*I will try to highlight new dates and information with red text.
November 1, 2013 - Progress Reports sent home and mailed to dual households.
November 4 - 7, 2013: Parent conferences. The conference schedule is available at: http://3rdgradehudson.blogspot.com/2013/10/fall-conferences.html
November 5, 2013: No school for students: Professional development.
November 7, 2013: Early release at 11:05 for conferences.
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 defined contractions as "a shortened form of two words." I also introduced apostrophes as indicating ownership or acting as a place holder for letter(s) in a contraction. We practiced composing (building) and decomposing (taking apart) contractions. When composing and decomposing contractions we wrote the contraction and the individual words that form the contraction. We also circled the letter(s) the apostrophe is a place-holder for.
Reading Workshop
We began our study of non-fiction (real) texts by using a graphic organizer that records what we "Know" about non-fiction and what we "Wonder" about it. In preparation for teaching kindergarten students about non-fiction and to develop fluency, students selected two non-fiction/informational books from the library that were interesting to them, likely to be interesting to a kindergarten student, and appropriate text level (a just right book). Students are practicing reading these aloud to themselves and a partner. They are recording reminders on post-it notes that will help them share their book(s) with the kindergarten students (K): asking the K what they know about "non-fiction, informational, or real" books; asking the K what they know about the book's subject (e.g., sharks, dinosaurs, trucks); asking the K what they wonder or want to know about the topic; introducing non-fiction text elements such as table of contents, glossary, index, text boxes, charts, maps and graphs; modeling how to read the text first before the text boxes and charts; and engaging the K by asking them questions that support comprehension and connections as they move through the text.
We are further developing our ability to read and understand non-fiction texts by reading Starry Messenger by Peter Sis and taking notes, using the same graphic organizer mentioned above. After each page, students record one "main idea" or big idea from the text read aloud. They also write one wonder after I share the text boxes (many of which are pulled directly from Galileo's books and journals). You can read more about Starry Messenger and see a brief animation at http://www.petersis.com/content/starry_messenger.html.
Writing Workshop
We finally published and mailed our pen pal letters. We began working on topic sentences. Students are using several different strategies to introduce the same topic, e.g., Trick-or-Treating. Strategies include: shocker (something surprising), sound words (onamonapia), ask a question, dialogue, descriptive language, figurative language (idioms), mysterious/cliff-hanger, emotional.
Math
Our focus is applying our newly learned multi-digit operation algorithms to authentic word problems. I am encouraging students to "box it." Boxing it is a simple strategy where students literally draw boxes around statements and rewrite them in their own words. Many students are struggling to slow down enough to actually understand the questions. If they see numerals, they simply start adding them, rather than understanding the question. I'm encouraging students to reread the question multiple times and to restate it in their own words.
Science
We started an observation experiment. Students measured a Finn (Adventure Time) water growing figure in length (inches and centimeters), circumference (inches and centimeters) and mass (grams). We measured him before submerging the water absorbing figure in water. Today, we repeated all three measures and determined the change.
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