Short and Sweet

Four days on, four days off, and four days on again!

I hope that you all enjoyed your four day weekend!  Teachers had very productive days in our classrooms on both Friday and Monday. We were able to spend time on report cards and lesson plans for the next coming weeks.

This week in Melissa's class is short and sweet as was last week.  Here's what we'll be up to:

Reading Workshop:  Students will spend this short week with the comprehension strategy of connecting.  There are three types of connections that can be made while reading.  There are personal connections, connections with other books and connections with things in the outside world.  When students make a conscious association with something that they have personally experienced, read or heard about, it becomes easier for them to relate to the text and to understand what is happening.  Connecting with the text will most likely lead to greater interest in the text as well.

Writing Workshop:  Recently students were introduced to the Six Traits of Writing.  The traits include Ideas, Organization, Sentence Fluency, Voice, Word Choice, and Conventions.  We had great fun creating posters and presenting each trait to the class.  We have also been practicing each trait through focused paragraphed writing.  This week we will wrap up our Six Trait focus, but we will refer back to it consistently throughout our next unit; Realistic Fiction.

Here are our posters.  They are also hanging above our cubbies since it's kind of hard to appreciate them in these teeny tiny pictures!

Math:  We just wrapped up our unit on the basics of multiplication and division and we are now moving on to place value in whole numbers and decimals.  We will be extending on previous lessons on the base-ten place value system to whole numbers through millions and to decimals through thousandths.  In third grade, we like to really emphasize the "ths" in decimals as it helps us remember that if there is a "ths" it means that it's a decimal.  Plus, it makes us laugh to remind each other to "say it don't spray it!"

Science:  We just began exploring the states of matter.  Last week, we learned what matter was and what the three states of matter are; solid, liquid and gas.  We sorted everyday objects into appropriate states based on their properties.  This week we will expand on our learning by discussing mass and volume.

Ski program has been fantastic and I'm looking forward to another incredible day on the hill on Thursday!

Thanks for reading!

Happy New Year!

Time sure flies when you're having fun!  I had a skiing-filled break and after the freezing of myself and the NFL and the High Lift today (can you believe that!  I'm glad I got one Headwall run in before they shut it down), I am ready to head back to school!  I hope you all are feeling thawed, rested and ready too!

Before we get into it, I just wanted to say thank you to all of you for making our feast a success and for your kind and generous holiday gifts.  I so appreciate you and all of your support!  Thank You!

Here's what we'll be up to this week:

Reading Workshop:  Over the next couple weeks, the focus of our reading workshop will be comprehension strategies.  This week, we will be focusing on are asking questions.

Questions are at the heart of teaching and learning.  Posing questions allows us to seek out information, solve problems, and extend our understanding.  They propel us to read on and to do further research.  I want to teach our students that instead of demanding answers all the time, they need to ask thoughtful and insightful questions.  In order to develop critical, analytical readers, we must teach them to think about and question what they read.  Asking questions enriches the reading experience and leads to deeper understanding.

We will begin the week learning to ask questions as we read.  Students will ask questions as they read and understand that good readers question the text, stop and notice when their questions are answered, and recognize that not all of our questions are answered.

As the week continues, we will learn how to ask questions to gain information and how to ask questions to expand our thinking.

Writing Workshop:  This unit in writing is all about the Six Traits of Writing.  Six Traits of Writing is a systematic and analytical approach for learning about writing one part at a time.  By focusing on only one trait at a time, a writer can break down a complex activity like writing and make it more manageable.  With practice, writers can then learn to be more critical of their own work and can make improvements in the quality of their writing. 

The Six Traits of Writing are: Ideas, Organization, Voice, Word Choice, Sentence Fluency, and Conventions.  

This week students will be introduced to all six traits.  Students will work in groups of threes and learn about one specific trait.  Students will become "experts" on their trait and create a poster and a presentation for their other classmates on their particular trait.  We will round out the week focusing on Ideas.  

Throughout this unit, we will look at mentor texts that highlight one or two of the traits.  We will discuss the traits, read the texts, and discuss what they thought the author did really well.  Then students write pieces inspired by these wonderful texts.  

Math:  We will begin the week with some review of subtraction methods.  Students will reacquaint themselves with both the count-up method, which is totally different than how you and I learned math, but it is a lot of fun. Yes, I just said that a subtraction algorithm is fun!  They will also practice the traditional method of subtraction as well.  As the week goes on, we will be plugging away on our multiplication and division unit and rolling our numbers.

Theme:  We will spend some time wrapping up our unit on France.  Students will reflect on what they learned, what went well, and what could've been better. Our next theme will be revealed shortly, but I will tell you that it is a science theme!

Well, that's a lot of information for now.  Just a few things to remember:

-Ski program starts Thursday January 16th for 3rd grade.  We will be skiing for the second half of the day every Thursday for 5 weeks!  Yahoo!!!  If you haven't paid yet, please pay as soon as possible.  If you have not paid by the second week of the program, you child will not be allowed to ski until you do.

- No school for elementary students (not sure about secondary, sorry) on Friday January 17 and Monday January 20.  Enjoy that 4-day weekend!

Thanks again for reading.  Please let me know if this blog is helpful to you or if there is anything you would like me to add or omit.  Your feedback really would mean a lot to me.  

Thank you!