Peek at the Week

One more week!

10/2/2020

We had another great week! We started a new math unit, wrote our second paragraph of the year, learned all about idioms and hyperboles, and learned how to use a balance scale to measure the mass of different objects.

Important Dates:

Restaurant Night - Wednesday, October 8th - Raising Canes 5-10pm (drive-thru only)
No School - Monday, October 12th - Friday, October 16th (Fall Break)

What We've Been Up To:

Math
We started a new math unit this week. Students learned how to round to the nearest ten and nearest hundred. We also began working on new strategies for adding 3-digit numbers.

Reading
This week we worked on understanding different types of figurative language, including idioms and hyperboles. We realized that this type of language shows up a lot in the books we read so it's important to understand different phrases and sayings that you can't interpret literally like: it's raining cats and dogs, she's a couch potato, I'm on cloud nine, he's grinning from ear to ear, etc. We created a chart and are keeping track of all the figurative language we come across in our independent reading books.

Writing
Students wrote their second paragraph of the year. We wrote about why it's important for kids to go to school. The students had great thoughts and perspectives about this due to COVID and having to do remote learning last year. It's so great to see how important the kids think school is now!

Science
This week we learned how to use a balance scale to measure mass. We learned the difference between mass and weight and why it's important to have a standard unit of measurement.

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Busy Week!

9/25/2020

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We had quite a busy week this week! The students took their first unit math test, learned how to access our online learning management system (Schoology), typed a writing piece for the very first time, reviewed strategies for figuring out hard words, and completed two science experiments. The desk fairy also visited! :)

What We've Been Learning:

Math
This week students took their Unit 1 Math Test. Before the test, we spent the week reviewing for it. This included reviewing odd and even numbers and different strategies for solving addition and subtraction problems.

***The graded math tests will be coming home with students next week. Students will be asked to correct any mistakes and then return the tests to me by the date listed on the paper. In class we talk about learning from our mistakes, so this is a great way for students to practice this idea.

We will start our next math unit on Monday. This is technically Unit 3 in our math program. (We will go back and do Unit 2 after we finish Unit 3.)
In Unit 3 students will:

continue to practice addition and subtraction
round multi-digit numbers and estimate their sums and differences
add and subtract 3-digit numbers using the standard algorithm as well as other strategies.

Reading
This week we focused on strategies for solving hard words including, chunking the word, trying out the different sounds a letter makes, and searching for clues to figure out what the word means (context clues). Students participated in a fun activity where they had to figure out what 10 made up words meant by using the context clues. They did a great job with this!

Writing
This week we learned about adjectives and then applied our knowledge of what we learned by writing a descriptive fall poem. The kids then learned how to access our online learning platform (Schoology) and typed their very first writing piece. They did a great job with this! Take a look at the pictures below of the kids typing.

Science
For the last couple week students have been exploring the concept of energy - what is energy, where does energy from from, how is energy stored, and how does energy get transferred. Towards the end of this week we also began to explore the different states of matter - solid, liquid, gas. Next we will learn how matter changes state.

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So glad to be back!

9/18/2020

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The kids and I had a wonderful week together! It was so good to be back in the classroom with them after being absent all last week due to a minor cold and super slow COVID test results.

What We've Been Up To:

Math
This week we focused on using the standard algorithm for 2-digit addition and subtraction. We also worked on solving two-step word problems. Students took 2 quizzes. One of them should have already come home, and the other one will be coming home next week.

Reading
This week we worked on summarizing fiction texts. We also talked about having reading GRIT and how to set reading goals for ourselves. Students did some self-assessment to determine what they already do well as readers and what they can continue to work on.

Writing
We finished our first writing project. Students wrote about their favorite season. They planned, wrote, and revised & edited their first paragraph as a third grader. These writing pieces will be coming home next week. Keep an eye out!

Science
We started our first science unit this week - Matter and Energy. This week we learned about different energy sources and how energy is converted from a source to an action (i.e. the energy in a battery can be converted into light)

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Happy Friday and a 3 Day Weekend!

9/4/2020

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Important Dates:

No School - Monday, September 7th

Important Reminders:
COVID Symptom Checker - Click HERE to access
The Cherry Creek School District has developed the “COVID Symptom Checker,” an easy-to-use, online tool that will help us mitigate the spread of COVID-19. It is a quick and convenient way for staff, parents and students to identify potential COVID symptoms. The tool also provides direction on what to do - or not do - if a student or staff member is experiencing any of those symptoms.

All students and staff members are expected to do their part to protect the health and well-being of our school communities by using the COVID Symptom Checker before they come to school each day.

What We've Been Up To:

Math - This week we reviewed strategies for addition and subtraction problems and worked on decomposing numbers to get to a "friendlier number". We also reviewed odd and even numbers. Finally, we took a short, computer-based math assessment (through MobyMax), and we worked on writing our own story problems.

Reading - Students took the i-Ready reading assessment on Wednesday and Thursday. This is the computer-based reading test that students take 3 times a year. In class, our focus this week was on identifying the different reading genres (i.e. mystery, historical fiction, realistic fiction, biography, etc.) and showing our thinking while we read by using post-it notes. As third grade readers, students will be thinking about their reading and responding to their reading every single day. This week, we focused on writing 2 thoughts down about our reading on sticky notes during our independent reading time. These sticky notes will be used to have a conversation around a child's reading when I confer with them. This is something you could also have your child do when they are reading at home. Then, when they finish you can have a conversation with them about what they wrote down/read about.

Writing - We reviewed the "stoplight" structure for paragraph writing and we planned our first paragraph. Through this work, we also learned how to write an exciting "hook" and topic sentence for our reader, created a list of transition words/phrases, and created a list of sentence starters for concluding sentences. The first paragraph that we write together is very scaffolded and we work together step-by-step. This way students have a very solid foundation in paragraph structure before they begin writing on their own.

Social Studies - We have been working on our map skills this week. We finished up our work with a compass rose and moved on to the different types of maps including: physical, political, population, natural resource, and precipitation maps.

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Great First Week!

8/28/2020

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Important Dates:

Picture Day - Wednesday, September 2nd
No School - Monday, September 7th

Reminders:

Send in a Family Picture to Display - I like to create a display of families in our classroom to encourage community and remind students that we are all working together. If you feel comfortable, please send a photograph of your family (unframed) for our display. Students love seeing your faces in their class!

Typing Homework - Students are expected to type for a minimum of 30 minutes each week. I will pull a typing report every Friday morning to track student progress.

Spelling Homework - Our first spelling list went home today. Lists will always come home on Fridays, and the test will always be the following Friday. Students are expected to practice their spelling words at home, but there is no other spelling homework that is due. We will also do spelling activities in class to help students prepare for the tests.

What We've Been Up To
We had a great first week together! I have to say, I have a great group of kiddos this year! I'm really excited!

We spent a lot of timing getting to know each other and building our classroom community. We discussed the word diversity, and how we are all different. We talked about how we should celebrate our differences, and that our differences make us who we are. We shared things that make us different, and things that we have in common.

Students chose books from our classroom library and we began working on building our reading stamina. We talked about what it looks like when a reader has good reading stamina and what strong readers do, and we began writing about our reading.

We also spent time discussing what it means to be resilient and we practiced being resilient through a few open-ended math challenges. Ask your child about our $100 Words Challenge!

Here are some pics of the kiddos working on a graphing math challenge with a partner (while staying socially distant, of course!)

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One more week!

Busy Week!

So glad to be back!

Happy Friday and a 3 Day Weekend!

Great First Week!

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