Mrs. Fox's Third Grade: December 2015

Friday, December 18, 2015

Weekly Update-December 18

Announcements

Thank you all so much for the kind words over the past week regarding the passing of my father-in-law. Aaron and I appreciate all the thoughts and prayers that were sent our way.

Weekly Journals and Friday Folders checklists were not completed this week. They will resume after Winter Break.

Another thank you to everyone for coming to the Winter Open House! I heard the performance was wonderful and everyone enjoyed seeing the Health projects. I was very impressed with the student projects and presentations. Every student did an amazing job of teaching their classmates about a disease. Following are pictures of each student presenting!

In the Classroom

In math this week, we continued to explore multiplication. Students studied a visual representation of multiplication called an array. Each student cut out and labeled their own set of array cards that will be used throughout the unit to practice multiplication.

Mrs. Finke visited our classroom this week to do one final health activity. Students were given an outline of a body and a bag of various materials. They were asked to use the materials in any way they wanted to show models of the body defenders. The students were very creative and able to show their understanding of the different defenses.

In writing, we started our next project with non-fiction writing. Each student will be writing an expert piece. So far, we have brainstormed topics we are already experts for which we are already experts. We have completed all the lowercase cursive letters! We will begin the capital letters after Winter break.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Holiday and Winter break!

Upcoming Events

December 21-January 4-No School, Winter Break

January 5-School Resumes

January 18-No School, MLK Jr. Day

January 27-Early Dismissal at 12:50

February 1-PTA meeting at 6:30

Friday, December 4, 2015

Weekly Update-December 4

Announcements

Just a reminder that Health projects are due Thursday, December 10th. Your third grader should have brought home a copy of the scoring guide on Monday. If your third grader completed an electronic project, you can either email the project to me or send it in on a flash drive. Please let me know if you have any questions about the projects.

Here is the schedule for the approaching Open House on Friday, December 11th. As you can see, 3rd grade will be performing at 11:55 in the gym with the open house in the classroom following at 12:15. We hope to see everyone there!

Grade Level	Perform in Gym	Open House in Classroom
Choir	11:15 am
5th Grade	11:35 am	11:55-12:15
3rd Grade	11:55 am	12:15-12:35
2nd Grade	12:15 pm	12:35-12:55
1st Grade	1:05 pm	1:25-1:45
Kindergarten	1:25 pm	1:45-2:05
4th Grade	1:45 pm	2:05-2:25

Congratulations to Ava for earning a Comet Note this week for being a helpful classmate!

In the Classroom

Last week in math, students did a project involving cubes and measuring strips. They created cube trains with alternating colors that represented skip counting by a factor. They then measured that train, marked the sections, and labeled with the correct multiples. This project continued to help us practice skip counting as well as get us acquainted with the multiples. Here are some pictures of the activity.

This week, we continued to focus on multiplication by looking at groups of items. We practiced using a picture of an empty sticker page and having to figure out how many stickers would fit on a page.

In Health this week, we discussed My Plate. Students learned about the different food groups and what they provide for your body. We also had a special guest come in to teach us about healthy eating. Mrs. B from the Nutrition department came to help us make a salad that contained something from every food group. Yum!

Our focus in reading this week was on non-fiction features. We read a book called The Buzz About Honeybees to learn about these features together. Each student also studied the features in their small guided reading groups.

Students worked on and completed their Health report drafts in writing this week. We also began typing our reports. We will have these on display next week at the Open House.