Mighty Monday!

I do hope that everyone had a great weekend!  Though this week is a four day week for the children, we will still have much to accomplish.

The Geography projects are wonderful!  We haven't been able to get to everyone yet to share. But I can tell that every child is so proud of their work and so complimentary of the work of others. The children are getting a taste of presenting to the class. They are sharing two of their favorite physical features and explaining how they came up with the ideas for the finished product. They also have to share one thing that they learned while completing the project. Many have learned how to cut and paste, find pictures using Google, and different ways to illustrate the geographic feature. We will finish sharing tomorrow and the projects will be on display for you on Thursday.

The children were assigned new lunch tables today. This month they are mixed in with other third grade friends from other classes. We hope that this will encourage new friendships outside their own classroom.

This week in Spelling the children have a group of words that have a Soft and Hard C and G sound. The words are listed on the side of the blog and can be found on Spelling City under that name. Tonight they are to write the words in ABC order on the sheet that was given to them in class. The 50 point spelling contract last week seemed to really pay off. I had very good spelling grades as a whole from the class. I will tell you that I am not going to expect the children to do that kind of a project every week. But it will come home again from time to time and the children will be expected to choose projects that they haven't done.

This week for the at home Reading Comprehension, the children are to compare two different styles of poetry. We discussed what couplets are in poetry and that when they are asked about the similarities and differences of each poem, they should focus on the main idea or the overall theme of the poem and not necessarily the words.

We have begun our Personal Narrative unit in Writing Workshop. Today we worked on our list: "Memories that are close to my heart!" I encouraged the children to ask you for perhaps a couple of special events or moments that perhaps the children have forgotten about that they can add to their page. We discussed how this list which includes special events and people could help springboard their writing in the near future. So better to have many ideas from which to choose.

In Math this week we are working on strategies to help with organizing information for word problems. Strategies include  the Part-Part Total , the Start-Change-End and the  Quantity-Quantity-Difference method. So far the children seem to understand how these strategies can be helpful when solving word problems. Two new terms today were deposit and withdraw. They had to understand these words in order to know what operation to use while solving the problem. This in turn led to an interesting conversation about ATM machines. Smiles! We read a Math book on Friday called, Only One. The children are going to create their own page for our class book. The format is :
There may be __________.
But there is only one __________.
This is a great book written by Marc Harshman. I will often include a math story along with out class lessons that do reinforce a math skill in some way.

We are continuing our reading of Charlotte's Web. Tomorrow we will be reading Chapter 6. The children are responsible for vocabulary words and writing responses in their reading journals. We are also keeping a story map going that outlines characters, events, problems, and solutions. Our class discussions are based on the information that the children find while they are reading. This week, we will begin the art of "sticky notes" where the children will make connection to the text. These connections fall into three categories. (text to self,  text to text, and text to the real world) Please remember to sign the weekend reading comprehension activity that comes home.

Last week we completed our Inspiration Maps on FLorida and our Simple Machines posters, thanks to Comic Life. The children have learned how to use these computer tools to share information that they have learned. We will continue to use this knowledge throughout the year with partner projects.

The Science Water Experiments are due on Wednesday. The children were to choose two and complete each experiment using the attached format of the Scientific Method. Each project should be completed on a separate sheet of paper. We are completing our "Bouncing Ball"experiment this week.

I did assign that Stages 4,5, and 6 should be completed this week. Please make sure that your child dates when they have completed that particular stage. You need to sign as well to verify that your child did the stage in its entirety.

I sent out a couple of group emails last week. Please let me know if you did not receive a single email. I entered all the email addresses that were given to me at the beginning of the year. A few emails did return to me as undeliverable. If you are one of these people that did not receive a single email from me last week, please write your email address down in your child;s agenda or email me from your home so that I may double check the address. Thank you very much!

I look forward to meeting with you all on Thursday. I wil be discussing your child's progress, work and study habits, and behavior. I will do my best to stay on time. To help with that, you may want to pre-think any questions or areas of concern and having them written down so that we can make sure we cover as much information as we can.

We will miss Library check out on Thursday due to Conference Day. The children can return their book anytime this week and I will make sure it gets back to the library. We will just have to wait till next week to check out new books. We were scheduled to have a library lesson. I will see if by chance we can find another time to have our lesson. The children really enjoy going to library!

This week begins our ART rotation. The children will go to art class on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon for the next three weeks!

I do plan on having the children order books from one of the book clubs. However, I have not received one yet that includes the types of books that I would like to have my children buying and reading. I expect that one will arrive soon and I will send it home for your "shopping pleasure'.

Please make sure that your child is following dress code when coming to school. Pants or shorts with loops need belts and the shirts need to be tucked in when they arrive in the mornings. In class we call this "dressing for success".