Week of January 29, 2018

Good morning 3EV parents, 

What a busy week we had in Grade 3. Students were busy brainstorming questions to answer and projects to create for Genius Hour. It is great to see their creative juices flowing! This will be a shorter week starting on day 2, with Wednesday a day off for Thaipusam.
I will be out on Monday but have left detailed plans for our guest teacher.

Reading

This week students will continue to read a variety of nonfiction and fiction books and discuss their learning with a small group. We will celebrate World Read Aloud Day on Thursday and will Skype with two authors, Deborah Freedman and Debbi Michiko Florence. 

Writing

Students will continue to work on saying more about each of their reasons. Students will learn that when writers write to convince someone they only put in their best, most convincing evidence. We will also begin to use paragraphs as a way to organize their reasons.

Math

We are continuing to work on finding the area of rectangles. Students will learn about the distributive property as a way to solve area problems and as a strategy to multiply using base 10 blocks. Take a look at this progression video to see how we do this. 

Social Studies

We are lucky to have 2 parent experts come in and speak with grade 3. The topics will be archeology and the legacies that ancient civilizations leave us. 

PE- please consult the class documents tab on our website to see when your child has swimming. 

Week of January 22-26

Week of January 22nd-26th
We had a fantastic week of learning in grade 3! As we launched our Ancient Civilization unit, students took on the role of an archaeologist and looked at many different ancient artifacts trying to uncover information about the item. What were they used for? How does it help us understand more about the people from that time period? Students were asking great questions, making connections, and creating stories to explain their reasoning. Nice work, Archaeologists!

This semester, students will have time in their week to explore a topic they are passionate about. We are calling this time Genius Hour. This week, we started by brainstorming different topics we love, things that interest us, ways we spend our free time, types of books we read or shows we watch. This list of ideas will help us choose a topic to explore further. If you would like to know more about genius hour, here are a couple of links we showed the kids.

What is Genius Hour?
Genius Hour in the Classroom
Visit with your child about some of the ideas they came up with this week. What are your passions? Share them with your child? Perhaps you want to have a genius hour project of your own!

This week begins on a day 3.

Reminder: ASA sign-ups will close on Monday, January 22nd at 10:00 am sharp!

Reading 
Students will continue analyzing different nonfiction books. We will be determining what makes a quality children’s nonfiction book. Some of the elements we will look at are: infographics, back matter, layout, interest level, and more. This week we will also be working in nonfiction reading book clubs to read, discuss, and ask questions of a shared reading. 

Writing 
Students will continue writing persuasive speeches. The focus this week will be on gathering and organizing information about their opinion. We will also be working on elaborating our writing by proving through showing rather than telling their reader. 

Math 
We will continue our multiplication and area unit. This weeks focus will be on breaking apart numbers to multiply more easily (ex. 12x8= (10x8) + (2x8)). This is called the distributive property. We will also continue to explore using square units to measure area, solve real-world problems dealing with area, and continue to reinforce our addition/subtraction/multiplication/division facts. Please continue to help your child practice these at home! 

Social Studies 
As we dive deeper into our ancient civilizations unit we will take a closer look at the different features of successful civilizations. 3EV will be looking closely at Ancient Egypt. We will start by looking at how location impacted Egypt. Then students will be choosing a civilization to study independently.  

Please see the Class Documents tab for the new swim schedule!

BONUS- Math Games your child may enjoy:

Multiplication War card game

Roll 2 numbers and write the fact families (4,2: 4x2=8, 2x4=8, 8/4=2 8/4=2)

Fact Triangles

Dice Games

Here are some math games on the computer:

Mathbreakers https://www.mathbreakers.com

Motion Math http://motionmathgames.com/

Dragon Box http://www.dragonboxapp.com/

Refraction http://play.centerforgamescience.org/refraction/site/

Wuzzit Trouble http://innertubegames.net

Mancala http://www.coolmath-games.com/0-mancala/

And so much more on our Parent Learning Connection Site!

Free Dress Fridays

Hello everyone and happy new year!

For the rest of the semester, we are going to be donating the money raised from Free Dress Days to the Chin Refugee School that we have been supporting recently. We helped them by donating lots of books, backpacks, school supplies, and water bottles. We also have helped them with their rent. 

We are going to continue to support them. They are a wonderful organization and we want to make sure they are able to run their school without worries of paying their rent or having to buy school supplies for their students.  

Thank you to every family who donates on those fun Fridays. It means a lot the people we help.

Cheers, 

Max Mangelsdorf

Red Hat Coordinator

Week of January 15th-19th

Week of January 15th-19th

Happy New Year! It was so much fun seeing all of the kids this week and reconnecting as a class.
I hope that you all had a relaxing and rejuvenating holiday. All of the kids were excited about seeing their friends, sharing stories, and getting back into a class routine. With a new year, we talked a lot about
setting goals and resolutions. As a class, we decided to each think of one little
word to use as our year-long motto. Be sure to ask your child about their word!

We started our persuasive writing unit and the kids are all excited to convince others in the class,
in the school, and perhaps at home. So please be prepared for all of the persuasion that might be happening this month.We are all very excited for a fabulous second semester and we welcome many new families to our third-grade community. Please reach out and help them all feel welcome!

In 3EV we welcomed Maria this week (who actually attended ISKL in grade 2, so she is a familiar face to many).

This week begins on a day 4

Reading Students will be analyzing different nonfiction books. We will be determining what makes a quality children’s nonfiction book. Some of the elements we will look at are: infographics, back matter, layout, interest level, and more.

Writing Students will continue writing persuasive speeches. We will be looking at different strategies to collect ideas.We will consider our audience to include our most persuasive reasons. As we get back into our writing routines, we will focus on editing as we go to ensure our readers understand.

Math We will continue our multiplication and area unit. Important concepts we will continue to explore this week are using square units to measure area, solving real-world problems dealing with area, and continue to reinforce our addition/subtraction/multiplication/division facts. Please continue to help your child practice these at home!

Social Studies We are launching our People of the Past Unit, which is a study of ancient civilizations. We will be taking a deeper look into how we learn about the past and how the past continues to influence us today. If any of you have any expertise in this area, we would love to have you share this with the kids!