Room 303 News: 11/21/2018

1. Weekly Updates and Reminders: 

• Reminder:  There is NO SCHOOL tomorrow or Friday for Thanksgiving Break.  Have a Happy Thanksgiving!
• Daily folders (black) and gray 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.  This is a great way to start a conversation about learning if you review it with your child each evening.
• Please always email BOTH teachers if you have any questions or concerns.  
• We do not have any November birthdays in Room 303. 
• We were so sad to say farewell to Shonacie.  We had a little goodbye celebration for her, complete with cake and a movie.  She will be missed in Room 303 but she promised to keep in touch!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

SNOW FUN!

When our work is done, it's time for an extra recess!  Thursday are long afternoons and it's always nice to stay focused earlier on so that we can enjoy the great outdoors together in the late afternoon!  The students really enjoyed playing in the little bit of snow we received last week!  Look at those rosy cheeks!  

Math:
We have been learning different strategies to subtract which has really expanded our thinking as it relates to number sense/concepts.  

During Math Workshop, after students have completed their independent work, they have several math choices to practice math skills.  The students love this independent choice!  They work alone or with a partner.  One new choice is, GINGERBREAD MATH!  This is a fun game to practice our multiplication facts.  

Social Studies:
 We have just completed our learning about Michigan's Government.  I will be sending home the student's scores next week.  Our next unit will focus on Michigan's Geography.  
"In this unit students use a geographic lens to explore the State of Michigan. The unit focuses around the five major themes of geography: movement, region, human/environment interaction, location and place.  While studying the theme of location, students use cardinal directions and identify various ways to describe the relative location of Michigan. When studying the theme of place, students use maps and instructional technology to identify significant human and physical characteristics of Michigan. Through literature, maps, informational text and other resources, students also explore the concept of human/environment interaction. They learn about Michigan’s natural resources and how people have modified and adapted to Michigan’s environment.  As students study the theme of movement, an emphasis is placed on the Great Lakes. Using the St. Lawrence Seaway, students explore how people, goods, jobs and ideas move into and out of Michigan. Students also apply the concept of region to their study of Michigan.  "  -WLCSD

Science:
Our next science unit will be Motion & Matter.  We should be receiving our new kits on December 3rd.  Below is a summary of the unit's focus:

"Motion and Matter provides grade 3 students with experiences around physical sciences core ideas dealing with forces and interactions, matter and its interactions, and with engineering design. The anchor phenomenon for the first three investigations is motion. Magnetism and gravity are the phenomena investigated as students look for patterns of motion to predict future motion. The guiding question is what causes objects to move? Students work with magnets and paper clips, wheel-and-axle systems, paper air twirlers, and rotating tops. Students use their knowledge of science to enter the engineering design process and through the process refine their science understanding.

In the fourth investigation, students move from energy to matter. They build on the science concepts of matter and its interactions developed in grade 2 using new tools to quantify observations. Students use metric tools to produce data on mass and volume to serve as the basis for evidence for an explanation of the phenomena of conservation of mass. The guiding question is how can we use tools to measure the mass of materials in mixtures?

Throughout the Motion and Matter Module, students engage in science and engineering practices to collect data to answer questions, and to define problems in order to develop solutions. Students reflect on their own use of these practices and find out about how others use these practices in science and engineering careers." - www.fossweb.com/

Word Study/Grammar:

Next week for grammar we will be on Week Twelve.  The students will be learning about silent consonants and subject/object in a sentence.

Writing:   
The students have finished publishing both their Personal Narrative and their Halloween story.  They really enjoyed the story writing and applying the many skills and strategies we learned about.  For our next writing unit, we will be moving into Informational Writing.  The students will be examining topics they are interested in and work to become experts and then share their knowledge with others in the form of an informational book.  We will learn all about text features, text structures, and much more!  This will be a fun and exciting writing unit for the students.

Reading:

We have completed Unit 1 where we learned all about "Building a Reading Life."  This past week, we launched our next unit where we will be focusing on Character Studies.  We read the story Maurice the Unbeastly and talked about character traits and viewing a story from different character's perspectives.  We did a Thinking Routine where the students had to examine the story from three different character's perspectives- Maurice, Maurice's parents, and the Academy's Head Master.  The students had some really great conversations about these different points of view.  In this next unit, we will be talking a lot about getting to know a character as a friend, following a character across a story, and comparing and contrasting characters across books.

In reading, we have also started working in our Thinking Teams.  These teams are a great way for the students to really engage in deep discussions about the books we are reading.  It is so important for students to be able to write about their thinking but before that they need to be able to have conversations about their thinking. These teams help the students to make sense of the text and see things from a different viewpoint as they hear varying opinions from other team members.