New Year in Room 102!

Can you believe it?  

It's 2016!  Wow!  We completed our 72nd day of school today. Have you been following us on Twitter?  

I hope everyone had a terrific vacation and had a chance to relax and spend time with family and friends.  I really enjoyed my vacation. It may be because my children are older, and one now drives, but I was able to get a little more down time.  Teenagers sleep late!  So I enjoyed some quiet mornings at my house.  I did quite a bit of reading. I met up with some friends over break as well.  I played musical BINGO! I bought myself a coloring book at Barnes and Noble and found it very relaxing!  

My first completed coloring page!

I highly recommend this for a little Zen-like retreat!

This morning, I asked students to complete a journal response about collections.  

The responses varied.  We have coin collectors, rock collectors, shell collectors and baseball card collectors.  Students shared how and when they started their collections and where they keep them. Trav started a marble collection after getting marbles from his grandfather.  Aidan keeps rocks on his dresser.  

The REASON for my journal question today was revealed when we started a new book called... Donavan's Word Jar.  

Donavan Allen is a third grade boy who collects...words! 

We will read this book for the next week and a half looking at the words Donavan collects and finding out how he solves his problem. As we read, we will start to collect words of our own.  Do you have any words you like?  I have to admit I have a few and my favorites change from year to year.  Some of my current favorites are "haberdashery" and "porcupine".  Last year, I chose words such as "platypus", "curmudgeon" and "flabbergasted".  

Words, words, words....

Well, be on the look out, as you will have to help us find some interesting words to add to our list!  

POETRY WRITING

We will be writing New Year's Resolution poems this week.  Our Mandarin students started today.  We started by defining what a "resolution" is.  Allison told us that it is promise to do something in the new year to make you a better person.  I liked that!  We made a list of 6 things to resolve to do in 2016!  Some included neater handwriting, learning to skateboard, get a rabbit, writing in cursive, and knowing all our multiplication and division facts!  But we had to write our resolutions in a poetic format.  Here is an example from Amelia:

In 2016...

I'm going to be a book reading, 

cursive writing, art making, spelling bee winning, 

skirt sewing, picture taking, 

third grader.

We will print out our final drafts and share our rough drafts with you for home when they are complete.  Imagine, by the end of 2016, they will be FOURTH graders!  

NON-FICTION

Our read aloud this week is National Geographic Kids' Deadliest Animals.  Studies show that informational reading is critical in school.  We read about Sir Isaac Newton before vacation and worked to differentiate interesting versus important information. 

We kept track of facts we learned about Sir Isaac Newton and put them in categories of either "Interesting" or  "Important".  Then we culled down the IMPORTANT facts from 8 to 5, and then down to what we thought was the MOST important thing we needed to know!  This led to some great conversations about interesting versus important!  Students had to speak up and defend their thinking! Check out our work!  

Interesting versus Important

Amy shares her end results! 

So back to our read aloud.... 

Scary pictures? Check!  

We have been looking at non-fiction books since we are going to start writing our own informational books!  There is a method to my madness!  Today we looked at a variety of non-fiction books to find text features.  Like professional authors, we are going to put these features in our own writing!  

• table of contents
• captions
• large colorful illustrations
• bold print
• index
• glossary

If you ever want to donate books... we love these!
I bought these recently at the Christmas Tree Shop! 

Students will use mentor texts as they begin to write their own informational texts.  Thank you for your help with the list of possible writing ideas.  We will start reviewing those this week and choosing some topics.  

Almost forgot... check out this QR code to become a National Geographic Super Reader!  

QR code for National Geographic Super Reader
or log on to kids.nationalgeographic.com/superreader

BOOK REPORT?  Yes! 

I will be assigning a BOOK REPORT (of sorts) next week! Students will be asked to choose a non-fiction book of interest* to them to read.  After reading their book, they will then complete an at-home project.  (*very important) 

Directions will be sent home next week!  We will visit the LIBRARY on Monday!  Please note that this requires VERY little at home help, just reminding them to READ! 

MATH

Well, we are certainly making great strides with our multiplication and division facts.  I have been pushing the EASY BUTTON for weeks on some of the problems we encounter!  That is great news. I think that the class is really doing a great job understanding strategies for multiplication.  

Just before vacation, we did some problems such as: 

                         66 X 5      and        74 X 8

These were the faces I saw! 

"You want me to solve WHAT?"

           But then.... 

"Wait a minute.... mmmm."

They realize they can USE WHAT THEY KNOW! 
I know that 60 X 5 = 300 and 6 X 5 = 30 so 300 + 30 = 330!

I decided NOT to jump right back into these problems today... as many of us had what I refer to as VACATION BRAIN. 

Don't worry... I'll definitely be back by... Tuesday! 

But we will start them up again soon.  Please note.... Our goal is for students to know the algorithm we learned to solve these problems, but this USE WHAT YOU KNOW strategy shows them HOW to solve and is less about a formula.  

Thanks for reading!  Remember to check out our DAILY update on Twitter!