Wrapping Up September...

 Today was Day 20! 

Students are doing a nice job with coming in each day and handing in homework and getting started with their day. 

Last week we finished up some reading assessments and learned about our second literacy character... Quincy, the Quizzical Questioner. 

Quincy reminds that GOOD READERS ask QUESTIONS while they are reading. 

We ask questions like, 

• "What do you think Sam is going to do with the scissors?"
• "Why did the Native people move to the forest in the fall and winter?"
• "Who are the pilgrims?"
• "How many people were on the Mayflower?"

In MATH we are working on estimation using rounding and this week we started addition with REGROUPING! Students are doing a great job thinking about how to solve problems when there are 10 or more ONES or 10 ore more TENS. 

We had our FIRST MATH WORKSHOP today and it was great. Students rotated through stations working on different skills. 

Homework is more practice with adding 2 digit numbers together and deciding when trading is necessary. 

Our WORD STUDY started last week with short and long /a/. We continued this week with short and long /o/. Students review their words, cut them out, sort them, and keep them for the week. During the week we do different activities with their cards such as marking vowels and consonants, alphabetizing, and using words in sentences. 

We also spent some time last week working on CAPITALIZATION. What do we capitalize?  MINTS! 

Students brainstormed words for each category and will keep these in their writing folder for review. 

Our STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) activity last Friday was to decide what type of column would be best to use for a house in case of flooding. 

Students experimented with circular, square, and triangular columns to see which they would suggest to the engineers. 

One group got their column to hold more than 40 chapter books. Ask your engineer what column works best!

SOCIAL STUDIES

We finished mapping out the different Native tribes that lived in Massachusetts. We are now focusing on the Wampanoag tribe. Students are excited to BUILD wetus tomorrow in class. 

Friday is the last day of the month and we will CHANGE seats! 

Friday Check In!

ELA = English Language Arts

This includes ALL of our reading and writing activities. 

As an example we started to talk about NOUNS this week. We not only sorted NOUNS and NOT Nouns, but we also talked about ADJECTIVES and VERBS! Each student was given a word card to read and sort. 

Writing Workshop

This past week we continued to work on WRITING STAMINA using lists and then writing. Topics included friends, teachers, books, and memories of Grade 2. 

Writers Write About Books! 

  

Buddies share their writing! 

New friends share their work.

I love this good listening and following along. 

JOURNALS

Students also respond to journal prompts each week. This week asked students where they fall in their family order and what they liked and didn't like about their place in their family. 

Oldest, middle, youngest, only... where are you? 

Reading Workshop

In reading workshop, we start with a mini lesson and then students have time for independent reading. Our mini lessons this week included abandoning books and distinguishing between fiction and nonfiction books. Using our book order, students were asked to identify types of fiction and nonfiction.  They were excited that we weren't cutting up ALL the book orders and some got to go home! 

Sort your BOOKS! 

Dylan hard at work! 

Where do the books we have read belong?

Manuscript

We are continuing to work on handwriting practice. We have several friends who need practice on making tall letters TALL (h, l, k, b, d, f, t), short letters SHORT (a, c, e, i m, n, o, r, s, u, v, w, x, z), and hanging letters HANG (g, j, p, q, y).  This also included learning to write our full name, address and phone number this week. I have several student who will need to retake the quiz next week. 

Technology

Students were REALLY excited to log on to our Chromebooks today. We were waiting for all of our AUP (Acceptable Use Policy) forms to be returned to school. Today we practiced logging on to Google using our passwords. Students all joined my Google Classroom and we did a placement on Lexia. 

Just a reminder that if your child does not have head phones, please send some in for he/she to use. Some of our apps or programs require students to listen to directions. (Thanks!) 

Room 102 is getting tech savvy! 

Please send in headphones if your
child does not have some at school. 

Read Aloud

I read aloud every day after recess/lunch. We have finished our first chapter book, Muggie Maggie and have started our second, All About Sam. Ask your third grader to tell you about these books. They really enjoy read alouds. We keep a running list of all the books read aloud in class. 

Math 

In math we are working on ROUNDING numbers to the nearest 10 using 2 and 3 digit numbers. We wrote numbers and then decided what two tens that number was in between.  Then we circled the closest ten. 

We will continue next week with rounding to the nearest 100. Be on the lookout for some rounding homework next week. 

Social Studies

This week we learned what a TRIBE is. We will be learning about Native American tribes that inhabited (and some that still do) Massachusetts. With this learning we also started working on writing answers to questions in COMPLETE sentences. Many grade 3 teachers call this TTQA.... or TURN THE QUESTION AROUND. In short, this means use the words in the question to write your answer. 

Here is an example: 

What is a tribe?   >>>>  A tribe is a community of Native Americans. 

We will be learning about many different Native people with a focus on the Wampanoag tribe. 

A "wetu" was a summer home for the Wampanoag people. 
They lived in these during the summer months. 

Parent Information Night

I look forward to seeing you all at Parent Information Night on Tuesday, September 20th. I am located on the first floor in Room 102. 

Day 7... Reading, Writing, Routines (and MATH!)

What's Been Happening in Room 102? 

A lot! In our first seven days, we have done some GET TO KNOW you activities that included a HUMAN treasure hunt, MATH about ME (see picture) and written in our response journals about ourselves and describing our bedrooms. 

Journal Response 

Math about ME posters! 

We have read a lot of books. We are working on PLACE VALUE of numbers including making and saying large numbers. We discussed WORD FORM, STANDARD FORM, and EXPANDED FORM. Students really enjoyed the activities we did playing Beat It and Place Value Pockets. 

Beat It with 3 and 4 digit numbers! 

Place Value Pockets

Reviewing Classroom Routines and Expectations

Our class READ ALOUD list! 

We have started Reading Workshop and are working on navigating our classroom library, choosing JUST RIGHT books, and increasing our reading stamina. This class LOVES to read! And they are learning that READING is THINKING! 

Students were asked to STOP and SHARE their thinking. 

We are also reviewing HANDWRITING!  Some of our friends still need some review of capital and lower case letters and which letters dip below the line like "j, g, p, q, y".  We are working on some manuscript practice before we start CURSIVE writing! 

Looking good! 

We learned about HISTORY being anything that happened in the PAST... even what you ate for breakfast!  We talked about LOCAL history - which happens close to home. We will be learning about Medfield later in the year. Students brainstormed ways they could learn about history and those included:

• talking to an expert
• visiting a museum
• reading a book
• searching (safely) online
• visiting a historical site
• looking at artifacts

We learned about our classmates when they brought in their own artifact bags. We found we have a lot in common... like sports that we like, pets we have or lost, collections we have, and families that we love! 

We had an OPEN CIRCLE on Monday about being a member of a GROUP and what responsibilities go along with that. Groups included families, teams, clubs, classrooms, and schools. We discussed including others and being respectful of people's feelings. 

On Fridays in September we do a STEM challenge. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Students are placed in groups to complete a challenge. Last week they had to create the longest paper chain in the time allowed. This week they had a MARSHMALLOW CHALLENGE. They had to use 20 pieces of pasta, one yard of tape and one yard of string, along with scissors to build the tallest free standing structure to support a marshmallow at the top. We weren't very successful in our final efforts but we discussed what we COULD do to be successful. 

KEEP CHECKING BACK to see what we have been up to and follow us on TWITTER for daily updates! 

@ewatsonroom102