03/18/18 Room 303 News

Weekly Updates and Reminders:

• Unfortunately it seems as though winter is still here...please remember to send snow pants, hats, gloves and boots with your child each day.
• THURSDAY, MARCH 29th is our final day of school before Spring Break.  There is no school on Friday, Good Friday, March 30th.  School will resume on Monday, April 9th.
• MARCH IS READING MONTH!  Just like all year, students should be reading for at least 30 minutes every single night.  They should be logging their minutes in their "March is Reading Month" reading log.  These logs are due every Monday so we can turn our class total into Mrs. Banks.  If the whole school reaches 150,000 minutes, Mr. Bender will become a kid for the day! So far, I think as a school we are at about 75,000 minutes.  Keep Reading! :)
  
  

• Thank you to all the families that sent in a snack for our Friendship Mixture to make our learning oh so fun and good too! The students really enjoyed it!  
  

Math:
This past week students have been working on trade first subtraction also known as subtraction with borrowing or regrouping.  I will begin meeting with small groups to secure this very important mathematical skill this coming week.  Students also LOVED playing Baseball Multiplication which is a game to build fact fluency.  If your child has been talking about this game, please log on to their ConnectEd account (the username and password is taped to the inside of their planner) to read the complete rules and play at home too!  It really is a lot of fun learning!


Social Studies:
The Metro Parks are back!  On Monday, our 3rd grade students will watch an hour presentation on the French Voyageurs and the the Fur Trade.  
From the Metro Parks website:  
Join a French Voyageur to learn about the trade and interactions between the French and the Native American here in Michigan. Through artifacts and replicas, students will experience life at a 1700s era trading post. Michigan history, geography and economics come alive in one program.


Science:
Students completed our Motion and Matter Assessment.  It was a great unit of learning and we really weren't ready to finalize our learning of this unit.  However, our new science kits will be arriving this week!  Our next unit of study is called, Structures of Life!    

Word Study and Grammar:

Reading: 

Three more students earned all 9 BADGES for the "Room 303 Reading Challenge!"  Congrats to Alana, Abby, and Archita!  Also, congrats to Emma for completing Reading Challenge #2!  So proud of all the hard work these students are doing in reading. 

For reading this week, we continue to work in our Research Clubs.  The students are learning how to have conversations about what they are learning, how to organize the information, and how to ask questions and form their own thoughts and ideas.  They are really enjoying learning about the animals in their Research Clubs and are having some great conversations.

Writing:
This week we are working on our Persuasive Writing letters.   The students have selected topics about something they would like to change either at home, in the classroom, in the school, in the community, or in the world.  They are then learning how to write a strong persuasive letter including an introduction, reasons, a counter-argument, and a conclusion.  I've been really impressed with the writing I have seen so far!