Week of October 24th-27th

Week of October 24th-27th

Students had a short, but productive week last Monday and Tuesday. They spent time tuning in to the different biomes (ecosystems) around the world and figuring out what are some of the common characteristics they all share.

Hopefully you had an enjoying and relaxing holiday. Speaking of holidays, we have had a lot of them recently. But we now enter a long stretch on the calendar with very few disruptions. Which is good, because the students have lots to learn!

This Friday, students will be going on a field trip to FRIM. They will need to bring a home snack, as we will be eating our snack at FRIM. Children also need to bring: sunscreen, water bottle, hat, bug spray/repellent. Please have your child apply sunscreen and bug spray before arriving at school. For those of you who are chaperones, please be at school by 8:00. Parents will ride on the bus with the students. We should arrive back at ISKL around 11:45.

Even though there is no school on Monday if your child has time s/he can complete a response to this week's IMWAYR linked here and on Classroom.

This week will begin on Day 4.

Reading Students will organize the bits of information in a nonfiction text into categories.  They will also teach others what they’ve learned from their nonfiction texts, paying close attention to the main ideas and supporting details.

Writing They will make plans for how to organize their information writing and try different organization structures on for size. Writers look at the different parts of an informational text paragraph, breaking them apart and identifying their purpose. They will write an informational paragraph.

Math Students will continue to practice a variety of addition strategies to find the sum of 3-digit numbers. They will also be solving real world problems involving addition and measurement.

Science Students will look for commonalities among components of biomes in different locations, as well as adaptations that plants and animals make to these different biomes. They will begin to study food chains/food webs to think about the interconnectedness of living and nonliving elements in an ecosystem.

A Note from Ms. Suji

Halloween Costume Ideas

Week of October 16-17th

Week of October 16-17th

Third graders really enjoyed participating in the cardboard challenge last Wednesday. It gave them the opportunity to collaborate, be creative and passionate, have fun, and share their creations with the whole grade.

3EV also was involved in a Mystery Skype! Students successfully identified the location of an international school near Berlin, Germany. They applied many of the mapping skills learned during this unit and really had an opportunity to practice the SLRs as well!  Please click HERE to view photos from both the Cardboard Challenge and other recent events. Ray was our photographer for the Skype, so I still have to get the photos from him to add, so check back next week too.

Thanks again for taking time out of your busy schedule to attend the conferences. It was a great opportunity for the students to share their work and talk about their learning goals.

This week will begin on Day 2. It will be a short two day week. Please turn in the field trip form by Tuesday. Home learning is also due on Tuesday.

Reading During this shortened week, students will get ready to read nonfiction by revving up their minds even before they start reading a text by previewing it, accessing prior knowledge, identifying the different features and thinking about how the book might go.

Writing Students will create a list of topics that they have a lot of prior knowledge with and feel like experts in. These topics will be used for future nonfiction informational writing. They will then choose one of those topics that they wish to develop further and write about in detail.

Math Students will begin the week by learning and practicing a strategy for adding within 1000, the first being the partial sums strategy.

Science This week marks the beginning of the Ecosystems unit. We will start out by thinking about what an ecosystem is and what are some different ecosystems around the world.

A great connection would be for your third grader to take a few photos over the break, focusing on how water is used or living and nonliving things within an ecosystem.

This week we will also start commenting on blog posts. I will introduce the students to the key words: compliment, connection, comment (being a way to add on to the topic), and question. We will brainstorm ideas for each of these words and strive to write blog comments that use at least three of these points. This may be helpful as you make comments on student blogs too. You can find all the 3EV blogs linked on the right side of the page HERE. It would be great if you could comment on a few student blogs regularly (do not feel you have to limit yourself to just your child). 

Have a safe and relaxing holiday!

Week of October 11th-13th

On Monday and Tuesday of this week, we look forward to seeing you AND your child for conferences! It is a great opportunity for us to have a conversation about your child’s progress thus far and set goals together.

As our narrative writing unit came to an end last week, students had the opportunity to share their stories with a variety of different third grade students, both in their class and in other grade three classes. They enjoyed being able to share, as well as give and receive feedback. Students are encouraged to continue writing personal narrative stories at home and bring them to class to share.

It is not too late to bring in cardboard! We need as much as we can get for our Cardboard Challenge taking place on Wednesday, October 11th.

We are enjoying our Global Read Aloud book choice, Fenway and Hattie and have read chapters 1-3 so far. Look for a link on Google Classroom of teachers reading the chapters in case you would like to listen in as a family.

This week will begin on Day 5.

Reading During this shortened week, we will transition toward information/nonfiction reading, with the first focus being on finding the main ideas of the text and text structures. Students will be accessing their prior knowledge of this genre and tapping into topics of interest.

Writing The informational writing unit will be taught in conjunction with our information reading unit. Although this is not a unit where the focus is on research to write, rather the students will use informational writing strategies as they compose texts about subjects they already know well. This week will give the students the chance to show what they already know about the genre. Students will also begin to develop plans for how to organize their writing.

Math We will continue to use rounding as an estimation strategy by introducing rounding to the nearest 100. Students will continue to show different ways of proving their thinking by using a number line, using benchmark numbers, and finding halfway numbers. As always the parent learning connection has ideas for you in math and reading/writing here.

Social Studies  This week will mark the end of our Mapping and Landforms unit. Students will get an opportunity to share and celebrate the maps that they have created (landform, resource, climate, and population) as well as analyze and ask questions about the maps created by others.

IMWAYR7- students had only a few minutes to record these

Week of October 2, 2017

Our Wonder Wall has been a great place to record questions. In the coming weeks we will move on to adding different prompts to encourage even more thinking. We have begun talking about the upcoming cardboard challenge (ask your child about Caine’s Arcade) which will lead us toward Genius Hour. We need your help! Please send in cardboard and other materials that students could use for building. We will need this by October 11.

With ISA testing behind us we are getting ready for parent teacher conferences. Appointment letters went home on Friday, so please ask your child to give you that paper. Remember that third graders are expected to attend conferences along with their parent(s).

This week we begin on Day 6. Please make sure your child has a water bottle and hat each day.

Reading This week we end our first reading unit. We will then move from fiction reading to information/nonfiction to focus on main ideas and text structures. This is perfect as we think about areas of interest, so students can build on their strengths.

Writing We are also ending our personal narrative unit. At conferences next week you will see both the pre and post assessments for this unit, which will help with goal setting as we move forward. Many aspects of writing are transferrable across genres so this information will help us as we move on to informational writing. This is not a unit where the focus is on researching to write, rather the students will use informational writing strategies as they compose texts about subjects they already know well.

Math We have begun our second math unit and in the coming week will focus on rounding to the nearest ten. We will introduce multiple strategies including using a number line, using benchmark numbers, and finding halfway numbers. As always the parent learning connection has ideas for you in math and reading/writing here.

Social Studies As we continue to look at different maps and what we can learn from them, students are creating their own maps (landform, resource, climate, and population maps are the focus). We have noticed that water is a key resource. We have enjoyed looking at various maps that students have shared.

This week we had our first Skype of the year when a retired librarian in the US read us a few picture books that have not yet been published (they come out in the next few weeks). Next week we begin a 6-week project, the Global Read Aloud, where we will be reading Fenway and Hattie at the same time as many other classes across the world. We will collaborate with a few classes during this time. Don't forget to check the photo folders regularly (see the tab on the blog).

On a personal note, I am involved with a project that is teaching teachers of refugee students and would appreciate plastic bottle caps and cardboard egg cartons that we can repurpose as teaching materials. Thanks for your help.

Thanks to Margherita's mom and Leonor's mom for helping with math fact practice- days 3-6 at 2:30 is generally a great time to help for a few minutes. Alternatively, 8-8:15 most days is a great time for sight word practice help.

Have a great week ahead!

First try of video book sharing- if you click on the link you can watch the videos