It seems hard to believe that we are already approaching the close of the first marking period. Parents will be invited to attend a parent / teacher conference in mid-November to discuss their student's strengths and identified areas for growth. You can expect to see a sign-up scheduling sheet come home next week.

The class was fortunate to have our first 4 Winds workshop of the school year this week. Scarlett McDermott and Beth Harper led the class in an investigation of the processes of erosion. Students watched a puppet show, participated in stations modeling erosion forces, and were involved in a design challenge to mitigate the effects of water erosion on the landscape. It was a great and highly engaging session.

Please remember to help ensure your child reads for a minimum of thirty minutes a night on weeknights and completes a Reading Log entry. The yellow log is then returned to school on Fridays for a quick review by Ms. Bahlenhorst.

In math, third graders are beginning to explore the concept of perimeter (the distance around the outside edge of a shape) and learn the skills associated with accurately determining a shape's perimeter. This involves understanding how to use measuring tools appropriately and the difference between U.S. standard units (inches, feet, yards, etc.) and metric units (centimeters, meters, etc.).

Students were introduced to three different ways they can determine a word's meaning from context clues when reading.

1. antonyms or contrasts as clues
2. synonyms or definitions as clues
3. examples as clues

We are sneaking up on completing the final drafts of our small moment stories. Today we used whisper phones (ask your child what these are and how they work) to check for meaning. Tomorrow we'll look at how to write an ending, and then students will begin the final phase of editing prior to publishing.

In science we've been working on the idea of the shared life cycle of all organisms (birth, growth, reproduction, death). Additionally, we've zoomed in on complete and incomplete insect metamorphosis (change). The class played some matching and card games to help them understand and memorize the different stages of metamorphosis.

• Incomplete Metamorphosis--egg, nymph, adult
• Complete Metamorphosis--egg, larva, pupa, adult

Finally, our read aloud Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher is wrapping up this week. Ask your child to give you a summary of the important parts of the book in order. This is an important skill we'll begin working on in the near future. It's something you can practice, too, at home. Students should think about who the main character is, what the big problem or issue in the story is, how the main character goes about solving the problem, and the overall resolution at the end. You can even practice this skill with TV shows.

Playing the Go Bug! metamorphosis game 

Matching metamorphosis game

More life cycle work

   

4 Winds wind erosion

4 Winds water erosion

More water erosion

Engineering a way to prevent erosion in 4 Winds

Although only four days, we've accomplished lots this past week.

Our classroom river is up and running with water circulating through it and live macroinvertebrates populating it. We had a successful expedition to the banks of the Ottauquechee on Tuesday and collected a host of creatures at different stages of their life cycles. We'll be using these up close and personal glimpses of the critters as a springboard to studying the life cycles of organisms. Most of the landmarks students created using craft materials or the Tinkercad program are complete. They are pretty amazing projects and are very realistic representations of the actual landmarks found in the village. All that remains for us to do is paint on the roads and place the buildings in their correct locations along the river. Swing by to check it all out when you have a chance.

We are deep into drafting our personal narratives inspired by true, small moment stories from the lives of third graders. At this stage students are concentrating on the following:

• adding the exact words people used (dialog) 
• establishing who the story is about, where it takes place, and when it happened (setting)
• including the inside parts of the story (characters' feelings)
• writing in a way that allows the reader to picture what is happening (description and elaboration)
• telling the story bit-by-bit

The class wrapped up its first math unit today which focused on addition and subtraction strategies. Our next unit of study is a significant shift in concepts. Beginning next week our concentration will be on geometry, specifically measurement and 2-dimensional shapes.

Reading mini-lessons have focused on the mind work of giving oneself comprehension checks along the way. Students should periodically ask themselves Who is this part about?, What just happened?, and Does this fit with something that already happened or is this new? Of course, independent reading for thirty minutes a night along with an accompanying Reading Log entry is still weeknight homework.

Everyone was given his or her own personal, portable, silent pencil sharpener today as a means of maintaining productivity and independence. Along those lines, please check in with your child to see if there is a need for any personal classroom supplies like pencils, colored pencils, erasers, etc.

Finally, if you could fill out the poll to the right it'll help me figure out if and how the Blog is being used by parents. Thanks in advance.

Enjoy the pictures below and have a fantastic autumn weekend!

Adding material to create the riverbed

Painting on the landscape

Searching for macroinvertebrates

Private homes and a church

Businesses, houses and the Town Hall

Obviously it's . . .

Today's trip to SculptureFest was a big hit with students viewing diverse artworks in a beautiful outdoor setting. Thank you to Ms. Piana, our new art teacher, for coordinating such a worthwhile event.

 

This afternoon the class piloted using the website Socrative as a means of reinforcing key concepts and content and quickly assessing for understanding. With each student having his or her own dedicated Chromebook, integrating technology into daily activities is becoming easier and easier. This was the first time we've tried this particular teaching tool here at WES.

Anonymous student data using the website Socrative

Students answer questions on Socrative after reading an article about river macroinvertebrates

 

For those interested in subscribing to our class Blog, you can register in the Follow by Email section to the right. I think and hope you'll get email updates when something new is posted. Thanks to Audrey R. for bringing this feature to my attention.

This is also my first pass at creating and maintaining a Blog, so if you have suggestions of ways to enhance or make it more meaningful please share them with me. The audience is you, the parents. Therefore, I want to craft it to suit what you are looking for and find most valuable.

The class is off to the river tomorrow to collect non-living and living matter that will be used in the creation of the classroom river model.

Thank you to Scarlett, Jackie, Buzz, Bryon, and Kim for volunteering to help chaperone the class as they meander the fields of SculptureFest next Tuesday.

Although Picture Day was today, we will have a retake day in the coming months. Don't panic if it slipped off your radar screen.

Next week we'll send home subtraction cards that students can work on in order to gain mastery and automaticity of their facts (small number computation problems).

Working on building reading stamina

Reading up to 30 minutes now 

Morning Meeting with Ms. Gauvin

Students working on their 3-D Tinkercad designs

A first "draft" 3-D  printed model and the accompanying house it's based on 

Music class is spent working on recorder skills

Here are some images capturing a bit of what we've been up to lately in third grade.

Concluding Morning Meeting with the activity Night at the Museum

Students catalog what they find in the Ottauquechee River 

Instruction at the Tuffet Lounge

As we approach the conclusion of the first, abbreviated month of school, our third grade class community is really coming together. Students are becoming familiar with their new classroom spaces, expectations and systems. That means children are being given greater responsibility and independence as they dig into the work of being thoughtful third grade learners.

In math, the class is focusing its efforts on building their place value understanding and strengthening its computational fluency in addition and subtraction. We are currently working on numbers within 1,000. Students often use "break numbers apart" as a strategy, which requires them to add numbers by their place value. For instance, 342 + 129 = _____ becomes (300 + 100) + (40 + 20) + (2 + 9). This is an effective and efficient strategy that builds understanding of place value...a key step prior to teaching any sort of algorithm (shortcut).

In reading, we're working on creating habitual readers in our students. Toward that end, the focus thus far has been on them understanding what kind of readers they are and how they can create a "reader's life" at home and school. They have nightly homework at this stage which includes 30 minutes of independent reading and the completion of a reading log entry. Yellow reading log packets were sent home Monday, September 19. Your child should fill out the log at home Monday - Thursday and then return it to school on Friday for a teacher review. They'll be handed back to students the following Monday for students to resume the weekly routine.

Third graders have been building writing stamina by looking to their personal lives for small moment stories and writing long and strong about them. They are encouraged to think of important people, places, objects or animals for inspiration. Some of these first draft stories will become polished, published narratives.

Our integrated science and social studies unit using the Ottauquechee River as topic to dig into sense of place, mapping, life cycle and ecosystem concepts is well underway. After walking the village numerous times, students drew maps of our study area with the important landmarks found along the river identified. They will be replicating some of these landmarks using the Tinkercad online program and printing them using the STEM Lab's 3-D printers. These structures will then be placed on our classroom river model in the appropriate location. Our first trip INTO the river took place last Friday with students working in teams to inventory and draw as many different things as possible that they found in the river and along its banks. Many unique and mystifying creatures were found lurking on the underside of river cobbles. These are the critters we'll be using to teach the concept of life cycles. Though they start their lives in the water, almost all of them live their brief adult lives as flying insects!