A short week and conferences!

We have been enjoying our first week back from February Break!  During this week we have revisited characters in Winn-Dixie, brushed up on some math facts, and focused most of our time on team-building.

We have worked together to move cups with rubber bands and string, build towers out of paper, and lift a very light ball without touching it!  This time of year is great for team building.  It allows our class to re-coalesce and be ready fro the exciting spring that is ahead!

Speaking of exciting upcoming events on Friday March, 31 we will be having our spring conferences.  Spring conferences are a bit different than fall ones as they are student-led.  This affords students the time and framework to reflect on their work throughout the year, and present this work to you.  For student-led conferences there are generally multiple conferences happening at once.  If you would like to have a little private chat with me during this time, it can easily be arranged.  Please also note that a sign up form is coming home this afternoon.  There is a link to the sign up sheet embedded on the "Conferences" page of our blog.  To sign up you can either return the paper copy, or send me an email, and I will get your name on the list (I will keep this list updated throughout the school week).

Have a great weekend!

-Dave

Just a few updates!

We are chuggin' along in third grade.  We are working on finishing up some final drafts of biographies, as well as investigating electricity and circuits!  As we move forward in math, we are working on finding products, as well as reviewing addition and subtraction of large numbers.  There are a few announcements below:

Food Drive, we have a food drive happening in our school.  We are collecting food to donate to the East Montpelier Food Shelf.

I Love East Montpelier Day!:

I Love East Montpelier Day~Wednesday, February 15th

It has become an annual tradition at EMES to have a day right around Valentine's Day to celebrate the great community that makes up the town of East Montpelier.  We will have a special lunch on this day, and guests are welcome to join students.  You do need to make a lunch reservation by contacting Susan in the kitchen at solander@u32.org or calling 223-7936 ext. 306.  Meals for adults will be $5.75.  There will be chicken stew and other wonderful goodies.  Here is the schedule for lunch times, in case you want to try to coordinate or plan for others. Students are invited to wear red/pink, etc. on this day to celebrate!

11:15 - 11:50      PK, K, 1

11:50 - 12:25      2, 3, 4

12:25 - 1:00        5-6

Celebration of Learning!:

On Thursday February 23 we will have a celebration of learning in our school starting at 6:00 p.m.  Please come and check out the hard work your students have been engaged in so far this year!

-Dave

Reflecting on the week and looking forward to the rest of the year.

This week we have worked hard to increase our conceptual understanding of multiplication.  We have been working with the idea that all multiplication expressions can be represented by a rectangle, with the product of this expression being represented by the area of said rectangle.  We are also working on building the foundational skills needed to move forward our knowledge of multiplication.  This weekend you will notice that your student has brought home their math notebooks to practice the table of 5.  Many of the ladders on these notebooks have a few asterisks next to certain factors, these are the ones your student should focus on the most.  Please take few minutes a few times a day to practice these with your student.

We also have been working with biographies.  We have read biographies of civil rights leaders from our history, and yesterday did some group work to summarize the lives of some of these great leaders.  We are looking forward investigating biographies of some people of our choosing in the coming weeks, and we will be working on researching and writing about the people that we choose.

Also, looking forward, we are preparing for a unit on gardening and food systems this spring.  We will be starting some seedlings in our classroom, watching them grow, and nurturing them to health.  We are also looking to revitalize the small garden plot that our school has.  If you would like to be a part of this, please let me know.

Thanks, and have a wonderful weekend.

Dave

The dawn of a new week!

Monday morning is always an exciting and happy time for me.  We are getting revved up for a fresh week, while at the same time reflecting on the week past.  Last week we had an interesting mini-unit investigation on the dinosaur extinction.  We learned about a relatively new theory about this extinction.  The discussion that surrounded this learning was profound and in depth.  It was really interesting for students to think about the notions that they had to begin with, as well as, introducing themselves to new information.

As for this week, we will be starting another mini-unit based on books, we will be thinking about books that we love, forming a statement that captures the gist of that book, and making some artwork to show what we are thinking about.

Of late, I have been thinking about the importance of language in our learning, and we have worked really hard to help everyone in here have and hold onto a smooth statement that captures what we are working on, and the essence of the lesson.

I hope all is well!

-Dave

Snowy and cold...but revved up in here!

This week we are really starting to experience some winter weather, and although it is chilly and snowy outside we are revving up in here.

First off we have been getting into a new unit about reading non-fiction.  We are working on getting mentally prepared to read these different types of books. Students have been using text features embedded in non-fiction to really get their arms around what they are reading.  Thus far the books we have been using are about Geology, so we are working on understanding the rock cycle, as well as the three major categories of rocks.

Speaking of rocks we have also been working on a mini-unit on soil percolation and grain size.  We let gravity pull water through sand, and observed how much water will flow through in one minute.  This was followed up with a discussion and prediction session which preceded percolating water through gravel.  It is always cool to hear what students think will happen as well as their reasoning.

N x 5...has been our focus this week in math.  We are working with different strategies to help us quickly know what any single digit factor multiplied by 5 will produce.  Students are getting a strong handle on this, and please ask them to rattle off a few "times 5" facts for you (as well as some x1 and x10 ones)!

I hope you all have a restful, wonderful, and snowy-fun weekend!

-Dave

Chex Mix!

Coming up on Thursday, we will be mixing, baking and bagging Chex-Mix for our Chex-Mix sale!  If any of you would like to volunteer in the afternoon (about 2:00 or so) please let me know!  I hope to hear from you soon!

-Dave

It is snowing!

Hey out there, it is snowing, and many of us are feeling the stoke!  All students have done an excellent job of being prepared for our wintry weather every day at recess, they also have been
making sure to hang up all of their wet stuff, so it will dry out a bit before heading home.

We have started to work on "fluency facts" in math.  These facts are just like sight words in literacy and and facts that we are working to memorize.  We are doing this through extensive discussion and verbal practice.  I like to work on verbal mastery before we begin to write these facts.  All students have currently mastered N x 1, and N x 10.  If you ask them any single digit number (or 10) multiplied by either 1 or 10 they will give you an accurate and quick answer.  We work on these in third grade to free up our minds later in the year, for the more complex mind work of multiplying numbers with three digits.

Speaking of verbal practice (hehehehehehe), we have also been working really hard on summarizing portions of books that we are reading.  WE are making these summaries verbally so that each student can hear the different components of a summary from a peer, as well as have the time to form their own ideas before they share them.

Finally we have been working on cursive, this is an art that we practice in third grade, and we like to envoke 3 tenets when we practice cursive:
-Relax, focus on your breath
-Emptiness, accept your evolving work
-Koan: When you go slowly, you will go faster.

Students are making headway on writing in cursive, and we are working to build fluidity.

I hope you have a great weekend!

Dave