Our tree of expectations!

 

Untitled

 

First Blog of the year

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

 

 

Shadow puppets and lung capacity

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

 

Important news from the kitchen!

        This was forwarded to me this morning, to pass on to you!

       

1.       Please keep your students’ meal accounts current with a positive balance as we will not allow students to charge meals. If your student has a positive balance remaining on the last day of school it will be rolled over to the fall 2013-2014 school year. If your student is graduating we can have a check sent to you with a refund unless they have a sibling at EMES and then we can roll their positive balance onto their account.

2.       We will be having hot dogs and hamburgers on Tuesday 6/18/13 for Field Day (and not baked potato bar). 

Thanks,  Susan

Another busy week, and important information!

IMPORTANT INFORMATION! In your student's Friday folder this week are two very important pieces of information. One is a placement form fir next year...this form has information about who the fourth grade teachers will be, and what things will look like next year. Also there is a form from Arlyn about summer book bags, if you would like to participate in this program, please fill out the form and return as soon as possible.

Throughout the week we have worked on lots of things. We have self-assessed our writing, worked on creating non-fiction books, practiced multiplication facts, created Benham's disks and so much more.

We have been working on many pieces of writing this year, and we have also been working on self-assessing this writing. The skills of self-assessment are so important as students can identify areas they are successful in, as well as see areas they can grow in. The skill of self-assessment also helps students reflect about their work and time in school.

For these self-assessments we are using checklists to compare our writing with current common core standards.

We are also working on creating non-fiction books. The topic of these books is the Human Body. Ask your student which system they find the most interesting! The following photos are if students at work creating these books.

Students are working on the tricky skill of highlighting important information and creating sentences from this information.

Another fabulous week has gone by and it is getting warmer. Please remind your student to grab a water bottle to bring to school, as it does get quite warm, and water is so important fir learning. Have a great weekend!

 

Tech night, authors tea...

Last week was a busy one in third grade. We had tech. night on Thursday, and the author's tea on Friday. At this time of the year students have produced so much work, it is always enjoyable to share some of it with all of you. We had fantastic attendance for technology night, and at the author's tea, as well.

The shots above are from technology night, and the ones following are from the author's tea!

In the coming week, we will be working on our nonfiction books, mastering some multiplication in math, performing experiments our eyes, and collaboratively writing stories. We also have a fine arts celebration night on Thursday which starts at 6, there will be a third grade recorder performance during this program.