January 26, 2018

Announcements

Thank you to those who signed up for our Valentine's Party! We still have two openings left. Please use the link below if you can help.

 http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0e4ca9ad23a1fd0-february

Please check in with students about materials and supplies. We have had quite a few students lose homework folders, notebooks, and weekly journals lately. This is also a common time students are running out of pencils and erasers.

The students were soooo sick on Friday! : ) Luckily we made it through math, weekly journals, and our spelling test. After that, we relaxed with a popsicle for our sore throats, a few cartoons, and some games and reading with our friends. I would say we all recovered nicely!

Congratulations to Kylie for receiving our Paxton Pride award last week and Aayan for receiving it this week!

In the Classroom

In math this week, we focused on multiplication strategies. Students learned about about square products (6 x 6=36) and near squares (7 x 6 would be one more group of 6 or 42). We also had a tough problem to make sense of involving button dolls. Here are pictures of our math congress where we discussed different strategies, including the good mistakes we made that helped us learn.

Students also played a fun game called Salute. Ask your third grader how to play!

We will assess over this unit next week.

Students are working on the first draft of their expert books! This week, students completed their chapters and made a blueprint for their non-fiction features. We will work on self and partner revising next week. We hope to have the completed book to share at conferences.

In Social Studies, we have been focusing on map skills. Last week, we explored the maps some students brought to class. We also studied maps of Columbia.

This week, students learned about compass roses, latitude/longitude, and using a scale. On Friday, Mr. Bowen came to talk about his job working for the city.

Upcoming Events

No School, Teacher Workday-February 5

Valentine's Room Party-February 9

Parent Teacher Conferences-February 15-16

No School, Conferences-February 16

No School, President's Day-February 19

January 12, 2018

Announcements

It is so wonderful to be back! I hope everyone had a fantastic and relaxing winter break. I enjoyed spending time with family and friends both back home in Illinois and here in Columbia.

Our final room party of the year will be the Valentine's Party on February 9th. We still have quite a few openings. Please use the link below if you can help.

 http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0e4ca9ad23a1fd0-february

In the Classroom

In math this week, students explored fractions and multiplication. We learned new vocabulary such as unit fraction, numerator, denominator, and equivalent fraction. We played a fraction matching game to help us identify equivalent fractions.

In writing this week, students chose topics for their expert pieces. This non-fiction writing will ask students to teach others about a topic on which they already know a lot. On Wednesday, students did a long write where they wrote down everything they knew.

We also color coded the information to start organizing it into chapters. We will work on our table of contents and first draft next week.

In reading this week, we focused on vocabulary. We used a non-fiction text called Fossil Seekers to practice identifying and analyzing various vocabulary words. Students also took the STAR reading test.

In Social Studies, we started our next unit on Geography. This week was all about maps and globes. We used the program Google Earth to explore different communities.

Upcoming Events

No School, MLK Jr. Day-January 15

PTA Movie Night-January 25

No School, Teacher Workday-February 5

Valentine's Room Party-February 9

Parent Teacher Conferences-February 15-16

No School, Conferences-February 16

No School, President's Day-February 19