What a fantastic week. We have started rearing monarchs, continued creating pieces of writing, and jumped into the world if arrays in math.
We had a very exciting day in Wednesday...that was the day that our monarch caterpillars arrived! We have been working hard to keep them safe, fed, and clean. We will be watching these animals develop alongside an investigation of life cycles. Soon enough these caterpillars will become chrysalis', and eventually they will emerge as butterflies. These grainy photographs are of some students 'pillars.
During literacy time we have been working on creating our own pieces of writing, as well as working on "the great writers project." Our own pieces are based on experiences that we have had in our lives, and focussed on times when we felt strong emotions. We are using these experiences to write personal narratives as well as to create original works of fiction! The great writers project is an undertaking that allows students to create their own copy of some if our favorite books! Students have chosen books that they e joy reading and are working to recreate the words and illustrations from the original.
In math, we have been working with arrays. Arrays are squares or rectangles that we can use to represent multiplication expressions. For each rectangle or square, the external dimensions are the expression. For example: a rectangle that is four tile long and two tiles wide represents the expression 4 x 2.
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| What expression is represented by this array? |
As always, have a great weekend, and if you need to check with me please feel free to email (dwillard@u32.org) or call me at school at 223-7936 x 318.
Hey all, this is our first blog post of the year! This will be a place to get information about our class, as well as information about our school, and some photos!
So many of you have returned our school forms, and thank you for that!
We had a fantastic first week of school. We have already begun a bit of work, as well as building our community! We have been practicing classroom routines, school wide routines and so much more. This year, as we begin our year we are also create our own classroom norms. Our norms for this year have focussed on our feelings. We will be working to ensure that everyone in our class can have the feelings that they like to have. There will be a photo of these norms embedded in this blog!
We have also begun P.B.I.S. in our school. This is a system to support all of the positive behavior that we see in our school so often. The tenets of this system are: Safe, Responsible, Respectful. Throughout the year you will hear about the celebrations we are having to celebrate the positivity within our school.
As this is our first post it will be brief, and I will be adding blog posts during the week...that is to say that this blog will be updated on Fridays as well as throughout the week!
If for any reason during the year you would like to contact me about anything please do! The easiest mode for me is email, and my address is: dwillard@u32.org. If the phone is better for you my room phone number is: 223-7936 x 318. Also this information will be coming home today in hard-copy form, and if you would rather my communications always come home in hard-copy please let me know so I can arrange it!
Thanks,
Dave
We had another exciting week of learning. We have continued work on our non- fiction books, practiced large number subtraction strategies, made lung models, tested the capacity of our own lungs, watched beautiful shadow puppet plays, and so much more.
As we are approaching the end of the year, we are working hard on mastering the skills of subtraction. We are practicing different strategies for completing multi-digit subtraction, and well as, working on automaticity with common subtraction facts.
Students are working on creating non-fiction books and the work they are putting onto these is amazing. The are adding different text features, as well as, interesting facts about the human body. These books should be coming home late in the week. It is important to know that many of the sentences students are using in these books are "borrowed" from some non fiction source books, so be ready for some complex reading! Also this "borrowing" skill will allow us to work on crafting our own information from source books early next year.
Speaking of next year, I am very excited about looping with this class. The loop model will allow us to pick up right where we left off, as well as, allow students to feel comfortable from day one. Over this year we have really created a kind and caring community in our class, and while we will allow benefit from a refreshing summer, the community we have will afford a quick start in the fall. If you have any specific questions about this looping model, please contact me so we can chat on the phone, or, preferably, meet in person to discuss it.
On Friday we tested the capacity of our lungs. We did this by displacing water out of containers. This is such an interesting experiment for third graders, and they are always amazed at the capacity of their lungs. Below are some "happy-snaps" of the action:
Man, so interesting, fun, and messy...there was lots of learning, and LOTS of water sloshing.
We also had the opportunity to go see some shadow puppets in Mrs. Knoedler's literacy classes. These show used well know tales, and brought them to life with shadow puppets. They are fantastic and difficult to describe, so I will default to some photos.
These stories featured expert narration from students, as well as masterful puppeteering!
Thanks so much for checking our blog, and, as always if you have any questions,or would just like to chat drop me a line so we can set up a time. -Dave
