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:
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
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:
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
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