Weekly Update

Reading Workshop:

This week students learned reading strategies to help them pronounce tricky words by chunking multi-syllable words into smaller parts and looking for words they know inside the tricky word.  Students also learned how to use context clues to solve words that they are able to pronounce but do not understand.  

Students show their understanding of the reading strategies by writing about how they use them on IDR task sheets.

Students are also beginning to meet with their teachers for goal-setting conferences.  All students are given a recommended color code that corresponds to a reading level in our classroom library when choosing "just right" books.  Based on what we have noticed when reading with them so far this year, we are also giving each student a reading goal to work on for the first card marking. 

Students keep track of their color code (reading level) in their reading folder.

Students' goals are recorded on a Reading Goals sheet that is kept in their 3rd Grade Goals folder.

Writing Workshop:

Students are continuing to improve their narrative writing by making the beginning of their story (the "lead") more engaging to an audience.  We taught students 4 different types of leads this week: Talking Lead, Action Lead, Snapshot Lead, and Sound Effect Lead.  Students loved sharing their leads with their classmates in our Author Share Chair.

Math:
Students took their first fluency fact quizzes this week.  Be sure to continue helping your child study his or her facts at home!  The fact triangles that came home in the fluency folder last week are a great way to help your child study multiplication and division facts at the same time!  This week in class, we reviewed the 5s, 2s, 10s, and 9s with additional story problem practice.  The 3s multiplication and division facts were also introduced.

Social Studies:
We finished up our "Where in the World is Troy?" geography unit and are now preparing for the test on Tuesday, September 30th.  A study guide came home with your child on Wednesday along with the corrected geography book that they completed in class.  A digital copy of the study guide was also sent to you via email last week.  Please help your child prepare for the test at home by completing the labeling practice that was attached to the study guide.  Below are photos of students completing a scavenger hunt of Troy using a large city map.

Faisal helps the class complete a sort where students had to differentiate between continents, countries, and states.

All-Star of the Week:
Elexis was our first All-Star of the Week!  She loved sharing special items from her sharing sack including a stuffed turtle that was given to her by her grandparents.  The stuffed turtle represented a real turtle whose trek we were able to track on the Internet.  She also shared great family photos and brought her favorite book, Wacky Wednesday, to school for a read aloud.  Her mom wrote a very creative and thoughtful letter to the class called "The ABC's of Elexis."  It helped us learn lots of new and fun things about her!

Mom and sister joined Elexis as her Lunch Buddies at school.

Classmates wrote compliments for Elexis that were made into a special book for her.

Elexis's photos, parent letter, and favorite book are displayed in the classroom for the week.

Weekly Update

Reading Workshop
After learning about the last 2 fiction genres, Traditional Literature (TL) and Mystery (M), students took a short quiz to see if they could identify a book's genre based on the characteristics of the book and a summary given by the teacher.  Students are always asked to use genre codes when recording books in their reading log.  Students were also introduced to the 3 nonfiction genres: Informational (I), Biography (B) and Autobiography (AB). 

Traditional Literature includes folk tales, legends, tall tales, myths, fables, and fairy tales.

Example of the genre code quiz

For the remaining lessons of our first unit in reading, we will be reading The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo and using it as a Mentor Text to help teach students specific reading strategies.

Students turn and talk with their reading partner to discuss what is happening in the novel.

Writing Workshop
Our lessons this week focused on helping students make their writing more descriptive.  We used fiction picture books with descriptive language to help students hear what good, descriptive writing sounds like.  These mentor texts were helpful as students attempted to use the 5 senses in their writing while adding stronger verbs and more descriptive adjectives.

We used Owl Moon by Jane Yolen as a mentor text for descriptive language.

Math
This week we continued to work on multiplication and division word problems.  Students need to be able to solve the word problems with a math drawing and an equation.  We also discussed equations with variables, such as 9 x n = 18 so n = 2.  Finally we learned a trick using our hands to help us with our 9 facts for multiplication and division.  Check out the video below from YouTube to understand our 9s trick.

On Friday, a math fact fluency folder came home with your child.  This folder explained how we do multiplication and division fact practice in our classroom and what we expect you to be doing at home.  Students will take quizzes every Tuesday and Thursday in class.  All students will start with 5s multiplications.  You can use the progress chart in the folder to keep track of what level your child is on and what list of facts he or she should be studying each week.  Below are photos of students using fact triangles in class to study their multiplication and division facts.  You can find a set of these fact triangles in the math fact fluency folder that your child can use when practicing at home!

Word Study
We completed our first unit of word study last week.  All students were given 15 words to study and a word sort to complete at home.  The test was given on Friday, and it will be returned on Monday after students highlight the high frequency words that they got correct in their word study folder and rewrite any pattern words that they misspelled.  During the week, students were divided into small groups to practice their assigned patterns by playing word study games and doing activities that helped them study and sort words by their patterns.

Social Studies
We are in the middle of our first social studies unit called "Where in the World is Troy, Michigan?" In this geography unit, students are learning about the location of Troy in relation to its greater surroundings. Essentially, we started in outer space and are zooming in to find the city of Troy. Along the way, students will learn about the 7 continents in the world, the 3 countries on the continent of North America, the 50 states in the U.S.A., the 5 regions of our country, our state, our county, and finally the wonderful city of Troy.

Weekly Update

Reading Workshop
Students have learned the organization of our classroom library.  We have talked about how to choose just right books and fill their book boxes with books which interest them.  We have also begun to review fiction genres.  We discussed the characteristics of realistic fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, and science fiction.  Talk partners worked together to read a specific genre and record three characteristics which made their story either realistic fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, or science fiction.

Writing Workshop
Students decorated the outside covers of their writer's notebook and began writing in their notebooks as well.  Our first unit will be writing personal narratives.  We discussed how writers often write personal narratives about special people and places.  Students brainstormed special people and places in their lives and created lists of small moments or memorable experiences associated with those special people and places.

Students show off their personalized Writer's Notebooks!

Math
Our first math unit focuses on multiplication and division.  Students are learning how to solve multiplication and division word problems.  They are writing equations and drawing pictures, arrays, and equal shares drawings to show how they've solved the problems.  Students have learned multiplication and division is related.  Therefore, if they know 5x3=15 then they know 15/5=3.

Science
We have started our first unit in which students will be investigating a very important substance, water. During the first investigation students placed individual drops of water on four different surfaces (wax paper, aluminum foil, paper towel, and white paper).  Through their observations they learned water can be absorbed by some materials and beads up on other materials.  Students also investigated surface tension, which causes water to stick together and try to form into a ball.  They worked in small groups to investigate how many drops of water they could fit on top of a penny.  Students observed the drops of water beginning to form a dome on top of the penny.  They also learned that soap weakens surface tension.

Curriculum Night Room 13 Trailer

Some of you asked if we would put the little movie we showed at the beginning of Curriculum Night on the blog.  Here it is!!