Kids Fest Silent Auction Ukulele

I will be entering a quality student ukulele into the Kids Fest silent auction.

Hilo Deluxe soprano 2658 ukulele.



This is a great student ukulele with the following specs:
- Solid mahogany
- Geared tuners
- Wood fretboard
- Epaulet sound holes
- Aquila strings.

Spelling for the week of March 28, 2011

This week's spelling words are:

had, did, hopped, patted, kidded, danced, stopped, made, called, wrote, liked, held

additional challenge words are:

baked, blamed, cared, graded, ate, met, spoke, won, lined, noted, piped, scored, kept, was, were, slid, sloped, stared, tuned, waved, drank, caught, bought, taught

All of our words are past-tense. Many past-tense verbs end with -ed, even though the ending is pronounced three different ways (patted, liked, called). However, some past-tense verbs are very different from their present-tense forms. I will not be asking for any patterns this week, only spelling and a paragraph dictation.

Bottle Caps

Dear Families,

I'm collecting plastic bottle caps, e.g., soda and water bottles. Please wash and rinse first or the stickiness will attract swarms of ants. Please send them in on April 18th. I'll take all I can get. We'll be using them for map skills and geography. Thank you!

Important Spring Dates

March 30 - Spring Picture Day

April - Windermere student art on display at Upper Arlington Board of Education

April 1 - End of third grading period

April 4 - No school for students, educator grading day

April 12 – Progress reports sent home

April 12 through 15 - Terra Nova and Test of Cognitive Skills (standardized enrichment assessment)

April 16 – Invention Convention at UA High School (www.just-think-inc.com)

April 18 – ***Date change*** 3^rd Grade Musical Performance, “It’s Easy Being Green,” at 7pm

April 18 through 24 – NO TV week

April 22 – No school, Good Friday

April 25 – Ohio Reading Achievement Assessment retakes for students who did not pass in fall only

April 26 – Ohio Mathematics Achievement Assessment (scores back late spring)

April 29 – PTO Kidfest from 5pm-8pm

May 3 - Election Day, students will eat in classroom

May 11 - Early dismissal at 1:15

May 21 - Wish Run
May 21 - Invention Convention Columbus Regional Competition at COSI

May 24 - 3rd Grade Art Field Trip to Columbus Museum of Art, volunteers needed, please email

May 30 - No School, Memorial Day

June 2 - Windermere Ukulele Orchestra at 7pm in Multipurpose Room

June 6 - Field Days

June 9 - Last day of school

3rd Grade Musical Coming Soon

The 3rd Grade musical performance, led by Mrs. Delcamp, will be at 7pm in Windermere's multipurpose room on Monday, April 18th.



This year's performance is all about natural resources and conservation. Please have your student wear a green shirt and denim or dark pants. See you there.

Invention Convention

The district's Invention Convention will take place Saturday, April 16 at 8:30am in the Upper Arlington High School's cafeteria. You can learn more about Invention Convention at http://www.just-think-inc.com/. This is a very rewarding experience for young inventors and can develop a real interest in science.

Students who advance from the UA Convention will participate in the Columbus Regional Invention Convention at COSI on May 21st.



Requirements

Students must complete journal (Download journal online at http://www.just-think-inc.com/)

Make a model of your invention. The model does NOT have to work, but must illustrate how the invention would work if the model was operational.
- Models must fit on a table top.
- Models cannot be larger than 2 feet by 3 feet.
- Electricity will NOT be available to inventors, but students may use batteries.

Display boards are not required, but are highly recommended. Display boards should document the invention process and questions in journal.

Students may work in a team of two. However, both students must attend each convention or they will be disqualified. I encourage students to work as individuals because I have had teams where one member was ill and the other student could not participate. It is a great idea to share your ideas and see if your friends can give you new ideas.

Please let me know if you have any questions or need any help. Participants will be encouraged to share their inventions, prototypes, and display boards the Friday before competition. The class will ask them questions to better prepare them for the judges.

March 13, 2011 Newsletter

What We Learned This Week

Word Study:

We will be studying plurals this week (y to i, regular and irregular forms) this week. All of this week’s words are plurals and end in one of two endings, -ies and other:

puppies, babies, teeth, armies, feet, cities, pennies, people, mice, children, berries, men

I will not be sending a paper copy of our spelling words home. Please retain this email for your student’s spelling words.

We are also continuing to study parts of speech and analogies. In conjunction with analogies I introduced memory strategies that can be applied to learning dates and events, cities and capitals, the periodic table (in the future), etc. by using mnemonic devices.

I introduced our “hills” pattern cursive letters, e.g., lowercase n and m this week.

Reading Workshop:

March is Women’s History month and we are building on our Famous African Americans research as we study famous women. We moved from single page encyclopedic sources to multiple books this time. Still focusing on noteworthy facts, students write a single fact on an index card and provide a modified citation on the back, including author, title and page number. Students studying the same subject then exchanged facts in small groups adding to their facts and checking for accuracy. We will sort and organize facts next week.

We are continuing our new read aloud, The Girl Who Could Fly, by Victoria Forester, a favorite at the last PTO-Scholastic book sale.

Writing Workshop:

We did one quick write on a time we were brave this week for a check on convention. We then began our poetry study based on a collaboration I had last year with Ohio’s 2009 poet of the year, Terry Hermsen, professor of poetry, composition, and literature in the Department of English at Otterbein College. Our focus is on creating an emotional connection to nature and objects around us and sharing them with highly visual non-literal descriptions. We also introduced haiku as a way for students to begin to practice word choice and parsimony in their poetry. This is a favorite unit of mine and is supported by our yearlong weekly poet responsibility. It is interesting to observe that most students choose silly poems, e.g. Shel Silverstein, until we introduce this unit. They then begin to choose to share much more symbolic and metaphorical poems. 

Math:

We are nearly finished with fractions, but I will likely add this assessment to the upcoming end of the grading period assessments, rather than conducting a single unit assessment, to give students more time for understanding and a review after break. We have discussed fractions in terms of equal groups/parts of a whole, equivalent fractions for one whole, numerator, denominator, counting by fractions in a sequence, equivalent fractions, mixed number fractions, ratios (1/2 and multiples of denominator), fractions of a set, and determining the size of a set given a fraction. Understanding fractions has been shown in multiple studies to be one of the key differentiating mathematical concepts between math students. We have used manipulatives a great deal during this unit.

Science:

We began our force and motion study and developed a list of important concepts and vocabulary: force (a push or pull), motion (a change in direction), Newton’s first two laws (an object at rest stays at rest unless acted on by another force, an object in motion stays in motion unless acted on by another force), gravity, magnetism, pressure, friction, mass, momentum and inertia. We also did a number of experiments to illustrate these different topics: Newton’s cradle (transfer of energy), croquet (transfer of energy), dropping a large kickball with a super ball on top of it (gravity – falling at the same rates), transfer of energy), film canister rockets (pressure as a force), quarter-dime slide (mass and inertia), eggsperiment (spinning unlabeled hardboiled and raw eggs to determine which are cooked using Newton’s laws), tops (momentum), and oil on water spin (Newton’s laws).

Social Studies:

We studied UA's unique form of government with a City Manager serving at the pleasure of the City Council's elected officials, as opposed to an elected mayor. We attempted to balance a hypothetical city budget crisis (UA is actually very fiscally responsible) with different council members arguing for their departments. Each group also had concerned citizens who argued for and against different solutions, including raising taxes. Each of our three mock councils came up with a different suggestion for reducing the deficit and balancing the budget:

-     Close one school and increase class sizes throughout the district. It was also proposed that the closed school could be used as a community center.

-     Close our parks, pools and libraries as they are wants rather than needs (I shared later that our pools are actually a large revenue generator for UA).

-     Reduce our public safety division and rely on a volunteer fire department as is common in many other parts of the country.

The students got to participate in a mock government that mirrors our local system and process as well as realize just how difficult it can be to come up with a political solution that works for everyone.

Important Dates and Reminders

Good luck to our many students participating in this weekend's Destination Imagination contest! I can’t wait to learn how you did and what you thought of the experience. Congratulations on taking advantage of this wonderful opportunity.

Your student should have brought an orange survey home. I usually do this activity later in the year, but Mrs. Adams is conducting an educator feedback survey as part of her masters’ program now and I decided to send mine out at the same time for grade level consistency. I greatly appreciate your feedback. I always learn from your insights and improve my teaching through this process. Please return these by tomorrow, Monday, March 14th. Thank you!

Daylight savings began this morning. Don’t forget to set those clocks forward an hour. This will impact some students more than others.

I will be out this Thursday for peer observation and continuing education. As a mentor to first year teachers I look forward to the opportunity to support new teacher’s development as well as my own. I have shared this with the class.

Please look through the lost and found before spring break. All items left after Thursday, March 17^th, will be donated.

Our class is collecting aluminum drink tabs for Ronald McDonald House. Please send them throughout the remainder of the year. Thank you.

Please send your student to school with their ukulele on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

March 18 through 25 – No School, Spring Break

March 30 - Spring Picture Day

April - Windermere student art on display at Upper Arlington Board of Education

April 1 - End of third grading period

April 4 - No school for students, educator grading day

April 12 – Progress reports sent home

April 12 through 15 - Terra Nova and Test of Cognitive Skills (standardized enrichment assessment)

April 16 – Invention Convention at UA High School (www.just-think-inc.com)

April 18 – ***Date change*** 3^rd Grade Musical Performance, “It’s Easy Being Green,” at 7pm

April 18 through 24 – NO TV week

April 22 – No school, Good Friday

April 25 – Ohio Reading Achievement Assessment retakes for students who did not pass in fall only

April 26 – Ohio Mathematics Achievement Assessment (scores back late spring)

April 29 – PTO Kidfest from 5pm-8pm

Song Book for Capital Area Humane Society

Our class created a two chord song book to raise money for the Capital Area Humane Society (CAHS). In collaboration with Mrs. Chisholm, Windermere's Art educator, students learned print making and designed images to represent twenty-eight traditional tunes. The books cost $5.00 and all proceeds go to support the CAHS. You can purchase books by visiting our classroom, emailing me, or visiting Wholly Craft in Clintonville.


Capital Area Humane Society
http://www.cahs-pets.org/


Wholly Craft
http://www.whollycraft.com/

Summer Reading

It's not too soon to start thinking about your student's summer reading. Here are some valuable links to the Columbus Metropolitan Library's summer reading club
http://ebranch-prod.columbuslibrary.org/ebranch/index.cfm?pageid=226

and the Upper Arlington Public Library.
http://www.ualibrary.org/

The Columbus Metropolitan Library was voted the 2010 Library of the Year! From their website...

We have the incredible honor of officially announcing that Library Journal has selected Columbus Metropolitan Library as Library of the Year. This is one of the highest honors in the library world, and comes on top of our 5 Star Rating and our #1 Hennen rating. What an outstanding accomplishment!

Library Journal puts it this way: "All libraries are good, some are great. The 2010 Library Journal/Gale Cengage Learning Library of the Year Award celebrates the library that most profoundly demonstrates: service to the community; creativity and innovation in developing specific community programs or a dramatic increase in usage; and leadership in creating programs that can be emulated by others." This award celebrates our Ready to Ready Corps, Homework Help Centers, Job Help Centers, and all the exceptional service CML every day to ensure that this great institution transforms the lives of our community.

In particular, Library Journal quotes Mike Curtain, editor emeritus of The Columbus Dispatch: "CML is a world class library on a shoestring budget." LJ tells us that this was a particularly tough race – that there were many excellent libraries who vied for the Award. But, ultimately, CML was selected.

Ukulele Summer Camp - 2011

Sessions and Course Descriptions

Why Ukulele? Ukulele is inexpensive, portable, has a short learning curve to success, has a mellow sound that is family friendly, lends itself to solo and ensemble vocal performing and works with any musical genre from classical to hip hop. Ukulele is ideal for students entering third grade and above.

Instructors: Camp will be taught by Jason Hudson, veteran elementary educator and co-teacher of the Windermere Ukulele Orchestra. Mr. Hudson is also a recipient of the Upper Arlington Civics Association’s Golden Apple for excellence in education and the Windermere Teacher of the Year Award. Other local area ukulele instructors may assist.

Beginning Ukulele is a performance based program designed for the true novice with little or no experience. Campers will learn tuning, chords, a basic down strum, vocal accompaniment, musical genres and song selection. Emphasis will be on two and three chord songs. All students will participate in a final live class performance at Espresso Yourself Music Café. (Dates coming soon) from 9:00am-11:00 daily with a final performance at Espresso Yourself Music Cafe on (Date coming soon) at 7:00pm. 

Intermediate Ukulele is designed for ukulele enthusiasts with proficiency on 8 or more chords (A, A7, C, C7, D7, F, G, G7, E7). This is the ideal class for graduates of the Windermere Ukulele Orchestra . This performance based session encourages individual and small group performances for the culminating concert at Espresso Yourself Music Cafe. Students will learn advanced strums and techniques (slides, stops, hammer-ons, pull-offs, and finger picking). (Dates coming soon) from 9:00am-11:00 daily with a final performance at Espresso Yourself Music Cafe on (Date coming soon) at 7:00pm.

Espresso Yourself Music Café is family atmosphere coffee house and performance space for local arts and artists. Visit them at http://www.espressoyourselfmusiccafe.com/home08.asp

*Students must have their own ukulele. USC supports soprano, concert and tenor tuned to GCEA. I recommend solid wood soprano ukuleles with geared tuners that have a nice sound and quality strings. Locally you can go to Colonial Music in Hilliard or go online. Please contact USC if you have any questions regarding a ukulele. The better the instrument, the easier to play and the greater the likelihood your student will continue.

**Class size will be limited to 25 campers per session. It is advised that students be entering third grade or higher grade levels.

***All classes will take place at Windermere Elementary School, room 204. There are NO classes on Saturday or Sunday. 

Spring Ohio Achievement Assessments

Our spring Ohio Reading Achievement Assessment retakes and Ohio Mathematics Achievement Assessments are coming up soon. The Reading OAA will be administered on Monday, April 25th and the Math OAA will be administered Tuesday, April 26th.




Here is a link to the Ohio Department of Education's website and practice tests: http://ohio3-8.success-ode-state-oh-us.info/.

I will review mathematics concepts learned this year and will expose students to different question formats and test taking strategies prior to taking the Math OAA.

Ukulele Orchestra

Mrs. Delcamp, our music educator, and I are sponsoring the Windermere Ukulele Orchestra again this year.  Windermere differentiates itself with its commitment to collaboration and we have enjoyed bringing our 3rd grade classroom together with music in such a meaningful way.

The WUO is a performance based learning experience that provides students with early instrumental success, continued vocal learning and exposes students to genres of music they would otherwise not be aware of: jazz, ragtime, early country and blues, and tin pan alley tunes from the 20's - 40's with the occasional pop song.

The ukulele has a short learning curve while also offering limitless instrumental possibilities. Our next performance is June 2, 2011 at 7pm in the multipurpose room.

I am planning on hosting multiple Ukulele Summer Camps as well. Be sure to check back soon for more information.

Welcome

Welcome to Mr. Hudson's 3rd Grade Blog. This site will be an experiment in improving commuincation, collaboration and conserving resources. I hope you will join me in sharing your ideas and supporting student learning.

I will be updating soon.