Celebrate the Beat is Here!

First things first, I want to thank you all for attending parent-teacher conferences last week. We had 100% participation and I truly enjoyed discussing your child and their progress with you.  Thank you!

Also, our Halloween party and post Halloween day both were amazing!  Our students were a bit tired on Friday, but they pushed through and stayed on task.

Here's the weekly academic happenings in Melissa's Third Grade:

We are so excited to start Celebrate the Beat!  We will be practicing every day in the Multipurpose Room from 2:30-3:20.  We've had to tweak our schedule a bit to accommodate CTB, but it is so worth it.  Our core content areas will not be compromised as a result of these changes.  We will not have P.E. during Celebrate the Beat which leaves us with enough time for our academics.  It does cut into our social studies time just a bit, but not to much.  Our parent volunteer times will remain the same despite the alterations.

Also parents, if you want to join in the fun of Celebrate the Beat, there is an opportunity for you!  The CTB team will be teaching a "Parent-Teacher Dance" on Wednesdays after school from 5:30 to 6:30.  I will be participating and it is a ton of fun!  Please let me know if your interested.


Readers Workshop:

Last week our focus was on Character Traits.  We practiced the comprehension strategy of inferring character traits by analyzing the actions and words of our characters in our class read aloud Peter and the Starcatchers.  We talked about how authors give us clues like character's actions or dialogue to show us who these characters are.

Students began to work on this skill independently toward the end of the week and we will continue working on inferring character traits this week as well.  We finish up the week with deciphering between fact and opinions.  This will be a great lesson to tie into our character traits and inferring.

Writers Workshop:

Last week we implemented our discoveries from famous author's writing techniques into our own writing.  We spent a lot of time talking about word choice and how we should replace "worn out" words like "good" and "happy" with words that were more interesting and descriptive.  We learned how to use classroom resources and a thesaurus to find high quality words.  Most students are finished with group revision and will be spending the week making changes, editing and getting ready for their second revision.

Our target skill this week will be paragraphing.  This skill is kind of tough at first, so we need lots of practice.  I begin by showing students two samples of a piece of writing.  One is paragraphed and one is not.  We discuss how the paragraphed piece just looks better and seems easier to read.  Then we try to figure out when the author paragraphed and why.  Then I bust out my trusty anchor chart that tells us exactly what we just discovered!  Coincidence? I think not!

We will spend a lot of time practicing with paragraphing and editing sample pieces before we will be doing this work independently.  

Math:

We will beginning unit 3 in our math curriculum which is one of my favorites:  Measurement!  We will be learning about units of measurement, standard and metric systems, perimeter and area.  This unit is very hands-on and so much fun!  

Social Studies:

Last week we learned a lot about the continents and oceans.  This week, we plan to spend a little time talking about countries.  We will look at world maps and see where our country is in relation to the countries we are trying to help through our World Citizenship charity Heifer International.

Speaking of Heifer International, we have only raised $13 dollars to help.  I know that we can do better than that!  We plan to collect money until after the holidays.

Thanks again for all that you do and for reading this blog.  Please feel free to contact me if needed!