Important Dates & Reminders
*I will try to highlight new dates and information with red text.
November 26, 2013: Food sampling from our garden (see below).
November 27 - 29, 2013: No school - Thanksgiving. Have a safe and relaxing holiday!
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 studied vowel teams "ea" and "ai." When vowel teams appear, "the vowels go walking and the first does the talking," meaning that the first vowel makes a long vowel sound. Assessments will come home on Monday.
We reviewed and defined open syllables: We hear the long vowel sound. We see the syllable ends in a vowel (is not closed by a consonant).
We reviewed and defined closed syllables: We hear the short vowel sound. We see the syllable ends in a consonant (is not closed by a vowel).
We reviewed and defined Vowel-Consonant-E syllables. We hear the long vowel sound. We see the VCE pattern.
Our high frequency word was "finally." I emphasized the three syllables (fi/nal/ly) and their syllable types (open/closed/open).
"raining cats and dogs"
Idioms start to appear in much of 3rd grade reading material, but students are often confused by their non-literal nature. We studied several idioms this week, such as:
- Fifth wheel
- Get your goat
- On the ball
The students are starting to become interested in idioms and are sharing them from their reading. This is a really great and meaningful transfer of an isolated practice to understanding. Please encourage them to look and listen for idioms throughout their day. They are relying on context clues to understand these non-literal sayings.
Reading Workshop (and Social Studies)
We continued our study of informational texts, using a "knows and wonders" graphic organizer. Students begun studying a topic by recording what they think they know and what they wonder about a topic. They then read from a variety of texts (classroom magazines, selected texts, including picture books, and the internet). Text choice is still emphasized as essential. Students record new "knows" and "wonders" as they progress through the text. I am also emphasizing key vocabulary and use of glossaries and text/word boxes to understand often unfamiliar terms, which we highlight. It is often difficult to use context clues to understand unfamiliar science and social studies vocabulary. We focused on economics throughout the week to co-create a definition of economics, utilizing key vocabulary. Our co-created definition is, "Economics is the manufacturing, distribution, and consumption of goods and services in markets for exchange of money or services." Not bad for 3rd grade! These are the first steps towards becoming researchers and I'm very pleased with our progress. We will try to wrap this up next week.
Writing
I administered the district's new writing assessment this week. Students went through the entire writing process of planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing with a checklist. I'm looking forward to reading these personal narratives.
Math Workshop
We started fractions in earnest this week with the shared definition that "fractions are equal shares of wholes (e.g., a pizza, book, etc.) or sets (e.g., cards in a collection, students in a class, etc.)." I'm emphasizing vocabulary and asking students to use numerator and denominator.
I'm beginning each lesson with a story problem and asking students to "box" each sentence and restate it as an algebraic equation. I'm presenting a lot of story problem work and will transition their operations from multi digit addition and subtraction to fractions once we have the basics.
Science
It looks like everyone is doing well after studying our louse. It was truly amazing to look at such a small animal on such a large scale. We were able to magnify it using our microscope and ladybug to project it on the Smartboard. Lice are translucent and we were able to watch ours' digestive track contract. You can see the dark area in the picture above, a bit of blood from its host.
We harvested our garden on Friday and will celebrate by eating it on Tuesday. Building on our tree study we looked at plant roots and leaves, comparing shape, color, texture, smell, and arrangement. Our carrots were disappointing, but they lead to great discussion on why they were so small. The class was excited to taste the raw basil and are looking forward to Tuesday's tasting. We will try the following:
- pasta sauce utilizing our oregano
- pesto sauce utilizing our basil
- tea utilizing our spearmint
- tea utilizing our chamomile
- carrots (and ranch dressing for those reluctant carrot eaters)
- pumpkin seeds from our pumpkin
- We will also be trying insalata caprese, typically a summer salad. We will have heirloom tomatoes, basil and olive oil on buffalo mozzarella (Thank you Coppolas!). I add just a bit of salt, pepper and balsamic vinaigrette.
Hopefully everyone will enjoy the "fruits" of their labor:)
Writing
I administered the district's new writing assessment this week. Students went through the entire writing process of planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing with a checklist. I'm looking forward to reading these personal narratives.
Math Workshop
We started fractions in earnest this week with the shared definition that "fractions are equal shares of wholes (e.g., a pizza, book, etc.) or sets (e.g., cards in a collection, students in a class, etc.)." I'm emphasizing vocabulary and asking students to use numerator and denominator.
I'm beginning each lesson with a story problem and asking students to "box" each sentence and restate it as an algebraic equation. I'm presenting a lot of story problem work and will transition their operations from multi digit addition and subtraction to fractions once we have the basics.
Science
It looks like everyone is doing well after studying our louse. It was truly amazing to look at such a small animal on such a large scale. We were able to magnify it using our microscope and ladybug to project it on the Smartboard. Lice are translucent and we were able to watch ours' digestive track contract. You can see the dark area in the picture above, a bit of blood from its host.
You should be able to see the louse digesting its food in this short video. More importantly, you can hear a bit of the class' discussion.
We harvested our garden on Friday and will celebrate by eating it on Tuesday. Building on our tree study we looked at plant roots and leaves, comparing shape, color, texture, smell, and arrangement. Our carrots were disappointing, but they lead to great discussion on why they were so small. The class was excited to taste the raw basil and are looking forward to Tuesday's tasting. We will try the following:
- pasta sauce utilizing our oregano
- pesto sauce utilizing our basil
- tea utilizing our spearmint
- tea utilizing our chamomile
- carrots (and ranch dressing for those reluctant carrot eaters)
- pumpkin seeds from our pumpkin
- We will also be trying insalata caprese, typically a summer salad. We will have heirloom tomatoes, basil and olive oil on buffalo mozzarella (Thank you Coppolas!). I add just a bit of salt, pepper and balsamic vinaigrette.
Hopefully everyone will enjoy the "fruits" of their labor:)
About to harvest.
Basil flowers.
Observing the basil roots.
Taking the dirt off the roots.
Basil roots.
Looking at the cilantro roots.
Looking at cilantro texture.
Lauren was not so crazy about the basil:)
Our immature carrots.
Pumpkin seed collecting.
