301 Class Blog 9/22/19

Dear Families,

Welcome to our class blog! This year we will be using the blog to communicate about anything you should know: our current units of study, upcoming events, and exciting news from the classroom. We hope you find that the blog connects you to our class community.

This week we are continuing to get to know one another and establish our rules and routines. We are having ongoing conversations about attentive listening, which will be a focus throughout the year as our third graders grow and mature. Right now we are working on making eye contact with the speaker and remembering that one person speaks at a time during class discussions. You can support this work at home by using similar norms during family dinners or discussions.

In Writing Workshop, we are just beginning our Personal Narrative unit. This past week the kids spent time listing true story ideas that had some special significance to them– maybe the first time they rode the Wonder Wheel, when they looked for rocks with Grandpa, or the time they lost a favorite item. Later in the week our writers settled on one idea to make into a story. This week we will be working on turning our ideas into a story.

Last week we finished our first chapter book read aloud, Stone Fox, by John Reynolds Gardiner. During read aloud time, we stop periodically to work on reading comprehension strategies, including retelling the important parts, describing characters, and making predictions based on what we know so far, what we know about how the characters usually act, and what we know about how stories usually go in general. During independent reading time, we are checking in with kids individually to make sure they are reading just-right books. At home, make sure your children can give you a quick retelling of what happened in the books they are reading. A quick check would be: Who is in the part you just read? Where is your character? What is your character doing? If your child is not bringing their book baggie home each night, please let me know.

In Math, we are setting up our norms and routines by working independently and collaboratively on a variety of logic and computation problems. This week we will focus on a coin investigation, where the process of the work is much more important than just “getting the right answer”. We will talk about the value of working systematically, in an organized manner, and how to communicate our thinking in a way that others can easily understand. The coin homework on Wednesday evening will give you a small taste of what we are doing in class. 

Finally, we have a couple of reminders: 

• Please remember that candy and sugary or caffeinated drinks are not allowed in school. This includes Gatorade and Snapple products. 

Thank you for helping us have a great start to the school year! I’m including a few pictures from last weeks math work.

Mr. O’Hickey