There have been some additional homework assignments that have come home this week. A "writing homework" packet went home yesterday for students to complete this week. Capital letters and punctuation seem to have "disappeared" in our 3rd grade classroom! So we are practicing this week at home to ensure we remember to use capitals and punctuation each time we write! The packet is to be turned in on Tuesday, January 17th. Homework has not been consistently handed in the past few weeks. Please make sure students are completing and turning in their homework. This is their responsibility! 

The second assignment that went home was an optional homework project. This project reinforces an important 3rd grade skill, elapsed time. Although this project is optional I encourage students to try it out! The project is due January 30th. The optional project for next month will be a writing research project! Stay tuned! 

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and an enjoyable week off with family. I am happy to be back and ready for the 2nd half of the school year! I sincerely apologize for being MIA the past month. The holidays and the chaos of parties, etc. going on really left me with limited time to blog. I am back to frequent updates and hope you are still reading them! 

We have started the new year off with some new units in 3rd grade. The third graders took their pre-assessment for Unit 3 today. I use this assessment to see what they already know and where the unit will take each student. Below is the link to the Family Overview Letter, which is very helpful in explaining the objectives of the unit. I encourage you to read the letter and understand what your child will be learning over the next month. 

Unit 3 Family Overview Letter

We started our new reading unit: Character Studies. Students shopped for new books and filled their book bins with plenty of new reading! During this unit our class read aloud is Because of Winn Dixie (one of my favorites)! Readers have learned that when they choose new books to read they are gaining new friends! Students will play close attention to characters throughout this unit and think about what they say, do and think and grow some sophisticated ideas about each character. In our first lesson we got to know Opal the The Preacher. We discussed what we knew (what the author told us) and then took that information and made inferences. From this, we are already growing some ideas about our new characters! Take a look at some of the students shopping and filling bins!

We are at the end of our Informational Writing Unit and almost ready to start another exciting unit! The students have been editing and revising before moving on to their publication! Students have been given a checklist tool to help them edit their work. They are on the hunt for capital letters, correct punctuation and properly spelled words! They have written some stellar books that will certainly teach you something you don't know!

We wrapped up our Social Studies unit and have just begun our Science Unit: Matter. Students reviewed Matter and the three different states of matter: solid, liquid, and gas. Students used a flip chart in their notebooks to write some examples of each one. As we move on, we will learn about the particles that make up matter and how matter changes! An exciting unit with some fun discovery lessons!

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!