It is great to be back! Thanks for understanding why I needed to be away to help my family. Also, check your child's book bag for a treat they received from myself and the room moms. It has been a tradition in my class for years and I hope they enjoy them. Thanks to the room moms for making sure the tradition continued. Enjoy the pictures from the party. More will follow next week.
I hope each of you has a wonderful holiday with some special family time!
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We've had a great productive week! Students learned 2 new digital tools and saw a puppet show!Their informational pieces are progressing as they added an introduction and conclusion this week. They are almost ready to publish! Also we have uploaded to SeeSaw at least once recently. You might want to check your child's account to see the work.
Questions to ask your child: What is text evidence and why do we use it? What concepts did the puppet show present? What is Padlet? How did we use it to communicate about fossils? What is flipgrid? How did we use it to communicate math. Next Week: Reading - Students will continue to read the book Bullfrogs at Magnolia Circle to discover main ideas, details, and how to use surrounding sentences to determine the meanings of unknown words. Writing - It's time to publish the informational pieces into nonfiction books that include at least 3 text features such as diagrams, time lines, captions, labels, index, table of contents, etc. They will also be studying verbs and their tenses. Math - Math will be a study of graphs focusing on picture graphs and bar graphs. Students will learn how to create the graphs, as well as, read graphs and interpret the data. Continue to practice those math facts up to 6s. Social Studies - They will also begin Econ and Me, a fun video series created to teach students about scarcity, productive resources, opportunity cost, consumers, producers, and interdependence. Have a great weekend! On Tuesday for our professional development day our key note speaker stressed the impact daily reading has on a student's love of reading and their reading success. Check out the chart to see for yourself. Also scroll down to see pictures of our latest STEM challenge. Our STEM morning on Wed. was successful! Students were challenged to create an earth dwelling that can withstand wind (hair dryer) and rain (water th/a colander). They had a budget of $20. A bag of sand costs $3, soil $5, clay $8, straw $5, a bucket for mixing $3, etc. Sticks and water were free. ALL of the dwellings withstood the wind ( a first for any of my classes) and almost all withstood the rain (just one or two had a leaky roof). Enjoy the pictures and ask your child how his group's dwelling did? How did they work together? What was their strategy and what materials they used?
We were all excited that our class won the playground equipment bag from the PTA last week. The names of the classes that met the fourth goal were eligible and we won! Our class now has 2 kickballs, a basketball, a nerf football, and a soccer ball plus 2 hulu hoops. Each child wrote the PTA a thank you note and they did a nice job expressing their appreciation. Thanks to the PTA and you all for making the fundraiser successful!
REMEMBER: -Tuesday is Election Day and a teacher workday. - Save the Six Flags Reading Log that came home on Friday. It is an easy way to earn some free tickets and encourage the students to read! - Write back to your student and return the parent journals by Wednesday. NEXT WEEK: Math - Students will learn how to multiply by multiples of 10. Ex. 30 x 6; they should add 4s to their time table studying; and we will continue to review the distributive property of multiplication. Writing - Most of the students have added new information to their nonfiction writing. This week they will develop beginnings and add transition words. Reading - As we finish Because of Winn Dixie ( didn't quite finish it last week) and begin informational reading the class will learn that good readers question before, during, and after they read and how to use this strategy to help them understand what they read. Social Studies - The students will continue to study the first explorers of North America. STEM - Our class is participating in a special STEM visit day on Wednesday. We will have STEM from 8:15-11:15. Students will learn about the effects of weathering and erosion. Groups will receive a budget, decide which materials to buy, and build a structure to withstand wind (hair dryer) and rain (water through a colander). It is such a fun STEM project. I can't wait to see what the students create. Have a great week! We had such a fun week! Our trip to Tellus Museum (pictures from that coming soon) , electronics day, and the Tritt-Mazing Race were all a huge success. Thank you to everyone for supporting us in everything.
REMINDERS:- Monday, October 30 we will hear all the great book reports/recommendations. -Tuesday, Oct. 31 is our costume/pj day the children won. Any child who doesn't want to wear a costume may wear their pjs. I'll be in mine! There is also no homework that night. -Please return the permission slip sent home last week for the two historical figures making a special visit to Tritt. - Square One Art also came home on Friday. If you are ordering please send that in this week. - Help your child study their 2s and 3s tables. We will test on those tomorrow(Monday) and then we will add the 4s. NEXT WEEK: Math - We will spend most of our time learning to use the distributive property to solve 2 digit by 1 digit multiplication problems, but will also continue to review the associative, identity, commutative, and zero properties. Reading - Students will learn to expand their vocabulary by using prefixes and suffixes to help determine words' meanings. Our novel study will be complete as we finish reading Because of Winn Dixie and analyze/write about the theme of friendship that weaves itself through the book. Writing - Each child will add facts to their informational writing piece completing the organizational part of our unit. Plus parent journals are back on Friday. Social Studies - Our study of the early explorers begins with a general overview and a study of Christopher Columbus. STEM - On Halloween we will have some fun with a STEM challenge involving candy corn and catapults. And then it's November! That's hard to believe. Have a great week! Thank you all for coming in and being so supportive during our conferences! I enjoyed talking with you and discussing our goals for your child. Next week I'll be communicating those goals to each child. If we include them in the planning they'll be more successful!
Our only PTA fundraiser for the year has started! Benson's Beasts (voted on by your children, of course) are ready to earn the incentives. The first collection day is Monday. Please help us earn our first goal by letting your child call grandparents, etc. We need to raise $575 which is $25 per child to make our first goal! The PTA plans on removing all those annoying wood chips from the playground and replacing them with the safer padding, repaint the peeling gym, sponsoring all the great family fun events we love, and providing the grants for the grade levels. PLUS 20% of what we raise comes directly back to OUR classroom. Thanks for your help!! The pictures below are from our writing celebration last Friday with our K book buddies. The students did a great job sharing their final narrative piece and we all enjoyed the goodies. Thanks for sending those in for us. After the celebration the kids completed compliment cards for 2 of the stories they heard. Hopefully, you saw those in your child's folder last week. The stories are now on display in the hallway. When you come for your conference please read your child's story. I'm going to give you some compliment cards to complete and leave in a basket for them. We will give them out at the end of the week. It is so important for us to celebrate their great writing. In your child's folder is a letter explaining a web based program called See Saw. Some of you are familiar with it from last year. So many of the activities we do now are not worksheets that can be sent home for you to see. We will use See Saw to post some of the work completed in class, so you can see some of your child's accomplishments. Next week we will continue to read Because of Winn Dixie, learn division strategies, and begin a new writing unit on informational writing. Remember that it is early release. I look forward to meeting with all of you during our conferences. Thanks to everyone for confirming the conference schedule. I look forward to meeting with all of you. It's been a great week in our class after a week off.
Questions to ask your child: - What are the differences in common and proper nouns? And concrete and abstract nouns? - What are some American Indian cultures you've studied? What have you learned about their housing and WHY did they have that type of housing? - What is your personal narrative about? NEXT WEEK: Math - Division will be introduced and its relationship to multiplication. Reading - Students will be excited to start our first class novel study. As they read Because of Winn Dixie students will learn new reading strategies and apply the ones we've already studied. Writing - An important part of third grade is learning to respond to questions about reading and to cite evidence from the text that supports/proves your answer. I will spend time modeling The students are doing a great job maintaining focus and showing what they know during our testing. As you know, due to Irma days off we will still be testing next Monday and Tuesday. Then we can put our desks back in groups and have a full day of learning! We will all be ready!
QUESTIONS: - Ask your child 3 different ways to show multiplication. -Ask them to tell you the story (small moment) they are using for their 2nd personal narrative. REMINDERS: Next Friday is Walk to School Day. The school has sent out an email listing all of the drop off spots. You do NOT have to walk with your child. I will walk from the Chimney Springs Clubhouse if your child wants to walk with me. We leave the clubhouse at 7:00. Let's try to have 100% participation! NEXT WEEK: Language Arts - Students will work through the steps to write a second personal narrative while I have small group conferences to help them grow their stories like storytellers. Math - We will continue to explore the different ways to represent multiplication and the relationship between multiplication and division. STEM - After much planning and collaborating STEM groups will build their mineral display cases. Social Studies - The class will begin learning about early American Indian cultures and their development in North America, as well as, why the different groups occupied the areas they did. Have a great weekend! . |
AuthorMrs. Amy Benson Archives
December 2018
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