11-19-05

Dear Parents,

December is approaching! Can you believe it? And what a busy and exciting time it will be.

We are still studying “Things that Come in Groups”. We are about to start using arrays to help in our investigation of multiplication. Arrays give a nice organized visual of what multiplication is. I will be sending home one set of array cards with directions for how to play 2 different array games. Make sure that your child is playing these array games as much as possible until you see that they have become ‘easy’ for your child. We will also begin working with fluency for some of the tables in multiplication. For the next nine or ten school weeks your will have written on Monday in his/her agenda which multiplication table (s) will be tested for fluency on Friday. Your child can practice these in whatever way is most effective. I love this site to practice because you have to get 20 problems correct in 1 minute and this is what is considered fluent. Just make sure your child shows you that he/she got 100 percent correct before leaving the program. If you child gets nervous about beating a clock, you can try comparing it to a video game, this worked for my son. You can also use flash cards and look at patterns in each table.

http://oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/mathmagician/mathsmulti.html

In reading the kids want to do a group book study of Squanto since we are studying Native Americans, so we will begin that in the next few days. While reading, we will practice writing in 1^st person and assuming the character of Squanto while writing his journal. Print the bookmark below for reading strategy reminders for your child.

We are continuing our study of Native Americans. The children will take quizzes on each region of Native Americans that we study. If your child is listening in class, the quizzes are easy A’s. However, if you have any concerns, you may ask your child to periodically bring home their Social Studies folder to go over the content. The children have been interested in seeing how different resources and where the Native Americans lived affected how they lived.

On December the 17^th we will have a Poetry Program and parents are invited. If you cannot attend please make sure someone comes to watch your child. It can be a grandparent, aunt, uncle, or a neighbor. Let me know if you cannot find anyone to attend and I should be able to help. The children will be acting out winter poetry and will need to dress up/bring props to “show” their poem. They will be choosing their poems this week.

As always, thanks for all of your support!

Have a great week!

Tanya Constantine

Site of the Week: http://oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/mathmagician/mathsmulti.html Get faster at a multiplication table!

Reading Strategy Checklist Before Reading I… Ø Think about the cover, title, and what I know about the topic. Ø Skim, looking at and thinking about pictures, photos, graphs and charts. Ø Read headings and captions Ø Read the back cover and/or print on the inside of the jacket. Ø Use the 5 finger method. Ø Ask questions. Ø Make predictions During Reading I… Ø Make mental pictures. Ø Identify confusing parts and reread them. Ø Use pictures, charts, and graphs to understand confusing parts. Ø Identify unfamiliar words and use context clues to figure out what they mean. Ø Stop and retell to see what I remember, reread if I need to. Ø Predict, then adjust or confirm. Ø Raise questions then read on to discover answers. Ø Jot down tough words and page it’s on, then find help. After Reading I… Ø Think about the characters, settings, events or new information. Ø Discuss or write my reactions. Ø Reread parts I enjoyed. Ø Skim to find details Ø Reread to find support for questions. Ø Draw a Venn to compare characters, events, books. Ø Write a review for your class. Ø Write a letter to the author. Ø Write a reader’s theatre (play) script. Ø Do a book report for your class. Ø Make a story map. Ø Write discussion questions. Ø Make a cause/effect chart.

Important Dates:

December 17^th 9:30-10:15 - Holiday Poetry Performance - This is just a short time for us all to be together and enjoy the season. Siblings are welcome. If it is impossible for you to come, feel free to send a relative or friend, I would like every child to have someone special at the performance.

December 18^th – Holiday Party – 12:30-2:30 Parents are also welcome to come to the class party, please let one of our room moms know if you can help with set up, the centers and/or clean up for our party. You can send a note through me if you wish.

Check our class calendar for other dates: http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=2bcvmamhc3752ej4tsltk671sk%40group.calendar.google.com&title=Mrs.%20Constantine

Have a great week,

Tanya Constantine

10-24-07

Dear Parents,

What a great year we are having, I am so proud of the kids, they are really working hard and doing a good job. I was impressed with thier first week of the new reading log and spelling menu I can tell they worked hard. Can you believe the first nine weeks are already over?

Thanks to everyone who will be able to help with our Fall Festival. I know the kids are going to have a great time. I just hope the rain will be over.

Here are some things we have been working on in class:

Reading-The kids worked and worked on thier fluency to publish a great collection of audio books for our 1st grade book buddies. We posted the MP3 files on the network so our buddies can have access to these audio books from any computer in the school. We recorded over 60 books of their adopted reading program and our buddies shared it with all of the other 1st grade teachers for thier kids to use also, our 3rd graders are very proud of the work that they did and how much it will help the first graders. They will be presented a community service award (if approved by Ms. Fenton) at the end of the year for thier efforts.

Continue to make sure your child is "sticking with a book" at home. We're still practicing text to text connections and we will begin text to world connections soon.

Writing-We have been working on collecting ideas for writing in our binders and adding detail to our writing pieces. Sticking to a topic will continue to be a focus. Next week we will begin collecting memories to put into a memory book. We will explore different ways to write about these memories. Please help the kids send in memories as often as possible starting next week. They will be glued into a book so if you do not want to part with original pictures, just print a copy and send that in. No bigger than about a 4x6.

Science-We have been learning about the human body and all of its systems. So far we've learned about the skeletal system and our muscles. Next week the Body Trek will begin for our entire school. We had an orthodontist come in and speak to us and Evan's mom will share her knowledge with us next week.

Math-We are still working on multiplication, the kids have compiled lists of things that come in groups and made multiplication riddles with them that I will compile into class books for each child to solve. Next week we will begin skip counting by 2-12 and look closely at patterns in each table.

Technology-The kids have thier emails up and running! They have emailed thier epals in Italy and the teacher said they are working on responding to us. I've just realized that in order to email the kids, you must have an epal account, the kids really want parents to email them so if possible, please log on to www.epals.com and set up an account so that you can email your child. I have already gotten several emails from them and it has been really fun! I have stressed to them the importance of editing before pressing send, especially to our epals in Italy who barely speak English.

I showed the class this link today: http://kidspeak.podbean.com/ where a class of 5th grade students made some "how to" videos of some "fun stuff" to do on the computer. We plan on making our own help videos similar to these very soon.

Sincerely,

Tanya Constantine

Important Dates:

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=2bcvmamhc3752ej4tsltk671sk%40group.calendar.google.com&title=Mrs.%20Constantine

Sites of the week:

Our tech coach's page: http://www.teacherstone.com/3-5links.htm

Our computer lab home page: http://www.quia.com/pages/labs.html

Practice keyboarding from any computer: http://www.nimblefingers.com/

Just some October fun! http://www.dedge.com/flash/hunt/scavenger.html

Constantine's Class Connections

September 5, 2007

Dear Parents,

Here is what’s happening in our class:

Social Science: We are almost finished with maps and globes, I will ask the kids to practice putting the names of the continents and 4 oceans on a map, they need to be able to do this on their own by next Wednesday. The continents and oceans need to be spelled correctly so there will be no extra spelling words next week. We are beginning our study of plants. It will be really neat seeing what happens to our “control” plant when it doesn’t get pollinated. We will have an end of the unit test that will be written in our agendas, but it is still a long way away. The kids will eventually have a study guide in their science folder. We will also be reading about plants in our text books. It will come home as a homework assignment so that you can see the book. We will be making an edible flower in a few weeks that will have a duel purpose: to see what they remember about labeling the parts of a plant and why each part is important, and to have fun eating a flower. Your child will write a note in his/her planner to bring in an item for this activity. We will also be making model bees to review the body parts of a bee.

Reading: In reading we have learned about where readers read, how to figure out words, strategies to understand, what we can do when we’re finished with a book, and how to log and respond in class. I’m asking the children to stick to a book so help me with this at home by making sure they are bringing the book they are reading in class home, or the book they are reading at home to school. I know I get confused when I have too many books going at once. The kids have just learned how to use the Book Adventure website in class. This is a quick check that will help you see if your child understood the book he/she is reading. I’m asking those who are reading too quickly, or not “thinking” about their stories to re-read and make sure they know what is going on in the story. Here are the details about that program and how our class will benefit from it:

Book Adventure

Book Adventure is a FREE and optional reading motivation program for our class. Children create their own book lists from over 6,000 recommended titles, take multiple choice quizzes on the books they've read offline, (in other words the books that they will use for this are the books they are reading in class and at home.) and earn points and prizes for their literary successes. This book can be their read and log book, book report book, or any other book they’re reading at home or at school. Just log on, after the book is read, and take the short quiz.

Once your child has read a book he/she signs on to www.bookadventure.com and logs in, (their username is the same as their password and is written in the front page of their agendas.) searches for the title he/she read, then takes the quiz. If your child scores low, you may want to have him/her re-read and try the quiz again. If you and your child need ideas for titles, you can search for thousands of titles by grade level and/or areas of interest on this site. We are taking our quizzes for the month of September in school just so they can get the hang of it.

Along with the prizes this site offers your child, we will also participate in the Pizza Hut “Book-It” program this year. No additional work J for us to win free pizzas! I told the children that their “Book-It” goal was to take 2 Book Adventure quizzes a month at home. (They can take more if they want to) You do not have to send in confirmation of this, I can check progress online as long as they sign in with their user code and password. I will attach their username and password (the username will also be the password) to the inside of the first page of their agendas. If you do not have an online computer at home that your child can use, then I believe the public library has computers for public use. If they meet their goal each month I will send home a coupon for a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut.

Math: We have finished our beginning of the year math assessments and a unit called Mathematical Thinking that helped us to review addition, subtraction and landmark numbers to 100. We will soon begin studying multiplication, in many instances, strategies to solve multiplication problems involve repeated addition, so below are ways you can help your child at home if needed. Addition and subtraction will continue to be practiced and assessed throughout the school year. Please check out the math links that I wrote in this section of our web page, they will be very helpful for you to see the kinds of strategies third graders use and how you can help from home: http://constantineclassconnection.wikispaces.com/Info+%26+Tips+for+Curriculum+areas

Math-Addition Strategies

Some things in school these days look a little different than they did when we were in school. I’m sending a sheet home showing the main ways that children come up with on their own to do addition problems. I ask that the children be able to use 2 strategies with ease (being able to use two is comparable to the old way of subtracting one of the addends from the sum to check your answer), and be familiar with the others for the sake of efficiency (You can always get the answer using any strategy, but many times, another strategy gets you there much faster. The best example of this is a subtraction problem, 10,000 -999, if we use the traditional borrowing and carrying it would take longer than adding 1 to 999 to get 1,000, then skip counting by 1,000’s to 10,000 which would make 9,001. Later on in the year I will send similar sheets home explaining strategies children use when subtracting and multiplying. The following are ways you can help your child when he/she is doing a math problem in any of the above areas:

1. Read over the addition strategies sheet. Come up with a different addition problem and practice solving it in each of the ways shown. Simply reading over the sheet once is usually not enough to understand these strategies if you are not familiar with them.

2. Watch your child solve an addition problem, ask your child to explain his/her thinking as the problem is being solved and determine which strategy is being used. Asking your child what he/she is thinking in any subject is so important in developing your child’s metacognitive thinking skills as well as his/her problem solving skills.

3. If a mistake has been made, ask your child to go over with you how the problem was solved, usually they can catch their own errors.

Help your child with organization: In the # 1 example, partial sums, there are two ways of showing this thinking. The first way connects the numbers with lines. This is fine for small numbers, however, as the numbers get bigger, the second illustration is a more organized way of showing the problem, children will start making mistakes when they try to draw lines or “string” larger numbers. Other forms of organization for math problems are numbering the problems, circling the answers, writing on the lines, skip lines between problems.

4. Ask your child to solve the problem in another way and go through the above steps. Stress that if a different answer is obtained, the child needs to go back and see where the mistake was made. Some children think that if they write a problem in 2 different ways, like example number 1 (attaching with strings and writing the problem in columns) then they are using 2 different strategies when in reality these two illustrations are using partial sums. It is important that your child be able to use 2 different strategies, if not then a mistake will usually not be “caught”.

I also believe that there is nothing wrong with the traditional algorithm UNLESS the child has no idea what the borrowing and carrying means. If your child struggles with math, the traditional algorithm will not help your child’s understanding of what addition is. If your child seems to be confused, I suggest working with partial sums. It’s in columns, the only difference with the traditional is that sums of columns are written on different rows keeping place value in tact. And the columns are added from left to right which is what kids do and understand naturally.

Writing-During writing workshop, the kids have been putting together their Writer’s Binder. It has an ideas section, a rough draft section, and a section for craft lessons. They already have lots in the ideas section and have begun writing drafts. We are focusing on narrowing what we write about and sticking to a topic.

Have a great rest of the week.

Sincerely,

Tanya Constantine

Important Dates:

http://www.google.com/calendar/embed?src=2bcvmamhc3752ej4tsltk671sk%40group.calendar.google.com&title=Mrs.%20Constantine

Sites of the week:

1. United Streaming: www.unitedstreaming.com - A great site to learn more about just about anything. You can go to our “content folder” for things that I have saved specifically for my third graders. Or, your child can search other topics. Just be careful that they stay with grade level videos if they search on their own. If you type in Magic School Bus in the search area, your child can watch ANY Magic School Bus video that he/she wants to.

Username: tanyaconstantine Password: united

2. Book Adventure: www.bookadventure.com – Explained above