We have both happy and sad news! Joshua Parvin and his family have moved to the Middle East on a mission trip, we will miss having him in our class. He still has his epal email address, so we're hoping he will keep in touch with us! And on a happier note for us, we have a new student. Welcome Nishanth Yuvaraj and his family to our class!
Can you believe the first 9 weeks of school are already behind us, the cool air has set in, and we have our site set on the upcoming holidays? The kids have done a great job with all of the transitions that the new 9 weeks bring...a new reading log, new spelling homework, and new committee jobs. They didn't miss a beat. Here are a few more things that are going on in our classroom;
Reading We have reviewed making connections and mental images and discussed how important these strategies are to making meaning. Now we are studying inferring. We are looking at how to infer the meaning of a word by using context clues and we are exploring how to infer characteristics of the main characters in our books. Have the kids explain and model these strategies to you when they are reading at home. We just finished reading Poppy by Avi in our "read aloud". I think the kids really enjoyed this book and a few are wanting to check out the sequel Poppy and Rye. Ask them to tell you all about the brave mouse Poppy and how she saved her family, sassy Erethizon, and the selfish owl, Mr. Ocax.
Math In math we are continuing to investigate things that come in groups. We have explored multiplication in many different ways and will continue to do so. Starting next week, we will begin to work on fluency with the multiplication tables. Fluency means that a child can give the answer to a multiplication sentence in 3 seconds or less. We will start with x2 and x4. The quiz will be next Friday. Here are some ideas for helping your child build speed:
1. Good old-fashioned flash cards (we will be making these in class and for homework with index cards and the children can bring them home to study). 2. Multiplication games (any that we’ve played so far), an easy one is multiplication war with cards, or if you want to practice a certain table, have your child draw a card from the deck, and multiply it by whichever table he/she is working on. 3. You can also print extra work sheets from the link below (or you can just make copies of the sheets I send home each week for homework). Our goal is to eventually be able to solve each problem in a couple of seconds. 4. Have your child count by the multiples of a given table, for example, if we are working on fluency with 4’s, ask your child to count by 4’s (12 times) until he/she can do it with ease. We will start out with 2’s and 4’s (every other 2 is a 4) Talk about these connections with your child and share any connections you have with the tables.
Writing One of the ways we learn about writing is in writing workshop. In our workshop we have learned how to keep our binder neat and organized, we have added lots of things to our "ideas" section: we drew a map of our favorite place, marking many places on it that have memories, we've made lists and lists of things we can write about, like a list of things we are experts at, a list of places we have visited, a list of "bad" ideas, a list of things we like, etc. And we have been having a great time studying author's craft and using it in our memories book. We now know that authors use things like ellipsis, commas, descriptive adjectives, sensory words, and lots of detail to make their stories more interesting.
Social Studies What fun we have had learning about the Native Americans and how they used what was around them to survive. Ask your child to tell you about the Northwest or Plains natives, the natural resources they used, the houses they built, and how they "got around" so long ago. Next week we will begin learning about the Southwest region and we will end our study in our neck of the woods, the Eastern Woodlands. Next Friday we will have a Native American swap with the entire 3rd grade. It will be a whole day of enjoying Native American crafts and cooking. Thanks to Tina Lindsey and the moms who will be coming in that day to help us with the activities!
Technology is integrated into everything we do. I'm so lucky this year to have so many parents who have been able to help me out! The kids will begin making their own web pages next week. We're working on tightening up our math strategies so that we can begin producing math casts. Our book buddies are choosing favorite picture books so that we can practice them and make audio files with our ipods on the network so that they will have access to them at all times. (We will be working on fluency as we do this, but shhhhhh, they will just think they're having fun!) We are also going to produce a movie about our school to put on our web site for new students and epals.
Super Sites: (these sites are always on our favorite links page)
http://oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/mathmagician/mathsmulti.html This is great to practice a multiplication table, use with 2's and 4's next week!
http://www.quia.com/pages/labs.html Our computer lab home page
http://its.leesummit.k12.mo.us/keyboarding.htm#third_grade Sites we've been using with Mrs. Lindsey to practice keyboarding
http://www.dumpr.net/ Some fun we had with pictures
http://www.brandextract.com/catbowling/ October fun
http://www.mrnussbaum.com/nativeamericans.htm Native Americans
http://www.ahsd25.k12.il.us/curriculum/nativeamericans/ Native Americans
http://www.aplusmath.com/Worksheets/Multiplication.html Print out sheets to practice multiplication
Have a happy last few weeks of October!
Tanya Constantine
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