Mrs. Watson's Weekly: November 2016

I am sitting here at my desk between conferences today and got this cute email from Mrs. Stover. She shared a video clip of several classes singing a song. Please click on the link below to check our our start singers!

Don't Worry!

So... besides singing, what else is going on in Room 102? A lot! We finished our read aloud Just a Dog and several of us cried. I mean it! I wasn't alone!

Yup, it was a tear jerker!

Mr. Moseley! How cute is he?

We just started our new read aloud called Nicholas A Massachusetts Tale about a small country mouse who has to recover his family's journal! It provides a nice look at our state from Stockbridge to West Tisbury! We will be using a map to follow his adventures!

Ask your child what genre this story is and WHY?

modern day pilgrims

We also finished reading Molly's Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen. It is the story of a modern day pilgrim. Students met in book groups to discuss questions and answer some higher level thinking written response questions. We will watch the video next week and compare and contrast the two.

Book versus movie...

WRITING:

In writing we worked on writing different leads for our stories.

An interesting lead engages your reader from the very start. Students tried to write 2 new leads to the same story.

Check out these great starts!

I finished our fall reading assessments and will share them with you at our conferences.

The DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment) looks at students oral reading fluency and comprehension.

We were also busy with some political assemblies. High school students role played our presidential candidates and answered questions about topics third graders want to know about!

Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, Donald Trump,
and Mike Pence from left to right

Then on Tuesday we voted right here at Wheelock! Students checked in by precinct (classroom), gave their last name and first name, and were handed their ballot. They had to hand in their ballot, check out, and were given voting stickers!

Room 102 heads to the polls!

We also read about Veterans Day this week. Did you know there are 22.7 million veterans in the United States. About 2 million of those are women. The History Channel started a program called Take a Veteran to School in 2007. We learned that Veterans Day was changed to October in 1968, but was moved back to November 11th in 1978.

Remember when you are off tomorrow... thank a veteran for their service to our country!

Ask your child to name the 5 branches of the military!

MATH:

Yes, we have been working on multiplication... but did you know we have ALSO been reviewing time, adding coins, reviewing addition and subtraction with regrouping? Every Tuesday morning we do a QUICK math review before we race off to ART at 8:45.

We have been RELATED writing multiplication and division story problems. It is harder than it sounds. Keeping them related gets a little tricky. Third graders always want to add a new twist!