Week in Review: November 9-13

We have had a super busy week of special events! For language arts, we concluded our poetry unit by studying types of figurative language, and watched a live-streaming poetry reading with all of third grade. We also recognized Veteran's Day after our schoolwide assembly by writing letters to veterans and reading a Scholastic News article about an 8 year old girl whose mom is deployed in the army.

We had a research lesson in the library, and then spent some time with online resources learning about Japan. Our class has been assigned Japan for International Children's Week, and on Wednesday, Mrs. Sawada and Mrs. Miyazawa presented to our class about elementary schools in Japan. They also showed everyone how to write their name in Japanese and we all got to try the art of origami. It was a wonderfully engaging presentation, and the kids loved it! Thanks so much to Shota's mom and Sota's mom for all of their time and effort. On Friday, we began creating Google drawings to show all that we have learned about Japan.

Thursday was special as Peggy Eddleman, the author of Sky Jumpers visited our school and gave a great presentation to 3rd, 4th and 5th graders about her process as a writer. Four lucky students from our class was selected from a drawing to win an autographed copy of her book!

In math, we are having great success with division, and learning how it is related to multiplication. I teach these lessons with lots of hands on work with manipulatives so students can actually SEE what they are solving.

In science, we have moved into natural resources. We have briefly touched on renewable versus non-renewable resources, as well as the three R's for conserving those resources (reduce, reuse, and recycle). We will continue with these lessons next week.

It is hard to believe we only have one more week of school before Thanksgiving break. I just know it will fly by as we have the book fair and International Children's Week. Events next week include an opening assembly on Monday, a family evening on Thursday evening, Friday morning country rotations, and a closing ceremony on Friday. I hope you all have a great weekend, and rest up for the week to come!

Week in Review: November 2-6

This week, we have continued exploring poetry (narrative and humorous poems in particular), and done lots of poetry writing. Every student chose their favorite poem to read aloud and had the chance to practice reading in front of a group. We have done a few practice poetry passages, which is the kind of thing they will see on the STAAR test in May, to get them used to the types of language and questions they will see. We talked about test taking strategies, and specifically PROVING your answers!

In math, we have learned about perimeter and used that knowledge to solve numerous word problems. We wrapped up our time and perimeter units with some fun reviews on Thursday and a test on Friday.

In social studies, we are continuing our unit on government and learned about the executive and legislative branches. Next week, we will run a mock Congress to see the process that a bill takes to become a law. Then we will study the judicial branch of our federal government.

In science, we wrapped up mixtures with stations on Monday and a test on Wednesday, on which everyone did really well!

We visited our kindergarten buddies during science time on Thursday, and the third graders taught their buddies how to log on, get to a website, bookmark it, and then log off and shut down. They did a great job teaching the younger ones.

Our week ended with Kona Ice and extra recess since the school met their fundraising goal of $25,000. Thanks to all who contributed!

Our last two weeks before Thanksgiving are just going to fly by! Next week, we are honoring Veterans on Wednesday with a school wide assembly, and third graders will be writing letters to Veterans. Two of our wonderful moms are also going to visit the class on Wednesday to present some information about Japan, which is the country our class has been assigned for the International Children's Fair. On Thursday, the author of Sky Jumpers will be visiting the school. I have been reading this book to the class, and they are looking forward to hearing her speak. Then of course, November 16-20 is designated as International Children's Week with a school wide assembly on Monday morning, an evening event for the family on Thursday the 19th, and a country station rotations for all students on Friday morning. I'm worn out just thinking about it all, but it's going to be lots of fun! Have a wonderful weekend!