Getting Ready to Publish!

Esprit Third Graders have spent the week finishing their nonfiction books, adding the final text features, cover, and illustrations!  They are very excited to share these books with you at our Publishing Party on Wednesday, December 20th at 2:30pm.  Please let your child's teacher know if you can attend the Publishing Party. If you cannot, we will be sure to invite other staff members from our school to attend and listen to your child's book.  See you Wednesday!

Last week, the students of SCS filled up the big C in SCS with cat coins!  That means there has been a lot of safe, responsible, and respectful behavior happening here at school!  To celebrate, we had a Mix-it-Up afternoon!  Both Miss Deb's class and Miss Niles' class met with their middle school buddies and created holiday cards for some senior citizens in our area. Everyone had a wonderful time creating their cards and mixing it up!

In math we focused on subtraction strategies this week, particularly the standard algorithm for subtraction. We used base ten pieces and sketches as a visual to see what happens when a mathematician has to trade or regroup with subtraction.  We continued to practice during much of the week as this tends to be a tricky strategy to master quickly.  Ask your child if he or she can show demonstrate the subtraction standard algorithm for you!

Miss Deb's class spent some more time this week doing "An Hour of Code" with Chromebooks.  They also played a fun game on Kahoot.com that Miss Deb created to practice their multiplication facts.  Both Miss Niles' and Miss Deb's classes have been working toward fluency with multiplication facts during the month of December.

During Reader's Workshop, Miss Niles' class has started doing a book study of Sideways Stories from Wayside School.  They are reading the story aloud as a class, discussing characters, and focusing on comprehension strategies.  Ask your child about the wild and wacky characters they have met in this book so far!  Miss Deb's class is reading books about people who have made a difference in the world.  These books are giving students a glimpse into life in other areas of the world and modeling for students how one person, adult or child, can make a big difference in the quality of others' lives.  Ask your child how some of the people in these stories have helped others have a better life!

Many third graders also chose to participate in the Scripps Spelling Bee written test to try and qualify to participate in the SCS Spelling Bee.  We will know the results soon!  Way to go spellers!

Have a great weekend!