Happy Holidays

I've really enjoyed spending December with your children! They did a wonderful job on their poetry presentations and were so excited about the Holiday party! Thank you parents for all of your support and help in making this year such a great one!

Enjoy every minute with your family and friends. I hope everyone has a peaceful and relaxing holiday and a happy New Year!

3rd Grade Service Project

Dear Parents,
We want to help Taylor Hendrix, a young girl who has been a cancer patient for three years at Children's Hospital, fill Christmas stockings. For the past three years, Taylor has filled and given stockings to all of the children and siblings on the cancer floor at Children's Hospital. She wants to do this for the children because she knows that cancer doesn't stop for the holidays. With our donations last year she delivered over 80 stockings to the children on Christmas Eve. We want to help Taylor fill these stockings again. Please donate any item from the attached list that you can, and our classes will help make the stockings. Thanks for making Christmas brighter for these children! You can visit Taylor’s CaringBridge site at http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/taylorhendrix.

Thank you,
Third Grade Teachers


Third Grade Service Project
Please help us fill stockings to give to children who are cancer patients at Children’s Hospital. These stockings will be delivered to all of the children on the cancer floor on Christmas Eve from infants to teenagers. Items to donate include:
· Play-dough
· Bubbles
· Puzzles
· Books
· Stuffed animals
· Cars
· Balls
· Dolls
· Crayons
· Games
· Legos
· Trains
· Art sets

You're Invited!

Our class will be memorizing and performing holiday poetry for you on Wednesday, December the 16th from 8:30 to about 9:15. This will be a very informal time just to be together and celebrate the season! 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 and bringing a copy home when we get back from Thanksgiving break.

October News

Vote on our new poll to the right! ------------->
Check out how others voted on past polls.

This Friday we have lots of helpers coming in to help us celebrate the continents that we studied. They will be bringing in food from all over the world, thanks to Mrs. Southworth for suggesting and organizing this and to all of the parents who will be sending in yummy food for us to sample at the end of the week. We are still collecting dry rice and beans if you would like to send some in.

What a busy month we have had. I'm very proud of what our kids are doing in class, they are really working hard and doing such a good job! In writing we are working on a monster exchange. We drew a monster and composed a writing piece describing exactly how to draw it. Then we sent our writing to our friend in Mrs. Walker's class but hid our monster picture to see if they could follow our written directions. We found out it is much harder than it sounds but we did an excellent job!

We started a new reading log and spelling menu this week. They are both in our BEE books and you can print them from the "homework helper" section of our web page.

We have been studying the muscular system and skeletal system of the the human body in science. The kids are having fun learning the names of the bones this week and using an online program to "put Annie back together"!

We are still focused on the concept of multiplication. More information on how you can help your child at home will be coming soon if you are interested. Don't forget that when the workbook sheets come home, they always have a page number in the top right corner for the hardback "parent helper" book that the kids keep in their back packs. This is a wonderful resource for you!

We have finished our read aloud The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo. This was my first time to read this book. I was very impressed with how the kids stayed focused and were with me through the whole adventure. We really enjoyed reading it! Now we are on to one of my favorites, Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. The last few weeks we have been learning how good readers make mental images to help them understand the story. We have just started studying inferring as related to the characters in a book.

Our Fun Run has officially been kicked off! It will be a very important fund raiser for us this year!! Look for information to come home in back packs today and thank you for all of your support!

The kids can wear pajamas this Friday, no costumes please. They can also bring a small pillow that fits in the back pack.

Important Dates

Have a great week!!

News

Thanks to everyone who could get away for Open House, we had a great turn out and the kids enjoyed making you proud with their work!

Wow, on Friday I checked our writeboard and there were only a few posts, today, lots! Can't wait to share with the kids tomorrow!

Just a little bit about what is going on in class:

Reading-We are practicing making mental images as we read in order to help us understand what we're reading. Talk to your kids about your mental images, even if you are not great at making them! Continue to make sure your child is "sticking with a book" and reading on his/her just right level.

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.

Math-We have just begun our study of the concept of multiplication. The kids have compiled lists of things that come in groups and made multiplication riddles with them. this week we will begin working on our skip counting charts from 2-12 and study the patterns that we see in multiplication.

Content-We are finishing up our study of plants and beginning our study of maps and globes. Our end of the unit plant test will be this Friday, a study guide will come home tomorrow. Thanks to everyone who commented on our write board. If you have not read all of our responses the password is constantine, go check it out! And it's not too late to add to our board if you haven't yet!

Technology-We have been very busy in technology! The kids are using Spelling City to practice their spelling words, they have started their very own web pages, saved files, embeded html code, created slide shows, used online editing software to work with photos, built their "wild selves", and yes, doing the old fasioned keyboarding practice on Dance Mat Typing, and that's just the beginning! Blogging and E-Pals are coming up soon. If you have not seen all of this, have your child show you and remember to keep talking about online safety!

We have a new poll on the top right corner of this blog, go vote!! Explore the other links on the side of the blog, as well. There is a link to our "thank you" blog in order to show appreciation to the volunteers that work so hard helping us out through the year. Also see our class book shelf, sign up to "follow" this blog or get RSS feeds, etc.

*If you want your child's picture remade please send me an email. The date is September 29th.

* If you are purchasing pictures please send money in by this Friday.

*Scholastic book orders should be coming in soon!

*Check our calendar for other important dates.

Site of the month:

United Streaming(username-tanyaconstantine, password-united): http://www.unitedstreaming.com/ - A great site to learn more about just about anything that your child wants to study. 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.

Parent Night 2009

Thank you so much to everyone who was able to attend parent night, if you could not get away, the Parent Night notes are posted on the home page of our website. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks also to Juliette Southworth and Mandy Dakis for volunteering to be our room moms! We are so fortunate to have moms that have the time and desire to do this for our class!

First of all, let me apologize for this long newsletter. My first one is aways VERY long because I think of what I left out at Parent Night!
The two other things I ran out of time to address regarding the survey, were homework and bullying. The majority were happy with homework last year. 2 were not big believers in the practice or at least, thought it should be relevant. My personal belief is that homework should be practicing what we are learning in class. It should not take more than 30-40 minutes for your child. (If it is taking "way" longer, please come talk to me.) I believe the reading is critical, there is a lot of research out there that confirms that the more children read, the more successful they are. Our math homework is always directly related to what we are doing in class. And spelling, lends itself to many other relevant skills that are on our course of study. I still have not found the perfect spelling recipe that is effective for all children all the time. I did forget to mention that the kids should only be doing 15 words for homework. If you want to see how we choose our words, you can go to our Parent Night handout on our home page and scroll to the chart.
Unfortunately consequences for bullying go above my head, and I will leave it at that. I will do whatever I have to do in my classroom to make sure none of our kids have to deal with that, but I really think we have a great class and our kids will be fine. :) I hope I restated adequately and addressed the concerns that were brought up in the survey, the site is down right now so I was unable to go back and re-read. My best piece of advice is that we are in this together and effective communication between us, the adults, is critical. Remember, 8-9 year olds, as wonderful as they are, are not always effective communicators, so, if you will believe only half of what your child says to you about me, I will do the same for you! :)


Here are just a few of the things that are already going on in our classroom:

Spelling: You will notice on some of the spelling tests there are two grades. Periodically I will give the kids a dictation sentence and grade them on conventions of writing, spelling, periods, etc. This also helps them to listen carefully and remember the sentence. I say the sentence twice so I tell them to remember as much as they can and wait for me to repeat it to get the rest.

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.
How would you like to know that your child understood a book without having to read it yourself? 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, and how you can use it to check your child’s comprehension:
Book Adventure
Book Adventure is a FREE reading motivation program for our class. Children 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, type in the name of the book, and take the short quiz. It should be a just right book, not too hard or too easy.
Once your child has read a book he/she signs on to http://www.bookadventure.com/ and logs in, (their username is the same as their password and is written in their BEE books.) clicks on quiz finder, 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 took our quizzes for the first month of school in our classroom.
Our goal is to take 2 Book Adventure quizzes a month at home. (They can take more if they want to) They can do this instead of reading twice a month, just let them log that they took a quiz on BA. I can check progress online as long as they sign in with their user code and password which can be found behind the “Important Tab” in their BEE book.
Math: We are almost finished with our beginning of the year math assessments and will soon begin our newly adopted TERC Investigations. We are reviewing addition and subtraction and it will continue to be practiced and assessed throughout the school year.
Math-Addition Strategies
Some things in school these days look a little different than they did when we were in school. Click here and scroll down to math to see 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. You can also look at the links 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 and does not have a strong concept of number. 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. If you are new to our system, or just want to know more about how we teach math, please visit these links:
http://tconstantine.wiki.hoover.k12.al.us/Info+%26+Tips+for+Curriculum+areas
http://tconstantine.wiki.hoover.k12.al.us/Math+Casts
Science-Our Wisonsin Fast Plants are on their 7th day of growth. We are carefully observing each stage of our plant's life. We started with the parts of a seed and will follow our plant through pollination (real bees will pollinate our flowers!) and seed pods where the cycle starts over. The kids are already loving this unit!

Writing Next week we will begin setting up our writing binder, adding to our “ideas we can write about section”, and discussing what good writers do. Our first parent letter comes home today. We have discussed how to write a friendly letter and what we are shooting for (it may take a while for us to get there) is a 3 paragraph letter. The 1st paragraph will be a response to your letter, the second paragraph should be a “meaty” one with lots of details about ONE topic, and the last paragraph is a closing. Try to format yours in the same way, so that the children will have a good model to go by each week. When theirs comes home, have conversations with them about what you liked about their letter and things they can do to improve (indent, check for spelling and punctuation errors, write neater, write straight down the red line, etc.) We will be discussing all of these things in class, it will just help if they hear it coming from you too! Soon I will take a writing grade on their letter and you will get a scoring rubric with signed papers. We will be reading Dear Mr. Blueberry next week and discussing how the letters back and forth should flow like a good conversation and hopefully be a memorable keepsake.

Grades - All quizzes and tests are graded using a point scale. On many papers, you will see a point value or a raw score (ex.: 43/46) and then a grade (93/ A). The point value on tests is determined by the number of points given for each item on the test. For example the DOL sentence{she gave chris some candy} might be worth 6 (raw score) points, 3 points to put the 3 editing marks in the right place, and 3 points for writing the sentence with the corrections appropriately on the line below. So, if there were 6 sentences worth 6 points, the entire test would be worth 36 points. If your child missed 3 points, he/she would have a raw score of 33/36 and a grade of 92/A. Signed papers will begin coming home the 27th of August. I take some grades at school that I do not send home, but most of these grades are participation grades and I’ll let you know about them only if they are below good or excellent. So do not worry about an occasional low grade that comes home, remember I will have many grades in my grade book that will bring it up.

The kids are enjoying our website. Please make sure it’s saved to favorites at home for easy access. They will have the opportunity to use it a lot this year!

It was great to see everyone at Parent Night, I'm looking forward to an awesome year working together with you and your children!

Great First Week!

What a great first week, your kids did a wonderful job getting back into the swing of the school routine. They were following directions and helping others when they did not understand. I was really proud of them.
This first week we had a wonderful time getting to know the friends we will be spending the next 10 months with. We interviewed a classmate, played "get to know you" games, and even went on a scavenger hunt in our classroom to get familiar with where to find things we need. We talked a lot about classroom procedures and rules and how in order to have a productive year we all need to work together and follow the rules and know the procedures. If you would also like to review this with your child, you can click on the bee on our home page.
The first few weeks in all subject areas will be spent reviewing concepts from the end of last year. I will also be assessing your children so that we can chart progress. We will continue building community by getting to know each other, our classroom and our school. Have a great weekend and I know the kids are worn out from our first 3 days so give them some extra hugs and let them sleep in!

Meet the Teacher

Dear Parents,

I enjoyed meeting you and your children today at Meet the Teacher. I am excited about the group of children that we have and the upcoming school year!
A big thank you to everyone who has already signed up to help us in so many ways this year! If you did not get a chance to sign up but would like to volunteer to help out, the sign up document will be available again on Parent Night.
Please complete this short survey about your child's last year experience in school, I will do another one at the end of the year, these surveys help me know what you feel is important for your child. Your responses are anonymous.
Mark your calendars for August 27th @ 5:30 p.m. for our "Parent Night" meeting.
Email is usually the most efficient way to contact me. Please do not hesitate to let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

tconstantine@hoover.k12.al.us

Welcome to 3rd Grade!

Dear Parents,

I hope this post finds you enjoying every minute of your summer and getting excited about the upcoming school year. I want to take this opportunity to welcome you and your child to the third grade at South Shades Crest Elementary. Check out our class calendar for important upcoming meetings and events and also take some time to get familiar with our class web site, we will be using it lots this year!

I'm looking forward to meeting you and the children on "Meet the Teacher" day!

Last Two Days

• Remember if your child will not be here the last days of school, please send a self addressed, stamped envelope so that I can mail grades.
• Wednesday-Game Day-The children can bring games to play. Only board games. Dismissal is at 1.
• Children may bring hand held electronics. They can bring them at their own risk! Games need to be rated G. Dismissal will be at 11 and no lunch will be served this day.

Keep your Mind Busy over the Summer!

Dear Parents,

I just added a page to our web site for summer activities. One of the items is a reading log. If the kids read 4 JUST RIGHT BOOKS, log them on the log I provided, and bring them to me at the beginning of next year, I promised them a treat!

Hope this helps keep the kids mentally active over the summer!

http://tconstantine.wiki.hoover.k12.al.us/Summer+Activities

5-6-09

END OF THE YEAR EVENTS 

 Parents, 

The countdown has begun- only 12 days of school left!  This has been a wonderful year for our class.  I’ve seen lots of growth which means all of our hard work has paid off.  This class has a special place in my heart and I will miss them as they move forward to continue their journey. 

Please mark your calendar with these important dates. 

UPCOMING EVENTS 

·      Book Fair is going on this week, send 5 dollars or so if you want your child to buy a book or two.   

 ·      Friday May 8^th- all library books must be turned in 

·      Monday May 18^th- School wide field day.  Please send a water bottle and sunscreen. 

·      Tuesday May 19^th- our class party 

·      Wednesday May 20^th- dismissal at 1:00.  Lunch will be served. 

·      Thursday May 21^st- last day for kids- dismissal at 11:00.  Lunch will not be served.  If you do not plan on sending your child to school on this day, please send in a self addressed stamped envelope for a report card. 

RCJ Test

Ask your children what tests they have been doing in chemistry and about the reactions the powders had with each liquid. Here are some pictures of the red cabbage juice test we did today. One powder turned a bright purple, the other a bright green. The red cabbage juice did not have a big color change when it was mixed with the other 3 powders. See if your child remembers why!!

3rd Grade Chemistry Musical

Dear Parents,
The 3rd grade will be presenting a musical as a culmination of our chemistry unit. The musical will be on April 29th and 30th. There will be two performances, one on the 29th for K, 1st and 2nd grades and another on the 30th for 4th and 5th grade and parents (If you need to come on the 29th, that’s fine too). Both performances will be at 1:45. Your child will need to wear an orange t-shirt (anything that is mostly solid orange will be fine!) for both performances.

We will be performing on the stage in the lunchroom.

Thanks for your help!
Ms. Constantine

4-8-09

Dear Parents,

Thanks so much to everyone who participated in our survey, I want to give anyone who has not been able to take it yet a few more days. Then I will compile and share the results with you. Thanks again for taking the time to do this, I take it very seriously and your suggestions are most helpful. Click here to take the survey if you have not had the chance.

State testing is over!! The kids did a great job. You can expect to get results around the beginning of next year. Remember that a score of 50 on the tests is average, not failing. Thanks so much to everyone who sent goodies in for us. All of the treats helped with the long mornings.

Our new date for the DeSoto field trip is April 22nd. If you were a chaperone for the original date, please let us know if you will still be able to attend.

If you have not had a chance to sign up for Spring Fling, please do. You can email Tina Lindsey to let her know when you can volunteer.

Spring Fling T-Shirts and Tickets can be purchased through www.myschoolfees.com. Deadline for ordering shirts online is April 10^th. Deadline for ordering tickets online is April 16^th. If any parent needs to know their child’s student number please call the front office.

Reading In reading we are studying how to synthesize information we read in a book. Basically, it is using all of our comprehension strategies we have learned this year in order to make sense of the book and discover the author's intent. For read aloud, we are reading a book called Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt. We are wondering what Winnie Foster will do next after meeting the Tucks. A family that has lived 87 years, but hasn't aged at all.

Math We have been learning about fractions and decimals. We will continue to work on fluency with multiplication facts.

Writing We are starting a project which will have to be a surprise for now.

Science    We are investigating chemicals and their reactions, I think this is their favorite unit so far. We started out with a mystery powder, but with the 3 tests we have already done on the powders, the kids are close to figuring out what it is. We will have a chemistry musical program at the end of this month. Check our calendar for dates and times. It will be during the school day, so if you cannot attend because of work, we will be streaming live for you and any out of town friends or relatives! It will also be recorded if you have connection problems for the live event.

Technology   We will search for favorite jokes on the internet and then record a vocaroo to put on on our web site! Fun!

Have a great weekend!

News!