Let's start off with.... Lice. As the letter we sent home stated, continuing to check heads is very important. It is easy for lice to continue to circulate so we must be diligent with daily checks! If you are unsure of what to look for, do an internet search for "lice" and "lice nits." *Please let us know if you find either. This helps us to keep up to date and to support from our end. *Remember that treating lice requires continued efforts. Keep checking and keep combing! Administer follow up treatments as necessary. At school, we are keeping our belongings neatly tucked in our wood lockers and are not sharing any clothing or playing with hair. We also continue to talk about respecting personal space. Nurse Eileen told us that adults are less likely to have lice simply because we aren't touching heads/hair together as kids often do! Good news: Our outbreak appears to be subsiding. You may now start scratching. Scholastic Book OrderingStudents were sent home with a bundle of Scholastic catalogs last week! I put a plug in for holiday gift season recommending that students circle their top picks and use that as a wish list :) Think about giving your child some books this holiday season! Ordering books creates excitement around reading and also earns points for our classroom to grow our library. I sent home catalogs as the kids love them, but you may also access a huge online Scholastic catalog as well. Look under the resource tab for the link to Scholastic as well as our ordering code. I'll let you know when the deadline is for holiday ordering as soon as Scholastic announces. Happy book Browsing! *If you want to order holiday gifts, let me know ahead of time and I won't send the books home with your child. You can pick them up from school secretly! Multiplication and DivisionOur classroom has jumped in head first! We are surrounding ourselves with multiplication and division. We are doing number talks, whole group lessons, activities, problem solving and learning many new strategies . Multiplication and Division is a major third grade topic and we will be studying it throughout the year. Here are the three big ideas we are currently working in: 1. Fact Fluency : Memorizing multiplication facts! (once we have these memorized, we can use fact family knowledge to quickly learn division facts). 2. Conceptual Understanding: Digging deep to understand the meaning behind multiplication and division. We are sharing our own thinking during number talks and then reaching to understand the way others think and process, as well. We are learning about models, equations, fact families, and strategies for multipying and dividing. 3. Problem Solving: We are learning about how to determine when multiplication and division can be used to solve a problem, and then employing strategies to solve problems. We even wrote our own problems and had friends solve them! How you can help at home: - Purchase multiplication and division games and play as a family! Check out Blue Highway Games in Queen Anne. -Listen to multiplication and division songs on YouTube. They are quite annoying after some time, and also quite effective for memorizing facts! -Stop and share how you use multiplication and division every day. -Use the Library Resource page to find many high-quality games to teach and reinforce these skills. Online System for Volunteering and ConferencesA huge thank you to Amy Janas for setting up this online system for us. I'm realizing I would have spent countless hours and made no progress. Thank you for your expertise and time, Amy! Amy sent out an email with great instructions and links you can click on to access the sign-ups. * Conferences: Please note that I will be holding conferences on Saturday the 23rd! I had mentioned at curriculum night that I may not be here, but I will be! Please fill up those time slots if that Saturday is easier on your schedule. I greatly appreciate efforts to back-to-back time slots, as well! I'm really looking forward to conference times! They will be student-led (please bring your child!) with a set-aside time at the end if there is a need to talk as an adult team while the student plays some games in the hallway. *Volunteering: We now have an online system for signing-up for volunteering! Let's give it a go and explore this great option. It is easy to sign-up and you will receive reminder emails! We have a particular need for volunteers during our reading block. There are many kids who would benefit from reading with adult and we would love to have you! WritingStudents are so excited and totally absorbed in writing their mystery fiction stories! Here are the highlights of this unit: 1. We read and studied many books by Chris Van Allsburg, keeping a list of the writing strategies that he uses. 2. We studied important story elements, drawing a picture of a mountain to illustrate the path our stories take. The exposition starts the western slope, the rising action carries up to the peak (climax), then the falling action takes us down the eastern slope to the resolution. 3. We planned our stories with graphic organizers to outline important events. Students developed characters and settings, as well. They studied "mystery words" and selected 3-5 they will incorporate in their writing. 4. Students conferenced with an adult sharing their story plans to make sure they had a solid plan. 5. We learned strategies for writing a "hook" and looked at Chris VanAllsburg's books for examples. 6. Students hurried off to computers, wrote their "hook" and are now developing their mysteries. 7. The final part of this writing project will require students to read their story aloud while recording themselves using the Photobooth application. We will learn storytelling and read-aloud strategies to make these oral storytelling performances really engaging. 8. Students will upload their typed stories, as well as their oral storytelling videos to their websites and publish for their audience! We will share these accomplishments at an upcoming Writer's Celebration :) | Characterworks ProgramWe are thrilled to announce our new social/emotional learning program-CharacterWorks! CharacterWorks will be every Monday and Thursday from 11:55-12:35 until December. You are welcome to come check out this program anytime! We have had our first two sessions and the kids are having a blast while they think deeply about our school's 5 pillars. This week's focus was the first pillar: "We are self-directed learners." Below is program information Mrs. Walters has provided for us. Please note the performance and parent talk dates. There is a button below that will take you to a parent survey. Your feedback will determine topic of Mrs. Walter's parent talk nights! CharacterWorks Grade 3: Exploring the Five Pillars of Queen Anne Elementary with Aesop’s Fables Fables tied to performancewill be used to teach each pillar -We are self-directed learners: The Ant and the Grasshopper-Tableaus -We encourage each other to think critically and learn more: The Crow and the Pitcher- Musical Theatre -We are concerned, confident and compassionate citizens of the world: The Lion and the Mouse- Musical Theatre -We learn everywhere, we learn together- Bundle of Sticks- Dramatic Play -We are creative: An original, class written fable- Original Dramatic Play Classroom Performance Dates: -Thurs. Dec 12- Ms. Klope's Class performs for families and celebrates 2:15-3:15 -Fri. Dec 13- Mr. Liner's Class performs for families and celebrates 2:15-3:15 Parent Talks: #1: Wed. Nov. 20 from 7:30-9 PM Location TBD #2: Wed. Dec. 4 from 7:30-9 PM Location TBD Parent Talk Topics:
**Please click the survey button below to indicate your topic preferences! ReadingWe are about three quarters of the way through our class book study of The One and Only Ivan. Students have been keeping a notebook where we detail our characters, respond with writing to deep thinking questions, visualize the setting, and more! Our goals for this unit are to look deeply at our characters and watch as they change over time. This last week, our main character Ivan made a huge change. We celebrated with him and named this the "turning point" in our story. In children's literature (and often adult's!) the author's message or story's theme is revealed through this "turning point." It usually occurs right at the 3/4 mark of the book, as well! Now that we have named our turning point, we will be collecting evidence in our notebooks to support our theory that Ivan has changed. Ask your student about this turning point! Studying our characters and the theme of the story are building our skill as readers and gearing us up for more advanced inferential thinking. Reading Strategy Highlight: We have been studying and using a new reading strategy called "Say Blank and Replace It!" *Goal= When we encounter a word we don't know, instead of racing over it, we use this strategy to infer the meaning. This strategy helps us to use the story context as well as our own schema to figure out approximate meanings of unknown words. This skill is also a building block to deep inferential thinking. Try this strategy at home! *Our next reading unit will be-NONFICTION! Upcoming Events-Writer's Celebration: We will hold a formal writer's celebration upon the completion of our current Harris Burdick Writing unit! Invitations to follow :) -Parent Talk Nights: Beaven Walters, our CharacterWorks instructor, will be holding parent talks. Please take the survey (linked above) to indicate preferences! #1: Wed. Nov. 20 from 7:30-9 PM Location TBD #2: Wed. Dec. 4 from 7:30-9 PM Location TBD -CharacterWorks Performance: Thurs. Dec 12- Ms. Klope's Class performs for families and celebrates 2:15-3:15 *Our first big PBL unit will commence this month! Look forward to lots of information and opportunities to join us :) |