News for February 13, 2015

Happy Valentine's

I hope everyone has a great Valentine's weekend. 

What We Learned This Week

Word Study

We concluded our plural noun exploration with the following patterns: -s, -es, -ves, and -ies. We also studied many common exceptions. I will assess these patterns early next week and will send it home. If you would like to support your student you can present them with common singular nouns and see if they can correctly identify which pattern they should use or if it is an exception.

Our cursive is coming along. This week, we learned lower-case u, w, t, and j, all of which are based on the lower-case i shape. While everyone's handwriting is different, I am asking students to tilt their paper to get a nice slant, trace their new letter before writing it on their own, and circle their best letter on each line so they start to attend to the subtle differences in letters. I will send these packets home as soon as we wrap them up.

Vocabulary words were introduced this week (knowledge, rapid, solution, cooperate). Students will not be assessed on them, but do earn apple punches towards homework passes and other rewards for finding them in their reading or including them in their writing. This encourages students to start to attend to interesting words and word forms, which is my real goal with vocabulary. I've even received a text photo of one of our vocabulary words (see below)!

"convenience"

Reading

We continue to add book recommendations to our Book Room. You can visit them via this link http://mrhudsonsbookroom.blogspot.com
If your student hasn't done one yet, they will. I'm really encouraging students to only make a book recommendation when they truly love the book, when they would honestly recommend it. We have some great examples on the Book Room blog. It will be shared during Kindergarten Information Night and Mrs. Hastings, our library-media specialist, has started sharing them with other classes. We will also gather on April 28th (more details to come) to celebrate these outstanding movies.

Students developed their understanding of locate (closed questions: who, what, where, when) and think (why) questions. Students were challenged to generate their own locate and think questions, first with a realistic fiction passage and then a folktale. They realized that while there are many more locate questions, the think questions are more interesting. Too they are starting to understand the differences between text types: e.g., folktales teach a lesson.

Writing

We are continuing with short daily writing prompts, (e.g., What Do You Stand For, Advertise Windermere, Describe Your Heroes, etc.). These are helping students to know how much they can generate in a specified time period, focus on key elements of opening, body (beginning, middle, end), and closings. For many students, generating sufficient writing to support their position or provide enough detail is the biggest challenge they face as third graders. Just as we have worked to develop stamina in our reading, we are now working to develop stamina in our writing.

We will come back to research, but I feel it is much more important for us to develop our ability to generate sufficient writing before we take on a new skill. I've been pleased with student content. We are (and will continue to) still working on convention. Most students are strong with convention in isolation, but when applied to a writing assignment still make many errors.

Math

Fractions moved into word problems. I am teaching students the following process for determining the number of items in a whole/the one a fraction represents.

For example: "2/3 of 24 cookies are chocolate chip. How many cookies are chocolate chip?"
1. Students should use the denominator (3) to identify the number of equal groups and draw that many empty circles to represent the groups. The denominator is our entry point for all fraction questions. Without an understanding of denominators as equal groups, students will struggle with fractions.
2. Students share the number of units or items in the whole/the one equally. In this case, there would be 8 cookies in each of the 3 groups. This is an example of how mastering math facts benefits students. Students that know 3 x 8 (3 groups of 8) equals 24 can do this step very quickly, while others take significantly more time using tallies and possibly making mistakes.
3. Finally, students use the numerator (2) to circle two of our groups of 8 for a total of 16 chocolate chips cookies.

Again, it is very predictable which students are strong in fractions (those that know their math facts). Some students are able to look at 2/3 and simply know that 3 groups of 8 equal 24 and therefore 2 groups of 8 represents 16 cookies. That is our future learning goal, which is more abstract than the above process.

Science

Students recorded their three problems for our future Invention Convention. All families are encouraged to come to the Invention Convention on March 31, 2015 from 9 to 10am in our Multipurpose Room/cafeteria. Students will begin working in groups to develop their solutions. I will send home specific details for their at home work (making their display board and creating their prototypes). This will be the only special project homework I will send home this year. Please let me know if you have questions after I send home directions with students on February 23rd. While I don't require students to work on their invention over spring break, it does provide an additional week for students who may be struggling or have taken on a really challenging project. 

I'd like to thank everyone for supporting our donation drive for the Ohio Wildlife Center (OWC)! Gillian visited from OWC and discussed animal classifications of mammals, birds, and reptiles; omnivores, herbivores, and carnivores; diurnal and nocturnal; as well as habitat and human impact. This visit provided us with a great starting point for our future life science unit (and a nice Valentine's Day).

ground hog

screech owl

o'possum

red tailed hawk

red tailed hawk

fox snake

Important Dates & Reminders 

Important 3rd Quarter Dates & Reminders

February 16, 2015 - No School Presidents' Day
February 17 & 18, 2015 - Math PARCC (make-ups will follow later in the week) Please have students arrive at Windermere no later than 8:00am as we will need to get started right away. Thank you!
February 23, 2015 - English Language Arts State PBA
February 23, 2015 - AASCD

March 9 through 13, 2015 - PTO Book Sale
March 17, 2015 - 3rd Grade Musical
March 20 through 27, 2015 - No School Spring Break
March 31, 2015 - Invention Convention Open House 9 to 10am

April 2, 2015 - End of third quarter
April 3, 2015 - No School
April 6, 2015 - No School, teacher grading day

Important 4th Quarter Dates & Reminders

April 8, 2015 - Early Dismissal/Teacher Development at 1pm
April 9, 2015 - Spring Picture Day
April 13 through May 22, 2015 - District Writing Diagnostic Testing
April 14, 2015 - Progress Reports sent home
April 21 through 22, 2015 - English Language Arts State EOY
April 22, 2015 - Ohio Reading Achievement Assessment
April 24, 2015 - Kid Fest
April 28, 2015 - Film Festival of Book Recommendations (Tremont Library 7-8pm)
April 28 through 29, 2015 - Math State EOY

May 1 through 29, 2015 - STAR Reading and Math Diagnostic Testing
May 9, 2015 - Wish Run
May 25, 2015 - No School Memorial Day

June 1, 2015 - Field Day
June 3, 2015 - End of fourth quarter/Last day for students, Classroom parties 12:05 till 1:05pm

June 9, 2015 - Progress Reports sent home