As promised... here are some things we are working on in Room 102! 
Read Aloud
We finished up All About Sam and have started A Boy Called BAT. For Bixby Alexander Tam (nicknamed BAT), life tends to be full of surprises, some not so good. Today, though, is a good-surprise day. Bat's mom, a veterinarian, has brought home a baby skunk, which she needs to take care of util she an hand him over to a wild-animal shelter. But the minute Bat meets the kit, he knows they belong together. And he's got one month to show his mom that a baby skunk might just make a pretty terrific pet.
MATH
Multiplication continues in Grade 3, but we are also working on reviewing and learning other skills as well. We have talked about numbers in word form, number form and expanded form. We have broken up arrays and used facts we know to solve larger multiplication problems. Recently for morning work, students had to solve multi-step word problems and explain their thinking.
We have been looking at patterns in multiplication using skip counting charts. Students are figuring out multiples of 5 only end in 0 and 5, multiples of 2 must be even, and in multiples of 9 the digits add up to 9.
Last week we spent time in the computer lab playing math games using the links on our class blog. Students LOVED trying new games and practicing our facts.
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| These three are flexing their math muscles! |
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| Quinn is trying new math sites! |
ELA
English Language Arts includes all reading and writing activities. We have been working on learning our cursive letters. We are writing in our journals and writing about our reading in our Reader's Notebooks. We started an author study about Cynthia Rylant and have been reading her books as read alouds and on our own to learn more about how writers use their own lives to come up with story ideas. We are charting the books we read and making note about what we are learning about Cynthia Rylant.
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| Books and some background information about Cynthia Rylant. |
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| Lily writes about her reading in her Reader's Notebook. |
We have been working on Word Sorts as we look at different spelling patterns. Most recently we have been looking at adding -ing to verbs. Some are quite easy and others require some changes. When we have words that end is "e" like bake and shake, we need to drop the e and add -ing. Other words like run and swim, require us to add another consonant so we can keep a short vowel sound, swimming and running. Practice and word sorts are helping us look closely at words and patterns.
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| The BLUE table is busy sorting! |
We also finished reading Molly's Pilgrim which is a more modern day pilgrim story. Molly and her family came to America from Russia so they could have religious freedom.
Molly deals with teasing as she is different from her peers at school. This week we will finish up our discussion about this book and watch the video version of this story. It is an Academy Award winner for short films.
We have been reading Scholastic News and looking at news from around the world and also taking a closer look at the non-fiction text features that help us better understand the text. Features like highlighted print, maps, and captions make the reader pay attention to all aspects of their reading.
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| Scholastic also has accompanying videos that the class LOVES to watch. |
We have had mini-lessons on correctly using there, they're and their. This is a tricky concept and requires repeated practice. We have learned how to introduce someone in our writing. As in: "Mrs. Watson's son, Timothy, is coming home for Thanksgiving next week." I have noticed these skills now used correctly in many students' writing recently.
We also do morning work that looks at:
- grammar skills in our Daily Oral Language
- reading comprehension
- journal questions
SCIENCE
We have started a science unit called Motion and Matter. Students were really excited to start this unit experimenting with magnets. We had several days of hands-on experimenting with magnets. Students looked at magnetic fields and how the number of magnets affects the magnetic field. We are adding words to our science vocabulary wall including - predict, experiment, data, force, attract, repel.
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| Anne proudly displays her "talking magnets". |
Our Foss Science Unit has an accompanying text that we have used as well. We looked at the Table of Contents, Glossary, and Index as tools to help us find information in a textbook. 
