Mrs. Watson's Weekly: Digital Citizenship, Pilgrim Activity Day and the Victory Garden

Yes, it was another busy week in Room 102!

MATH
We are working on the Distributive Property in math. The Distributive Property allows us to use smaller factor pairs, or friendly numbers, to help us solve unknown facts. As an example, to solve 3 X 17, we can break it up into friendly pairs like (3X10) + (3X5) + (3X2). The 10, 5, and 2 add up to 17! And we know all those facts! Wow!

The Distributive Doctor activity helped us decide how to break the problem into smaller (friendly number) chunks!

I am giving timed quizzes for multiplication, but unlike Math Wizard, there is no staying on certain facts for week after week. Instead, we add in new facts we are learning and try to beat our score from the week before. I have noticed students are not as anxious. We have been doing a lot of work with these facts in class and for our nightly homework.

In READING, I am meeting with groups throughout the week. The Daily Five allows students some choice in their activities during our Reading Workshop. Assigned tasks include: meeting with me in a group and Raz-Kids on the computer where they LISTEN to stories. Choice activities include: independent reading, word work, written response, and partner reading.

The Daily Five (Boushey and Moser)

Reading logs from home are looking good. Remind your child that they should be writing their book titles correctly in pencil and good third grade handwriting.

Spelling tests will now be consistent since we are finally getting into full weeks of school. Be sure to encourage your child to review their words for a few minutes nightly and not to wait until Thursday.

In grammar we have covered common and proper nouns, how to write an address correctly, and now we are looking at subjects and predicates of a sentence. This is helpful early in the year as many students are answering questions about the pilgrims in ways such as "102 passengers." or "scared and nervous." I am emphasizing that ALL sentences need to have a complete thought. They contain a subject (who or what the sentence is about) and a predicate (what the subject is or does). We will continue with this for the next 2 weeks in class and for homework.

As you know, we have been using computers and ipads in the classroom. We discussed RULES for using technology. This week we attended a presentation in the library about Digital Citizenship. Mrs. Robertson gave shared a power point presentation about being responsible online at home and at school.

What does it mean to be a good Digital Citizen?

Students will receive a digital "license".

Pilgrims: We head to Rocky Woods on Wednesday this week.
On Wednesday we harvested onions and potatoes in the Victory Garden!

Getting our assignment for harvesting!

Thank you all for the supplies you sent in this week for our Pilgrim Activity Day and to the many parents who came in to help make it such a success. We braided belts, cooked corn muffins and pumpkin bread, beaded necklaces, sewed pockets, and leaf printed our napkins. Check out the pictures of our busy "pilgrims".