I apologize for not having an update recently, but it has been a bit busy! We have begun new units in reading, writing and math. Students have enjoyed "switching gears" in each of our units and learning new skills! 

We have just begun Unit 2-Introduction to Multiplication. The students have been using repeated addition to understand the relationship between addition nd multiplication. We have been solving word problems with various operations and steps. As we continue into the unit we will work arrays to help us understand multiplication. We are beginning to master some early multiplication facts and students have been practicing every morning! Please click the link below to read the family overview letter!  

Unit 2 Overview

We have begun our Reading and Writing Informational unit, which has been a huge hit! Readers have filled their book bins with some interesting nonfiction reading topics. They also have been partner reading with some different articles, some extremely silly and gross! As we continue to move into this unit, we will spend a lot of time reading sections and looking for the main idea. This is sophisticated work for 3rd graders! 

They are carrying all they are learning to their writing and choosing expert topics. Students will choose an expert topic and write all they know about it. We have begun to brainstorm, share ideas and rehearse with our writing partners. We have fashion experts, soccer, basketball, dogs and many, many more! 

We visited the Makerspace this week and explored with the Little Bits. Students learned about power, signals, input, output in order to create noises, movements, lights, etc. with their Little Bits. We loved it! 

Mrs. Bennett taught a Social Skills lesson that focused on using self-talk to ignore distractions. Students did a fabulous job of using their focus and attention skills while ignoring distractions and passing around cups of water!! Each day we remember that we can ignore distractions and use self-talk to help us make better choices.

Our Social Studies Market is open and ready for business! Students enjoyed being producers and consumers this week and watching their wallets grow! Students are working hands on to understand goods and services and how the economy works. The students are super economists and really watching their profit! It has been amazing to see the learning going on while they are doing something they enjoy. Some students are recognizing the "supply and demand" and raising their prices, some are lowering their prices to get more customers. They each paid me their $5.00 rent for the month! Here they are offering their goods and services!

We will have our Harvest Party in our classroom on Tuesday, November 22 at 1:00pm. We will have fun activities, games, crafts and some delicious snacks! Please contact me immediately if you have any concerns about snacks at our party! 

The Book Fair will run from November 30-December 2. Our 3rd-grade class will visit the Book Fair on Thursday, December 1 from 10:00-10:20. Please make sure money is labeled in an envelope! 

The Coin Drive has kicked off at Crystal Lake School! Each year we run the Coin Drive to collect money for the Crystal Lake Food Pantry. The Coin Drive is running from November 18th-December 16th. Our school is working to beat our goal from last year, $1,800.00! We have already filled up two containers and earned our first school spirit day, "Extra Recess"! 

This week students came home with a flyer explaining the Cookies for Camouflage fundraiser. You may wish to bake/buy cookies for local troops this holiday season. The cookies will be packaged and sent to active military personnel who are unable to come home for the holidays. Next week students will be making cards in school to send to the troops. Please note that this is completely voluntary. If you wish to bring in cookies, please send them by Wednesday, November 23. Please contact me with any further questions! 

Conferences are fast approaching! They will be November 30-December 2. Please check your email for the Google Form link to sign up for a conference. Thank you to all of those parents who have signed up already! I look forward to meeting you. Also, just a reminder that the early dismissal time has changed to 12:00pm on early release days! 

Parent-teacher conferences are quickly approaching. Conferences are scheduled for November 30-December 2. Students will be dismissed at 12:00 on these days. Please check your emails! I have sent an email with a link to the conference sign-up. The link can also be found below! I look forward to seeing you soon! 

Conference Sign-Up

Happy November! We have a lot going on in our classroom! We've had birthdays, Halloween, books, wallets and all sorts of stuff going on! 

Students worked hard all week to fancy up and finish their published small moment piece. We will be celebrating all of our hard work with a writing celebration tomorrow. Students will have a chance to share their stories and any challenges or proud moments! Writing and any other work from this unit will be coming home next week with a letter. We are moving into Informational Writing for our next unit! 

We started our new math unit-Introduction to Multiplication. Students have been introduced to beginning concepts of multiplication. Our focus at the beginning of this unit is to help students see the relationship between multiplication and repeated addition. We look at our repeated addition equations and we recognize that we are adding a certain number a specific number of times. For example, 4+4+4 is the same thing as 4 x 3. Students have spent a few days figuring out how much groups of stamps cost! 

We can't forget about Halloween! We had a fun time using CANDY CORNS and pretzels as math manipulatives. Students solved word problems that involved getting witches to their parties and figuring out how many could fit on a broom. They loved it and showed such sophisticated mathematical thinking! 

We have concluded our reading unit and finished Stone Fox. The ending had us feeling A LOT of different emotions. The author really took a twist at the end of the story! Readers talked about the different emotions we have when we read. Before we move on to our Informational Reading Unit we had to celebrate all of our hard work! Students celebrated by creating their own bookmarks with strategies. Students added strategies that help them be a stronger reader. We are going to laminate them and they will be able to see their strategies each time they open their book! 

The next exciting thing  is our Social Studies project. Students have been studying Ellington, past and present. In this unit we also learned what it means to be an economist and we brainstormed some of the goods and services offered right here in Ellington! We have decided to open up a "Mock Economy" in our very own classroom. Students chose to work independently or in a group and they have pitched a business plan to me. Students are either offering a good or a service to their classmates. Each student is starting off with $100 in their fancy, homemade wallets! They will be required to pay rent to me each month and will have to pay to start up their business. There will be time when the market is open and students will be able to act as both producers and consumers. Students are extremely excited about this and I can't wait to see all the fun AND learning as we open our market each week! Ask your child about their good or service! 
Here they are making their wallets and planning their business. They came out SO good!

We will be having our Harvest Party on November 22 at 1:00pm. If you are interested in volunteering, and I haven't emailed you, please send me an email ASAP! 

Friday, October 28 is a Crystal Lake School Spirit Day! Wear your CLS spirit wear or colors (blue, white, orange)! Can't wait to see you! 

Below is an overview of Unit 2. This is the next unit we will be learning in 3rd grade. I encourage you to take a peek at it. There are some friendly examples for parents to understand the what/how of our upcoming unit! 

Unit 2 Overview

Good evening! I hope you all are having a wonderful week. A quick update on the learning in Room 165! We are coming to the end of all of our current units! So exciting! We just took our Unit 1 Post-Assessment for our current math unit. Be on the lookout for Unit 1 assessments/work coming home in the next week. We will be beginning Unit 2 in the next few days. This unit will introduce multiplication. Students will take a Unit 2 Pre-Assessment this week to show their understanding of the unit skills. We are very excited! 

Our Number Corner has been really exciting this month! We have been observing an interesting pattern of shapes this month. Students have learned about different kinds of quadrilaterals (parallelogram, trapezoid). Some important vocabulary this month has been: parallel, congruent, polygon. Students have also learned about right angles and lines of symmetry. Each day we look for these important attributes of each shape. We have some fantastic mathematical observations each day! We are also very excited to watch how many liters we are collecting. Each day we collect 250mL and add it to our total liter. So far we have collected 4 liters (4,000mL). Next week we will have a whole new Number Corner for November! :) 

Our readers are wrapping up their first reading unit. We have spent the last week working on predicting, retelling and tackling tricky words! We all know what it's like to be stuck on a tricky word. We have some great strategies in our toolbox that we can reach for! Our next unit will switch gears a bit and we will begin reading non-fiction texts! 

We have had a lot of fun studying Ellington. We spent a few days observing different kinds of maps that showed Ellington in different ways. We looked at a county map, a state map, Google map, zoning map and a farmland map. All of these maps represented Ellington as a town. Students learned that Ellington is in the county of Tolland. 

We are so excited to be celebrating all of the learning over the past several weeks. We are growing each day!

Happy Friday! Although it was a short week we had a lot going on in Room 165! Today we had our Fire Prevention Assembly. The Crystal Lake Fire Department came to teach us about being safe if there were ever a fire. We also got to check out the fire truck! Our classmates, Julia and Jillian were the winners of the Fire Prevention Poster Contest! Congratulations! 

Not only did we have Fire Prevention, but we had Mr. Greenwood visit our classroom as the Mystery Reader. He came in his police uniform to teach us all about being a police officer. We got to meet his D.A.R.E lion, ask questions and learn about the duties of a police officer. Thank you, Mr. Greenwood for teaching us! 

Our readers are growing each day! We learned to stop and give ourselves a comprehension check to be sure we are understanding our Just Right books. We also learned that we need to be aware of the thinking our book is telling us to do- should we be envisioning or thinking about information the book is giving us? This helps us understand the text. We got to read a few more chapters of Stone Fox and we are left at a cliffhanger! Will Grandfather survive? Will he talk? The suspense is killing us!

Today we did our Fact Frenzy Friday! Mathematicians used their addition strategies to work on their fact fluency. Students saw their growth from their last fact frenzy! How exciting! Keep practicing those facts!

We've also learned about the word, efficient. We use it a lot during math as we are becoming efficient mathematicians. We want to get to the answer in the most efficient ways! Ask your child about their efficient strategies. 

HAVE A MARVELOUS WEEKEND!