October has flown by and so has the first 9 weeks of school! I am working on updating all grades-should be finished tomorrow night, so you may want to check home access. This next grading period is only 7 weeks due to holidays, so we will be busy, especially with International Children's Week coming up in November. Our class will be studying Germany since Mrs. Huffor, our librarian assistant and parent, is eager to be the representative from our class-she has lots to share with students about Germany. I would love for any other parents who have lived in other countries to be a guest speaker in our class to teach us about that country. Let me know if you would are willing to prepare a short presentation for the class. This week is red ribbon week. Please refer to the flyer sent out last week about the activities for the week. Monday is wear read day. See below for a glimpse of what we are learning this week. Reading: We are starting a new unit on expository text. Students will explore nonfiction text features to gain an understanding of how each features helps the reader comprehend. Every student will read nonfiction books during independent reading and discuss the text features with their reading partner. I'll read several nonfiction texts as read alouds to model how text features aid in comprehension. Writing: We are almost finished with our personal narratives-just a little bit of editing left for most kiddos! It has taken a long time, but I am so pleased with the stories the kiddos have written. It is evident that they are applying what they have learned during our mini lessons-yay! Our next writing unit of study is expository writing, so this week we'll start reading like a writer, thinking about the craft of expository, and noticing what is looks like and sounds like. Also, I'll begin modeling the inquiry process in preparation of our upcoming research. Science: More matter this week! Students will plan and create a boat that will hold a specific amount of pennies without sinking. The boat will need to be able to make a complete circle in the container using magnetism. This is a new twist on our boat floating experiment, so we'll see how the magnet works out. Also, we will explore properties of matter using pumpkins and gourds! This was a huge hit last year! Who doesn't love a pumpkin! Later in the week students will begin exploring the states of matter. Math: I was impressed with how well the kiddos caught on to elapsed time last week. This week students will continue to solve problems involving elapsed time as a class, with a partner/group, and independently using number lines or t-charts as a strategy. Adding or subtracting time using an algorithm is NOT a strategy students should use as it can be very confusing and doesn't always work without having to recalculate the time. We'll begin counting money and solving problems involving money after a few more days of practicing elapsed time. Social studies: Since October is National Bullying Prevention month, I want to squeeze in a few lessons about bullying this week. I believe it is important to teach children how to identify bullying, how to react if being bullied, and how to stand up to bullying. PBL: Students have generated many, many questions about plastic that they believe we need to know as Earth Warriors. In November students will begin researching plastic, recycling, reusing, and reducing. Right now we are slowing building background knowledge. Last week we learned how recycling processing centers use various methods of sorting recyclables based on their physical properties, (we discussed this as part of our matter unit). Upcoming Events: October 28th- General PTA Meeting at 5:00 October 28th- Spelling Bee at 6:00 October 29th- Early Release Day October 31st- Austin Jazz performance for 3rd-5th October 31st: Reflection Entries are due Highlights from Last WeekUsing Google Classroom I try to incorporate technology whenever possible. I've recently learned about Google Classroom, so we tried it out this week. Mr. Weiler came in to teach the class how to highlight and make comments on an article about ocean trash using Notable PDF. The article was assigned in Google Classroom where there was a link to get to the article. Once students made a comment and practiced using tools, they "turned in" their assignment via Google Classroom. I can envision using this more in the future. Great way to go paperless! Investigating Matter Everyone had a great time exploring the physical properties of matter and using tools to measure temperature, mass, magnetism and the ability to sink or float. We learned that matter can be classified by its physical properties. Students discovered some interesting concepts during their investigations such as: not all metals are magnetic, plastic objects float, heavy objects don't always sink, many items found in nature float, and matter can be a liquid, solid, or gas. Don't forget... The PTA membership drive is still going!! Our class is lagging behind in our grade level competition. Please consider joining PTA-it is only $6.50 to join! The PTA helps fund activities such as International Children's Week, guest speakers, guest authors, and other special events. They also help purchase items for the school such as playground equipment for recess. Part of your membership dues stay right here to help our students. Remember, anyone can join and you don't have to volunteer. The PTA is also conducting the annual fundraising event. There is still time to make a donation! Classroom Updates Week of October 20-25 Reading: Students will finish reading their character study book. They will continue to infer character traits by noticing what the character says, does, and thinks. This week we'll learn that characters in fiction books usually change in some way as the plot unfolds. Writing: Our personal narrative drafts are written and students have started revising their stories. We'll finish revising and begin editing within the next few days. Students will learn how to peer edit as well as edit independently. The goal is to have our drafts ready to publish by Friday. Science: Last week we started our unit on matter. We observed various forms of plastic, (for our PBL), and determined the physical properties of those plastics such as color, size, shape, etc. This week students are investigating additional physical properties including mass, temperature, sink/float, magnetism, and texture. Also, we'll investigate the states of matter. Math: We are beginning a new unit on time and money. Students will practice telling time to the minute using online clocks and small analog clocks. We'll also practice using terms such as half past, quarter after, quarter till, quarter of, and am/pm. Once students have mastered time to the minute we will start elapsed time, a concept that can be challenging for some students. As always, we will use concrete objects, in this case, clocks, to gain conceptual knowledge of the concept first. PBL: As you know, our project based learning is off and running. Our yearlong study will be on conservation with an emphasis on the impact of plastic on earth. As Earth Warriors our mission is to learn all we can about conservation, especially related to plastic, and then educate others and inspire them to help make a change. Remember, learning related to our PBL will be incorporated into all subject areas as part of our regular units of study. Upcoming Events Tuesday, October 21st- Watch D.O.G.S Pizza Night for dads and kids @ 6:30 Friday, October 24th- Family Movie Night @ 6:30 Monday-Friday, October 27-October 31- National Bullying Prevention Month & Red Ribbon Week (see flyer) Tuesday, October 28th- Spelling Bee @ 6:00 Wednesday, October 29th- Early release Friday, October 31st- Reflections Due Friday, October 31st- Austin Jazz Assembly 3rd-5th Highlights from Last Week
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Highlights from last week! Making inferences in reading. This was a silent discussion the students had about photos. Each student wrote their inference along with evidence to support their thinking. Then they read other inferences made by classmates and responded to their comment. It was a great discussion that led students to think deeper. Guest speaker-Science guy Dr. Rick (He gave my hair a new look!)
Last week was a very busy week. The highlight was definitely making solar ovens and testing them out by cooking s'mores. It was amazing to watch the kiddos plan, collaborate, and create their solar ovens, (check my website for photos). They were all so excited to take the boxes outside, but even more excited to eat the s'mores. Can you believe the temperature inside most of the solar ovens was about 120 degrees after being outside in the sun for a little over an hour! Just enough time for the chocolate to melt and the marshmallow to get a bit gooey. Planning & Creating Solar Ovens to Learn about Heat Energy Some other exciting news is that we officially started our PBL on Friday! I am so excited about our topic, conservation, as I am a huge advocate for saving the earth. For an introduction to our project, I brought in a collection of trash, (don't worry, there was nothing yucky or dirty involved), for the students to sort into categories. I wanted them to notice how much plastic trash I had from just a few days of collecting. We discussed which items could be recycled, (almost all of them could since I didn't have yucky trash), and where they might go if they weren't recycled. Then we read part of a book called The Human Footprint,a book created by National Geographic that shows estimates of the amount various items are used by the average American. We were shocked to find out the average baby goes through over 3,700 diapers! Hopefully, the kiddos started thinking about how much trash we generate on a regular basis. Here's a glimpse of what we are learning this week... Classroom News Week of October 6-10 Reading: This week we'll focus on making inferences and elements of fiction. We'll also review strategies already learned this year as we read our Time for Kids magazine. Writing: We'll continue to write and draft personal narratives. Students will learn to sequence a story using a timeline and we'll practice writing strong leads. Also, students will work on capitalization and punctuation. Science: It's time to wrap up our energy unit and begin matter. We'll conduct our last investigation on mechanical energy, (this concept will be included in our matter unit as well), by making two different sized roto-copters. Students will have a test on energy this Wednesday. We'll review in class, however students may want to do the virtual investigation on Stemscopes as a review. I'll provide you with more information about that in another email. Math: Students will continue to develop efficient strategies for solving multi-step addition and subtraction problems. Additionally, we'll practice subtraction with regrouping and continue to work on rounding. This will be our last week for this unit. Next week we'll review and take our first math test which will cover place value, rounding, addition, and subtraction. I'll send a review sheet home later in the week. Upcoming Events We have two presentations this week, a Geography Gameshow and a science demonstration. Friday, October 10th- Cookout at our regular lunch time, 11:30 Monday, October 13th- Student holiday Coming up in November...International Children's Week |
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November 2019
Mrs. Swyers3rd Grade Teacher |