Important Dates & Reminders
*I will try to highlight new dates and information with red text.
October 11 - Fall Family Night is from 6 till 8. This is a great evening for families to reconnect and enjoy the beautiful fall weather.
October 25, 2013 - Field Trip to Highbanks Metro Park for Earth Science. Thank you volunteers! Students should wear good hiking/walking shoes that can get muddy, pack a sack lunch and wear something they can zip and unzip as it is usually cool and the morning and warms up throughout the day.
October 25, 2013 - End of the first quarter. Please avoid appointments this week as I'll be assessing.
October 28, 2013 - No school, teacher grading day.
October 31, 2013 - Halloween party (extended lunch from 12pm till 1:30pm, most students go home to change into costumes). Please note it is district policy that no costume may include any weapons or facsimiles.
November 4 - 7, 2013: Parent conferences. If you have not signed up, please contact me. I will send reminders of your date and time in your student's progress report.
November 5, 2013: No school for students: Professional development.
November 27 - 29, 2013: No school - Thanksgiving.
December 11, 2013: Early release: Professional development.
December 23, 2013 - January 3, 2014: Winter break - no school.
January 6, 2014: First day back to school.
January 16, 2014: End of the second quarter. Please avoid appointments this week as I'll be assessing.
January 17, 2014: No school, teacher grading day.
What We Learned This Week
Word Study
We memorized our high frequency word, "ready." using several kinesthetic, auditory, and visual methods to increase the likelihood of retention and retrieval.
This week's spelling assessment is a bit different. In an attempt to emphasize the importance of linking a phonological generalization to a word, I've asked students to list the spelling pattern. Do not be alarmed if they do not do well on this (I'll send them home on Monday.). It will take some time for them to develop proficiency in doing this, but it should benefit them a great deal over time as it shifts their spelling practice from memorizing words to applying generalizations.
You will also notice on the spelling assessment a short paragraph which I dictated. It is often easy for parents to have a feel for how their students are doing in concrete and easy to assess areas such as math and spelling. In order to show you how your students are doing with convention and neatness, I will be using the dictated paragraph to measure progress and will use conventional editing symbols to show errors. Your student should be familiar with these errors at this point in the year, but please let me know if you have any questions once you receive their new format assessment on Monday. Some of this is subjective, e.g., neatness, but after teaching third grade for so many years I believe I can make fairly consistent judgements. The short paragraph will also illuminate students' high frequency word spelling.
I've determined through assessment that many students do not possess secure phonological awareness so I am teaching them consonant sounds and to listen for sounds in words, (e.g., do you hear the d sound at the beginning or end of a word) to support spelling.
Reading
We continued to focus on determining just right books. Having such a small class is affording me time to conference with all of my students on their specific needs. Some students are working on fluency, while others are working on expression or non-fiction text elements, depending on where they are on the reading spectrum. A few students are still struggling to find a just right book that is interesting. This can be modeled, but is often more a situation of looking, but hoping not to find, a just right book. This can be a year(s) long challenge for reluctant readers, but research shows letting students have say in what they read can be very motivational.
Main ideas/summaries and comparing and contrasting continue to be our whole class focus. Summaries link to our writing by distinguishing between main ideas and supporting details.
Writing
We began planning for our second personal narrative and we are beginning to think about friendly letters. Please help your student begin to think about a pen pal who is dependable, neat, and will write back to them quickly. We will plan to mail our pen pal letters the week of October 25th.
We did a few organization/sequence activities to help us begin to include helpful transition and linking words such as first, next, then, and finally.
We are also editing pre-written paragraphs with intentional errors. This week's errors focused on capitalizing the beginnings of sentences and proper nouns, ending punctuation and using apostrophes for possession, e.g., Steve's hat.
Math
We are beginning each lesson with mental math and a challenging word problem.
Students represented decimals as a decimal, a fraction and money. We also worked on a quarter-past, half-past and a quarter-till the hour.
We hit math fact fluency strategies hard this week. We have covered zero more, one more, two more, sums to ten, doubles, near doubles and make ten.
- Zero more: start with the larger addend and add zero more, which leaves you with the original addend.
- One more: start with the larger addend and add one more. This is easy to do, but you might be surprised by how many students need to learn to start with the larger addend.
- Two more: same as zero more and one more.
- Sums to ten: all of the sums to ten (0 + 10, 1 + 9, 2 + 8, etc.).
- Doubles: This will transfer to doubles or X2 in future multiplication fluency strategies.
- Near doubles: Whenever two addends are different by one, the double of the smaller addend can be relied on and simply add one more (I make it more clear than this to students, but I do try to introduce them to this important vocabulary.), e.g., 4 + 5 = (4 + 4) + 1 = 8 + 1.
- Make tens: Whenever you have an addend of 7, 8, or 9 and your sum is greater than a sum to ten, you can borrow from the other addend to "make ten" and add on, e.g., 7 + 5 = (7 + 3) + 2 = 10 + 2 = 12. This strategy is relied on heavily by adults for mental math and can be used for larger numbers easily, e.g., 28 + 13 = (28 + 2) + 11 = 30 + 11 = 41.
Some facts have more than one strategy, e.g., 5 + 5 = doubles and sums to ten. Students worked on the strategies (versus the facts) by sorting dominos by strategy and organizing them and playing strategy baseball. Your student should be able to explain both of these activities.
Students represented decimals as a decimal, a fraction and money. We also worked on a quarter-past, half-past and a quarter-till the hour.
We hit math fact fluency strategies hard this week. We have covered zero more, one more, two more, sums to ten, doubles, near doubles and make ten.
- Zero more: start with the larger addend and add zero more, which leaves you with the original addend.
- One more: start with the larger addend and add one more. This is easy to do, but you might be surprised by how many students need to learn to start with the larger addend.
- Two more: same as zero more and one more.
- Sums to ten: all of the sums to ten (0 + 10, 1 + 9, 2 + 8, etc.).
- Doubles: This will transfer to doubles or X2 in future multiplication fluency strategies.
- Near doubles: Whenever two addends are different by one, the double of the smaller addend can be relied on and simply add one more (I make it more clear than this to students, but I do try to introduce them to this important vocabulary.), e.g., 4 + 5 = (4 + 4) + 1 = 8 + 1.
- Make tens: Whenever you have an addend of 7, 8, or 9 and your sum is greater than a sum to ten, you can borrow from the other addend to "make ten" and add on, e.g., 7 + 5 = (7 + 3) + 2 = 10 + 2 = 12. This strategy is relied on heavily by adults for mental math and can be used for larger numbers easily, e.g., 28 + 13 = (28 + 2) + 11 = 30 + 11 = 41.
Some facts have more than one strategy, e.g., 5 + 5 = doubles and sums to ten. Students worked on the strategies (versus the facts) by sorting dominos by strategy and organizing them and playing strategy baseball. Your student should be able to explain both of these activities.
Social Studies
I introduced geography this week as morning work to be done before the Pledge. I find it is helpful to teach this slowly throughout the year, rather than rushing through it. Too it gives students a concreted activity to get them focused and settled each morning.
I introduced globes, maps, continents, equator, and the North and South poles.
Science
We ended the week by exploring matter, part of our physical science and scientific ways of knowing content. We explored water's properties, focusing on water molecules' strong attraction towards each other. We used this learning to understand how bubbles form and rise as well as how we can fill a glass above the rim of a glass without any water spilling. We then used soap to break apart the water molecules and spill over. We then studied the properties of water in bubbles using two solutions, one with glycerin and one without. The glycerin essentially insulates the water and allows one to blow bigger bubbles that are less likely to pop. Here's are two Steve Spangler videos on these concepts. I apologize in advance if you discover your student making a joyful mess at the sink with bubbles this weekend:)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPC3HmOcyY8
Please send in one or two old socks for cracking open geodes by next Friday. Many thanks!
