First of all, I attended the Silent Auction on Friday night and I just want to thank you for donating to our classroom basket...Mrs. Godfroy did such a nice job putting it together and it was all for a great cause...our PTA does SO many wonderful things for our school and your support makes that possible.
Secondly...if you're looking for something to do this coming Wednesday, March 16th...the UES staff is playing the Centerville staff in a friendly (but competitive) basketball game at Urbana High School...and to enter, all you have to do is bring an item for the Urbana Food Bank. Doors open at 6pm and the game starts at 6:30pm. AND...I will be playing in this game and would LOVE to have my own cheering squad...so bring your kids, your food items, and come enjoy a night out with the community! Light concessions will be sold with all proceeds going to the Urbana Food Bank. Hope to see you there!!!
BYOD is in full swing in our classroom...and oh the things we can do now that we all have devices at our fingertips...it's truly unbelievable...take a look...
RESEARCH and DRAFTING....
WRITING GROUPS DISCUSSING THEIR OPINION PIECES...
Right now in Language Arts we are covering a lot of different things...we recently finished reading a fiction story in Storyworks and worked with close reading and figuring out the theme of the story. Right along side that unit we have been working on our biography studies...and boy, are these kids working hard. They have each chosen a person who in some way has made an impact on our country. As a class we wrote questions that helped guide our research...things that we thought others would want to know about them. They have used those questions and researched this person thoroughly using books and many different research portals on our Media Center page. They are using an organizational folder and envelopes system to make sure they have enough information before they begin drafting their own biographies. These biographies will be written in the first person. They must know A LOT about their person because in April they will portray this famous person in The Wills' Wax Museum. Look for info coming home tomorrow in their Take Home folders about this very special day when you can come visit and learn about all of these famous people. Needless to say, they are very motivated on many levels...they picked someone THEY were interested in and they know they are working to inform an audience (YOU) about why they matter to our country.
Over the past two weeks we have focused on AREA and PERIMETER in Math. Tomorrow we will only be focusing on PI as tomorrow is 3.14 (March 14th). However, come Tuesday, we will be all about fractions for the next couple weeks. I am using a web program titled TenMarks and you can keep an eye on how your child is faring with all of these math standards. The letter I originally sent home has a parent login and you are able to see what assignments they've completed, whether they've completed them on time, whether they've needed help from the hints or videos, and how they scored. These are all of the things I look at when I go into the site to view the reports.
Something else we have been doing are PARCC practice tests. NOT because they need to practice a test...but because they will be taking these tests ONLINE this year and they need to practice using the tools and seeing how to manipulate the inner workings of this particular test. However, while they worked with the Math portion two different times, they realized that just knowing their math concepts is not going to be enough...they have to READ carefully and they have to WORK SLOWLY to solve the problems. We all agreed that the math skills aren't that hard, but the problems and directions make it hard. Its been kind of eye opening for them! The thing I like about the practice tests is once they're finished they can view how they scored AND they can go back and make corrections. If you want to take a look at these tests, the links are on Google Classroom...have your child show you! We will work with the LA section this week so they can see how the stories are laid out and how they are asked to work between two different tabs to answer questions sometimes. They haven't seen the LA part yet, so that will be eye opening as well. We don't want them to be shell shocked come testing time!
We finished up our unit on Rocks, Soil and Fossils and are now moving into the next social studies unit on economics. This is a great unit where the kids learn all about production, supply and demand, limited resources, opportunity cost, etc. We will learn all of the important concepts involved in this unit and then take it further by developing our own companies, creating a product, advertising that product, and ultimately, selling our products in hopes of making a profit. It is a very fun time watching my third graders become entrepreneurs!
As seen and mentioned above, your kids are writing opinion pieces...now, we all know they have opinions...but communicating those opinions well with good, strong reasons and examples is no easy feat! We are working on bold beginnings and strong endings in order to make our points. I love some of the things they've decided to write about and am excited for you to see their finished pieces...but don't hold your breath...the process is lengthy!
They are being asked to write weekly on Google Classroom...and I am grading those entries...mainly for capitalization and punctuation. These grades will be applied to their overall writing grade. By the middle of third grade, their punctuation and capitalization should be strong. I am stressing the importance of REREADING for editing and revising.
Last...please send in your useful recyclables...we are doing a STEM project as a class reward and we will also need them for our Entrepreneurs unit, so anything you have is appreciated.
Thanks to all who have offered to bring PIES tomorrow...it's always fun to end PI DAY with PIE.
As always, email me with questions.
Hope your weekend was fun!
