learning your children have already done in this first six weeks of school.  We look forward to collaborating with all of you this year to make third grade a happy, productive and successful year for your children.

Have a terrific weekend,

Deb and Jenn

Author Visit

This week SCS has been lucky to host Natalie Kinsey-Warnock, a Vermont children's book author. All of the third, fourth, and fifth grade teams had the opportunity to hear Natalie speak and explain how she gets the ideas for her stories.  She told us that most of her stories are based on real-life family stories...stories about her great-great grandparents and aunts and uncles.  She encouraged the children to ask about family stories from the past to get inspiration to write their own books.  We also had the chance to host Natalie on the Esprit Team. She visited us twice to do writing activities and work on adding detail and description to our writing.  She has even inspired some children to start writing their own books during Brain Break.

Speaking of books...we were so excited on Tuesday to visit our new SCS Exploration Center (also known as our library).  After a whole summer of renovation, the library is complete and it is beautiful!  The children were thrilled to check out new books and explore the cozy places to sit in the library.  Your child will be allowed to take out three books at a time from the library.  In third grade we do not have an official library day; therefore, your child can return his or her books any day during Brain Break.  Be sure to ask your child about his or her favorite part of the library!  My guess it was the Story Portal!!

In math, we have continued to work on addition and subtraction strategies when working with double-digit numbers.  The children have been encouraged to solve problems using different strategies (number line, diagram, words, equations, decomposing numbers) which reminds us that there are multiple pathways to solve problems.  They have been working on showing their thinking clearly and working on how to talk about their thinking so it makes sense to their peers.  We also learned a new game called Target 100 which required both the addition and subtraction of double-digit numbers.  Ask your child how to play!

During Reader's Workshop, we took a pause from the book Stone Fox and have been working on different reading strategies, such as retelling, predicting, persevering when the text gets difficult (grit), and using a variety of decoding strategies to figure out tricky words in the text.  The children have also been building their reading stamina and examining their school reading logs to look for patterns in their reading habits.

We also started our first Social Studies theme this week.  To start the year, we will be learning about the history of Shelburne and about the Abenaki Native Americans who lived in this area.  We began our study by sharing all we know about Shelburne and then we brainstormed a list of wonders or questions we have about Shelburne and its past.  We also began to learn more about the Abenaki Native Americans by reading several articles about their food, clothing, shelter, and artifacts.

Have a great weekend! We look forward to meeting with many of you next week to share your child's accomplishments thus far in the year!

Walking Wednesdays

Please join us for Walking Wednesdays!

October 2017

October has arrived, and you know what that means...Walking Wednesdays!  This year we thought we’d continue an opportunity for more students to participate in this wellness activity.  

Beginning October 4th, all K-8 SCS students and families are invited to meet at the “parade” green on the corner of Church Street and Route 7 (Farmer’s Market location).  We will meet up with buses D, G and H at about  7:45-7:50.  Any students who want to get off the bus and walk to school are encouraged to do so.  There will be cones set up on the right (north) side of Church St. with the Shelburne Police there to assist.  Teachers, staff, and community members will supervise students as they cross Route 7, walk down the sidewalk by the library and coffee shop, and head west on Harbor Road.

• October 11th, Bus D,    Driver~Diane
• October 18th, Bus G,    Driver~Damian
• October 25th, Bus H,    Driver~Lucy

Although, we would love to have everyone participate, this is an optional activity.  Any students remaining on the bus will continue on to the school.