With the first month behind us, we are turning the corner towards conferences already! The students I am sure have shared about how we get to use Chromebooks now. They have been treating them very responsibly and really looking to make sure they follow rules. I have currently only introduced them during math time. Beaverton School District adopted a new program called Dreambox. It is one way we will be monitoring math progress in the district. Dreambox adjusts to the students' needs as they answer questions so that each student is working directly at his or her level.
Math: We worked really hard this week on solving story problems involving multiplication and division. We underline the important information in the story problem and then decided whether it was more appropriate to solve using multiplication or division. They were doing a great job and were active participants all week! Something important to note: You will see a piece of paper come home regularly that says "Pre-Assessment" at the top. After every few math lessons, I assess the students to see how they are doing and if I need to reteach or revisit a specific concept. To keep grading student friendly I grade the assessments with a check plus, check, or check minus. A check plus means they got everything correct, a check is they are on the right track but made a mistake or two, a check minus means they are struggling with the concept(s). For students who get a check or check minus, I have them correct their work with me or a parent volunteer. You'll see their corrections in markers. Literacy: This week we continued learning about how we can be the best readers. One of the lessons students learned is what to do if their mind keeps wandering from the book. We talked about how if it happens, we should always back up and reread or determine if the book we are reading is not a good fit or if the place we are sitting is not a good fit. Each Friday we also dig into Scholastic News to practice reading non-fiction texts. Non-fiction tends to be harder for students to understand. We learned how authors leave clues to help us better understand the article by using a Words To Know box. The Words To Know box defines words in the article that the author may think the readers do not understand. Along with reading the article, the students also take a quiz. This is one way we measure their understanding of non-fiction texts. Students who score and 7 or less, will be asked to go back and fix their answers. We are working hard to find the answer back in the story rather than just guessing. Third graders will need to be provide evidence to their answers by the end of the year so this is a way to start preparing them. :) Please keep your eyes out for their Scholastic Quizzes that go home, so you can also see how they are doing. Writing: We started our narrative writing unit this week by brainstorming true small moment stories. Students brainstormed important people and places and small moments associated with them. We read a book called Roller Coaster where the author told a small moment story of riding a roller coaster. We discussed how a small moment is something that is no more than a few hours long and definitely does not start in the morning and end at night like students are used to writing. Ask your child: What small moment story have to started writing or plan on writing? You can also help them brainstorm some small moment stories whether it was a moment of happiness, excitement, difficulty, sadness, etc. Science: We started learning about heredity for our PYP Unit: Who We Are by learning about acquired and inherited traits. Acquired traits are ones that we learn or get throughout our life and inherited traits are what we are born with. Students brainstormed acquired and inherited traits. Ask your child: What is an example of an acquired trait and what is an example of an inherited trait. A few things to note: 1. Please make sure your child is recording their at home reading on their reading log and is doing so accurately and honestly. :) I would really like to see them reading 30 minutes or more a night..yes weekends are important, too. There are many studies you can read online about third grade reading achievement and high school graduation rates. I won't go into detail but bottom line is students need to be reading, reading, reading. 2. Many students are trying to read books that are too hard for them right now. If your child sounds choppy, most likely the book is too hard for them. Please be aware of that at home! I am working with students at school to choose just right books. Having them read books that are too hard for them lead to their eyes wandering, their comprehension lower, and do not help them become better readers. If they are dying to read a book above their reading level, spend time reading it with them! 3. You will see green laminated bookmarks start to float home. On the green bookmark is your child's reading goal and five words they should be practicing. It also shares their reading level: 1B, 2B are first grade reading levels, 1R and 2R are second grade reading levels, and White is third grade. This can count towards their nightly reading. I have not finished every student's bookmark but I am hoping to soon. I do want them to have it at school each day, which is why it is a very large bookmark. Happy Weekend!
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This week I felt students really started diving into what third grade is all about. We are settling into the routines and learning lots! Take a peek into our week...
Math: Students are learning about division and how it relates to multiplication. We are working on solving word problems by reading the question carefully, drawing a picture to support our thinking, writing our answer in a complete sentence, and representing our answer in a number related sentence. We started basic division and multiplication facts! Ask your child a simple multiplication or division problem! See if they can figure it out! Literacy: We are working on setting up our reading lives to be the best readers possible. Students learned how to record their reading on their reading log and to read books like gold. We also took a quick day to see how authors leave clues in non-fiction writing to help us understand. Ask your child: What does it sound like to read a book like gold instead of reading like a curmudgeon? Writing: Students are still working on writing pieces of their choice. I am working very hard to get them to write for 30 minutes without stopping. I have been working my way through the class to meet with each student for a compliment conference. I want students to feel comfortable sharing their writing! Science: We spent more time this week talking about the stigma and pollen dusters in flowers. Students learned it takes pollen from another flower to get stuck to the stigma of a different flower in order to produce seeds. Students had the opportunity to replicate it by pollinating their flowers with coffee ground and baking flour. Students then determine if their flower was pollinated and if it could produce seeds. Students also brought in flowers that allowed us to examine the pollen dusters and stigmas. Students were able to see how each flower is unique just like we are as people. Ask your child: Did the flower you make get pollinated by both flowers? Would your flower produce seeds? How do you know? I hope you all had a great weekend and are enjoying the nice fall weather! We made it our first entire week through school! The students are settling in and learning the routines of the classroom.
Thank you so much for those of you who made it to Curriculum Night! I appreciate you taking your time to see what is in store this year for your child. Please do not hesitate to ask any questions! Here is what we did this week: Math: Multiplication was slowly introduced to students. They learned to turn a repeated addition sentence into a multiplication sentence. Today they had the opportunity to play Slides and Ladders (Chutes and Ladders) or work on another activity with dice to practice their multiplication skills. The students came home with a quiz today assessing how they did on the first few lessons we have learned. Please take a look at it! Ask them to solve a simple multiplication sentence such 3 x 2 or 4 x 5. They are starting to get the hang of it! Literacy: We are practicing building our reading stamina and working our way up to 30 minutes. We finished our first read aloud book and started our second book already. We are reading an OBOB book. Third grade students can compete in OBOB this year! There is a series of books they should read if they are interested in competing! We haven’t gotten very far into our book though! Students also took a pre-assessment to see how they did answering questions to a story. Writing: We are working on building our writing stamina. We talked about different types of stories or types of writing authors publish. We also discussed problems we as writers may come across as we are working on our writing pieces. Students brainstormed solutions to those problems. Ask your child: What are you currently writing about in class? Are you making a graphic novel, comic strip, writing fiction or some type of book? Science: We finished up our Me Posters and began looking at how flowers are created and what it takes to create the seed of a flower. Students watched a series of short clips about flowers and learned about the pollinator and “sticky” stigma parts. They learned that in order for seeds to be produced, a flower’s stigma must be pollinated with another flower’s pollen. In this case those two flowers or “parents” are what produce seeds (or flower babies). Next week we will create a flower and pollinate them ourselves using coffee grounds and flour as pollen! I told the kiddos they could bring in a flower next week so we can observe all the different pollinators and stigmas on different flowers. If they ask you to bring a flower on Monday, it is not because I personally need them, ha! ;) We are using them for science purposes! Ask your child: What needs to happen in order for a flower to produce seeds? Answer: The stigma needs to be pollinated by another flower. We made it through the first week of school! It has been wonderful getting to know your students. They are such inquirers and do a wonderful job participating. We did many get to know you activities but also academic work too. Here is what we did:
Math: We did a couple "Get to Know You" bar graphs where students voted on their favorite season and shared how many siblings they had. The graphs provided us with data about "Who We Are" (our first PYP theme) as a class. We also started working on three digit addition and subtraction practice. Ask your child: What did you learn your class' favorite season is? (Winter is the answer) What was the most popular amount of siblings our class had? (1 is the answer) Literacy: We began reading Judy Moody In a Bad Mood as a classroom read aloud. Students are working to compare Judy's experience to our classroom's experience. So far the students have come up with: Judy started third grade, she has to get used to a new desk/classroom, she is working on a Me Poster (collage), and she collects Box Tops. We have also briefly started talking about how books follow a plot line in the shape of a mountain. The book starts off and as it goes on the main character begins to face challenges and when they reach the top of the mountain (climax) they are usually facing the most difficult problem. When they have reached the bottom of the mountain the problem is solved. Ask your child: How is Judy Moody similar to you? Ask them to explain about a Story Plot Mountain. Science: The students started working on a Me Poster. They are having to share all about themselves through art, a self-portrait, and a short writing piece. This is one of our first pieces that goes along with our PYP Unit "Who We Are". Ask your child: What did you learn how to do this week to help your complete your Me Poster? (Answer: Make bubble letters, self-portrait, acrostic poem, and create a border around their poster) Have a wonderful weekend! |
Sept. 14th- First Day of Online Learning
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