10/29/2017 Room 303 News

Weekly Updates and Reminders:

• Daily folders and red reading folders are to go to and from school each day.  Reading logs are to be filled out at home to log their 20 minutes of nightly reading.
• Assignment Notebooks (planners) are to be signed or initialed every evening by a parent.  Thank you for taking the time to check your child's planner.
• Math homework is checked in class together each day.  This time is spent reteaching (if necessary) and more importantly, a time for students to take ownership of their learning by asking questions if they have an incorrect answer on their homework.
• Please always email BOTH teachers if you have any questions or concerns.
• Happy Halloween!  Tuesday, October 31st will be a half day of school.  The outdoor Halloween Parade will be from 10:45-11:00am and our classroom party will be from 11:00-11:45am.  Dismissal will be at 12:04 (for apple pickup and Prime Time) and 12:09pm (for bus riders).  Students are to bring their costume to school with them and we will be getting dressed around 10:15am. 

Math:

We are in full swing with our math workshop!  The students really enjoy this routine and making independent choices.  After our math lesson and independent work, students have an opportunity to play a math game to reinforce learning, a challenge problem to solve, or use versa-tiles, a self checking “ mathematical game”.  While students are working on their independent choices, this provides time for me to work with students one on one or in a small group. During this time, the students are really staying on task and enjoying learning!  

Social Studies:

This week in Social Studies, we had a guest reader that just so happened to read, “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss which was part of my lesson for this week.  "The Lorax" is a fable which has become an environmentalist classic and a wonderful introduction to environmental awareness.  

The story of “The Lorax” teaches children the consequences when humans modify our environment by using excess natural resources.  Our learning continued with a discussion about how humans modify and adapt to our environment and the pros and cons associated with those choices.

  Science:

This week we went outside to collect some natural materials. It was a beautiful fall day!  Students ran all around the playground area searching for the perfect materials to test.   Our focus question was, “What happens outdoors when rain falls on natural materials?”  Students then conducted a group experiment and dropped water on the objects they found and recorded their observations into a T-Chart labeled, “absorb” or “repel”.  I used this opportunity to discuss the use of models (using a dropper to simulate rain) to learn about the natural world. We also discussed the limitations of using models such as the amount of rain and the duration of falling rain.

This Week in Word Study and Grammar:

 Writing: 

This past week we began digging deeper into Personal Narrative writing.  The students finished publishing their first writing piece and are now taking everything they learned to publish a second piece.  I have been impressed with how they are applying many of the strategies we learned earlier in the school year. 

Reading: 

We began a new unit in reading this past week where we will be learning all about getting to know the characters as friends.  We have started the read aloud Because of Winn Dixie.  I will be using this text to model many of the minilessons and strategies we are learning in this Character Study unit.  We will also be reading other read alouds and thinking carefully about how the characters think and act adds to our understanding of the story.  We will also be starting Book Clubs, Comprehension Focus groups, and Guided Reading this week.  Students continue to fill out their reading log every time they read to look for patterns and see how they can continue to grow as a reader.

10/20/2017 Room 303 News

Weekly Updates and Reminders:

• Daily folders and red reading folders are to go to and from school each day.  Reading logs are to be filled out at home to log their 20 minutes of nightly reading.
• Assignment Notebooks (planners) are to be signed or initialed every evening by a parent.  Thank you for taking the time to check your child's planner.
• Math homework is checked in class together each day.  This time is spent reteaching (if necessary) and more importantly, a time for students to take ownership of their learning by asking questions if they have an incorrect answer on their homework.
• Please always email BOTH teachers if you have any questions or concerns.
• We have started WARM fuzzies in 3rd grade!  Warm fuzzies are a way for us to celebrate our classroom family by acknowledging leadership skills, positive behaviors, and working together collaboratively.  Students have an opportunity on Fridays to shop at our classroom store using their fuzzies.   
  
  
  
  

Math:

This week students were introduced to multi step number stories.  As part of their learning, I incorporated a fun Halloween art project and students wrote Halloween number stories that included multi step problem solving using two different operations.

 Also, with regard to the weekly fluency quizzes, all students will move onto multiplication in November.  So if your child is currently on addition and subtraction, please begin practicing multiplication as well.  

Social Studies:

 This week students were taken through a CD Rom presentation about Michigan’s natural and human features such as cherry trees, the Mackinac Bridge, the Great Lakes, Sleeping Bear Dunes, and the Soo Locks to name just a few.  Then student chose one  natural or human feature to write about.  Their paragraph had to restate the question, state whether it was a human or natural features as well as its importance to Michigan.  

Science:

Science groups conducted a hands-on experiment.  Their focus question  to guide their experiment was, “ How much water can a dry sponge soak up?”  This experiment required students to accurately find the mass of a dry sponge and the mass of a wet sponge using gram pieces, and a pan balance.  Then they had to subtract the mass of the dry sponge from the wet sponge.  Students are doing so well working cooperatively to conduct their experiments.    

This Week in Word Study and Grammar:

 Writing: 

This week the students worked to publish their first small moment story.  We will be taking a close look at our writing and using the rubric to see what areas we still need to work on.  We will then launch into another two weeks where we will go deeper with personal narrative before we begin informational writing.  We also did a fun Halloween writing activity this week applying some of the different grammar skills we have learned.  The students had to write 8 sentences/clues about themselves and then underline all of the nouns, verbs, adverbs, pronouns and adjectives.  Then we took fun and scary pictures for them to place under the ghost to reveal the student behind the clues.  

Reading: 

This week we talked about the many different ways that readers "climb the hurdle of hard words." The students applied these strategies during their independent reading time and we have been talking about the importance of "stopping and thinking" when something doesn't make sense instead of just reading on. We will continue to apply these strategies both in whole group and small group instruction.  Next week we will begin a new unit on Character Studies. 

10/15/2017 Room 303 News

Weekly Updates and Reminders:

• Daily folders and red reading folders are to go to and from school each day.  Reading logs are to be filled out at home to log their 20 minutes of nightly reading.
• Assignment Notebooks (planners) are to be signed or initialed every evening by a parent.  Thank you for taking the time to check your child's planner.
• Math homework is checked in class together each day.  This time is spent reteaching (if necessary) and more importantly, a time for students to take ownership of their learning by asking questions if they have an incorrect answer on their homework.
• Please always email BOTH teachers if you have any questions or concerns.
• Happy Birthday to our October birthdays!  Mrs. Dunphey (6), Emma Rioux (17), Katelynn Chester (18), and Michael Hendrix (30).
  
  

Math:
 More details to come....stay tuned! :)

Social Studies:
 More details to come....stay tuned! :)

This Week in Word Study and Grammar:

 Writing: 

We have continued to work on our personal narrative stories.  This next week we will begin publishing our first writing piece.  We will be working on making revisions and edits to make our writing our very best!  We will also talk about illustrations and how that adds to our story.  Students will be working on these illustrations as part of the publishing process.  They are writing some really great stories and I'm excited about their progress.

Reading: 

We have been busy in reading.  The students began some daily reading tasks that we worked through as a class as well as in guided reading groups.  These tasks focused on making predictions, character traits, vocabulary, author's message, summarizing, and a variety of thinking routines.  We used some of the stories that we have read aloud as a class to model many of these strategies and then the students tried it out with their own text.  We continue to work on our reading stamina and using our logs to look for patterns in our reading.

10/6/2017 Room 303 News

Weekly Updates and Reminders:

• Daily folders and red reading folders are to go to and from school each day.  Reading logs are to be filled out at home to log their 20 minutes of nightly reading.
• Assignment Notebooks (planners) are to be signed or initialed every evening by a parent.  Thank you for taking the time to check your child's planner.
• Math homework is checked in class together each day.  This time is spent reteaching (if necessary) and more importantly, a time for students to take ownership of their learning by asking questions if they have an incorrect answer on their homework.
• Please always email BOTH teachers if you have any questions or concerns.
• What a success our PTA Funky Fall Fun Run was! I believe Mr. Bender mentioned that our school surpassed last year's fundraising effort!  THANK YOU TO ALL THE PARENTS!  The rain stopped by the afternoon and students had a wonderful time with the entire Wixom Family!  Thank you PTA for such a fun and memorable day as well as your support for our kids!  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

Math:

This week we finished Unit 1: Math Tools, Time and Multiplication.  Students will be taking the unit assessment on Monday.  I am pleased to say that we also began our Math Workshop, which begins with checking homework, our daily lesson, independent work, independent choice, as well as small group work with me. 

Social Studies:
 In Social Studies we have discussed the importance of cardinal directions as it relates to exact location.  Students enjoyed working on this concept as they navigated directions on a fun Halloween activity/page.  For example, what is Northeast from the pumpkin patch? What is located just North of the Haunted House?

Writing: 

This week the students have been writing up a storm.  We worked on our Flash Drafts- this is where the students write as much as they can about their topic.  We are then using the many strategies that we have learned thus far to polish and make our writing better.  The students will be taking this Flash Draft to the publishing stage and this will be their final draft for our personal narrative writing unit.  Their writing will be scored based on the rubric below so we are working through each piece as we make our writing our very best!

Reading: 

The students have been working hard to become great readers!  We continue to learn important strategies about how we can make sure we are understanding what we read.  We have also been learning about retelling the important parts of a story to help us with comprehension.  This week, we read the book The Can Man and applied the many different strategies we have learned so far- making predictions, giving ourselves a comprehension check, envisioning while we read, and retelling the important parts.  Ask your child about this great story.  We also finished our read aloud Stone Fox.  It had a surprising and sad ending but we have been talking about how books that make us really "feel" are often the best ones!