Fairy Tales, Water Cycle, Winn Dixie and more!

This week we continued drafting our fairy tale adaptations.  We are working hard to include lifelike details and create scenes that are like small moment stories. Prior to writing, we began by drawing and acting out the scenes which helped add detail to our writing and create organization in our writing.  Our goal is to bring both our characters and the place in our fairy tales to life.


In Reader's Workshop we will be analyzing author's craft.  We will also begin comparing and contrasting characters to find similarities and differences.  We will do this by reflecting on the books we have read both together and in our book groups.  This will convey to students that they now have a deeper understanding of synthesis - of how a story unfolds, with its parts connecting in particular ways, and the knowledge to think and talk analytically about story structure and author's craft. We finished reading Because of Winn Dixie this week and had a chance to talk about the lessons learned from the book.  It was impressive to hear 3rd Graders really pull out some the bigger themes and ideas of the story!  We made "bumper stickers" with the important lessons and posted those, along with illustrations, on our team bulletin board.  Next Thursday, we will watch the movie Because of Winn Dixie and compare it to the book.

We spent more time solving multiplication and division problems using a variety of strategies.    Next week we will investigate two different interpretations of division - grouping and sharing.  Toward the end of the week we will explore area in greater depth.

This month's Hands On Nature Lesson taught us about the water cycle.  We listened to a puppet show and did some water experiments that investigated the properties of water.  Many thanks to our Hands On Nature parents for providing this awesome learning experience for us!

We have spent some time during the past couple weeks learning about the SBAC test that we will be taking in May.  We have logged on to computers and explored practice test in both Math and Literacy. We will continue to practice periodically until May so all students can become comfortable with the structure of the test.
Have a nice weekend!

Fairy Tale Fun!

This week during Writer's Workshop, we have been immersed in the world of fairy tales.  Our goal by the end of this narrative unit is to have written an adaptation of a fairy tale and an original fairy tale.  To get our selves ready to write, we have been reading original versions of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, and Three Billy Goats Gruff and many adaptations of these classic tales.  This week we focused on identifying the  kinds of changes authors make when they adapt a fairy tale and the reasoning behind it.  We found that many authors either change the characters, change the events of the story, or the character's motivation. Next week, your child will choose to write an adaptation of Little Red Riding Hood or of Three Billy Goats Gruff.  Which will your child choose?

In Reader's Workshop, we are continuing our book club groups and investigating characters.  As the children read their books this week, they were looking to see how their characters react to problems in the book and looking at what their reaction tells us about them as a character.  We did this activity first with our read aloud, Because of Winn Dixie. We observed that Opal, the main character, has had a lot of challenges so far in the book.  Here mom is gone; she is new in town; she does not have any friends; and some boys tease her.  We noticed from her reactions that she is a strong character with a lot of courage!  What has your child learned about the character is her or her book club book?  We also began to study the secondary characters in a story and are looking at how those characters help the main character in the book.

Multiplication and division are still are main focus in math this month; however, this week we focused on solving story problems using multiplication and division. The children worked on these grouping and sharing problems independently in their math journals and then we discussed their variety of strategies, with an emphasis on building an array and identifying its dimensions. For example, one problem was "Rosa bought 32 marbles at the game shop. The marbles came in bags of 8.  How many bags of marbles did she buy?". Ask your child how he or she solved that problem.  Can he or she model it with a labeled array?

Lastly, the weather has been warmer this week, but I am sure it will still fluctuate as we are only in the beginning of March. Please make sure that your child comes to school with appropriate outdoor clothing every day.  Boots are a must as the playground has become extremely muddy with this warmer weather.  Thank you!

Welcome Back!

It was great to be back and see all our third grade friends!  Although we had a choppy week with that "ice day" in the middle, we were able to get back into our routines.

On Thursday, we celebrated Read Across America Day with an assembly.  All the teachers in the school read aloud What Pet Should I Get? by Dr. Seuss and we had the chance to see everyone's "Wild About Reading" hats and costumes! Throughout the day we had several guest readers too!  After the assembly, we hurried off to the Flynn Theatre to see Frindle on stage.  The children seemed to enjoy the show (there were many laughs) and were a great audience!

In Reader's Workshop, we continued to study characters and noticed that although characters are unique, they all progress along the same kind of path in a story.  We can expect that a character will face a problem that gets bigger and bigger, reaches a turning point, and then is resolved.  We used a story mountain to chart these actions/problems/feelings of our characters.  We also began book clubs this week. Each child is in a small group of four peers and they are reading the same book.  Book groups will be reading daily and meeting daily to discuss characters and character development in their books.  Be sure to ask your child which book he or she is reading in book club!

Please note that there is no school on March 25th. That is a parent conference day. If you have not signed up for a parent conference, please visit our google site and do so.  Thank you!

Read Across America

Our first week back from February break will be another busy one!  On Wednesday, March 2nd, our school will participate in Read Across America Day. This is a day to celebrate Dr. Seuss' birthday and to celebrate reading!  We will have a school wide assembly in the morning, followed by guest readers visiting our classroom throughout the day.  This week we made special hats to wear to the school wide assembly to celebrate Read Across America Day. This year's theme is "Wild About Reading" so our hats are decorated with animal prints. Be sure to ask your child about the animal print design on his or her hat!

We will be traveling to the Flynn Theater on Thursday, March 3rd to see "Frindle".  We will leave around 9 am and be back for lunch and recess. Frindle is the story of a boy who decides to start calling a pen a frindle.  This causes much chaos in his school and his town.  We have read the book already so we are looking forward to seeing it brought to life on stage!  Today we enjoyed a companion workshop the Flynn provided for us to support our understanding of Thursday's performance.   Everyone had a terrific time during the workshop, reading from a script from the show and acting out parts of the book, and we are very excited to see the show on March 3rd.

This week we finished our measurement unit in math and will be moving on to a new unit after the February break that will focus on multiplication and division.  We also finished our persuasive speeches and will begin a new writing unit through which we will be adapting fairy tales and writing our own fairy tales.  We will continue studying characters and how characters change throughout the month of March.  In science we will begin learning about heredity and variation of traits.

We look forward to meeting with everyone in March for parent/teacher conferences.  If you have not already done so, please visit our google site to sign up for a date and time.
We hope everyone has a happy, relaxing and safe winter break!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Well this was quite a week: the book fair, Kindergarten concert, Hands on Nature, Vermont Writes Day, and Valentine's Day!  As you can imagine the excitement and energy levels were high this week with so many fun and different activities going on!

This month's Hands on Nature theme was sound.  Through a puppet show and several hands on experiments we learned how sound travels and we learned about how the ear works.  Our ears are amazing!  We had fun testing out tuning forks and doing an experiment to see if sounds are different when the waves travel through the air versus traveling through a solid.  Be sure to ask your child about our Hands on Nature session this week!  As always, thanks to our volunteers for providing us with this enriching opportunity each month.

This week we also celebrated Vermont Writes Day.  This is a tradition for our school during which all students write for seven minutes on this day about a topic provided by the Young Writer's Project.  Some of the topics this year included:  

• You are granted a singular wish. Write about what happens after you ask for it. How does it affect your life?
• Out of nowhere, an object falls from the sky, landing directly at your feet. What is it and what happens next?

What did your child write about?  There will be a display of Vermont Writes Day writing in the hallway (by the ramp) near the Treehouse team.  Be sure to check it out!  Speaking of writing...we continue to work on our persuasive speeches.  We should be ready to publish these shortly with the hopes of bringing some changes to our school or town!  We are working hard to have these published on Google Slides so that you can see and hear their persuasive speeches soon!

In Reader's Workshop, we continue our study of characters using Because of Winn Dixie as our mentor text.  We have looking at the characters and are digging deeper, trying to determine why these characters behave like they do.  Then once we have a deeper knowledge of our characters and a better sense of who they are, we can use that information to make predictions about how a character may act later in the story. Which character is your child studying?  Can your child make any predictions about his or her character?  When reading at home, encourage your child to share with you about the characters in his or her book!

Lastly in math, we continue our study of fractions.  This week we focused on placing fractions on a number line. After creating their own number lines from 0 to 1, the students practiced locating various points along the number line, including, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 2/3, and 5/6.  We then used these number lines and number line diagrams to help solve story problems involving fractions.  We also started a small Jack and the Beanstalk project in math.  This week we created paper beanstalks and measured the stalk and leaves to the nearest half- and quarter- inch.  We will use this data next week to construct line plots showing the length of the leaves.

Happy 100th Day!

It's hard to believe, but we have reached the 100th day of school! It's gone by so quickly!  We celebrated with a special trail mix made up of lots of "100s" of chocolate chips, cereal, pretzels, goldfish, etc.  Delicious!

This week we began reading Because of Winn Dixie as a mentor text for our new character study unit during Reader's Workshop.  We have been observing how the character "Opal" acts and talks and have been using our observations to come up with ideas about Opal and what they tell us about her. We have been working toward making our ideas precise and using text evidence to support our ideas. We have also been noticing character patterns, what the character does over and over, and using that information to come up with big ideas and theories about the characters.

We continue to work hard on our opinion pieces during Writer's Workshop and are learning how to create a presentation in Google Slides and will be using voice over to record our speeches.  When our speeches are done we will be sending links to our families through email so you can listen to our speeches at home.

During math we have been learning about fractions as fair share, and using our understanding of unit fractions to compare and order fractions. We have also been exploring pattern block fractions.  We have been working hard to use precise language when describing relationships between fractions and have been learning about the words "congruent" and "equivalent".

Next week will be filled with a variety of events for us.  Deb's class will visit the Book Fair on Monday to preview books and will return to the Book Fair on Tuesday to purchase books.  Her class will also be attending the Kindergarten Concert Tuesday morning, and will have Hands On Nature on Thursday. On Friday we will have our Valentine's Day Celebration.  Miss Niles' class will visit the Book Fair on Monday for our preview as well and then Tuesday is our purchase day.  We also will be attending the Kindergarten concert and will have Hands on Nature that day...busy!

Have a terrific weekend!

Get Ready for February!

February is a short month and probably one of the busiest months of school!  We have a lot of great activities coming next month that we want you and your child know about.  Please check your child's Friday Folder as there is always valuable information!  Here are the highlights of February:

February 5th:  100th Day of School...We will be celebrating with a special snack.  Please send your child in to school with 100 small pieces of food for our  100th day trail mix (ex. cereal, pretzels, chocolate chips, goldfish, marshmallows, raisins, craisins, etc.).

February 8th-12th: The Scholastic Book Fair is returning to SCS this week!  Monday is the preview day so both Deb and Miss Niles' classes will go to the Book Fair to see what's for sale. Then on Tuesday, Februrary 9th, our classes will go back to the Book Fair to make purchases.  Your child does not have to buy anything during this time; however, this is the only "in-school" time we will be encouraging purchases to be made. Feel free to come to the Book Fair with your child to purchase books as well. The Book Fair is open until 8:00pm on Tuesday and Thursday.

February 12th: Valentine's Day Celebration...On Friday, February 12th, we will have a small Valentine's Day Celebration. If your child chooses to make valentines for his or her classmates, please make sure there is one for each child in the class.  We have included a list in your child's Friday Folder.

February 19th:  "Frindle" Companion Workshop with the Flynn Theatre...On Thursday, March 3rd, we are going to see the book Frindle brought to life on stage at the Flynn.  We were lucky enough to get a grant to have a teacher from the Flynn come to our class on February 19th to do a workshop to get ourselves ready for the performance.

February 20-29th: Winter Vacation...School resumes on Tuesday, March 1st.

In math, we continued to work with measurement, including volume, time, length, and mass.  We worked with measurement tools to find different objects in the room to measure. Measuring volume was definitely messy....water everywhere!  We also spent time solving multi-step story problems related to measuring. Next week, our focus turns to more work with fractions.

We continued to work on our persuasive speeches in Writer's Workshop. This week we worked on gathering all we know about our topics.  The children listed everything they know about their topics and worked to organize those ideas into categories.  They then started to write their paragraphs from these lists.  Have you asked your child about his or her persuasive speech topic?

We also finished learning all of the cursive letters this week!  We made it!  Now we are working on cursive connectives. This means we are working on connecting letters together to spell words.  Encourage your child to practice writing his or her name in cursive at home!

Miss Niles' class finally finished reading the Red Clover Books this week.  After completing a variety of literacy projects for each book, a winner was chosen in their room.  Elizabeth: Queen of the Seas was Miss Niles' class favorite followed by a tie between Shh! We Have a Plan and Blizzard. Be sure to ask your child about his or her vote!

Have a great weekend!