We have been very busy in 3F! Lots of important paperwork came home in your child's orange folder this week. Many graded assignments, including rubrics, as well as a mid-trimester Learner Behavior Progress Report. Every student received one in their orange folder. Please take time to review these reports with your child, sign and return by November 2nd. Please note, these are not final grades! This is about half way through the trimester and it is a good time to make us all aware of what we are working towards and what plans we need to make to be successful. If you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to write me a note on the back or email. Thank you to all of the families who have sent in generous supplies for our pumpkin activity on Tuesday! We have about 6 volunteers coming in to assist...it is going to be amazing! The children are so excited! In Writer's Workshop, we are finishing up our final personal narrative for the trimester. This narrative is based on a fall activity that they participated in with family or friends. Lessons we have focused on and will be looking to see come to life in their writing are: -An interesting lead (emotion, dialogue, action or description) -Characters and setting -Descriptive details (adding adjectives to describe our nouns) -Dialogue, speaker tags and putting "said" to bed by choosing other words. -Show don't tell (Instead of saying "I was so angry" focus on describing what you look like/how you act when you are angry -A satisfying ending (reflection, a hope/wish, lesson learned or a decision) -revising and editing We will be typing our final copies! After we complete personal narratives, we will be moving on to text-based narratives. In Math, we finished up subtraction through the thousands with and without regrouping. They did really well on this chapter assessment! This week, we focused on how to represent multiplication with equal groups, repeated addition and arrays to help the children have a better foundation of what multiplication is before we dive into the facts. As we finish up our introduction to what multiplication IS, it is time to start thinking about how we can help our students become fluent in their multiplication fact recall. I have very vivid memories of my father driving us home after sports, firing off multiplication problems to the back seat, "What is 7x8?" "What is 9x6?" As painful as it was for the both of us, I can say I have my facts memorized, thanks to him! I will do as much as I possibly can at school with fact recall; however, they are going to need to do a decent amount of time each night on memorization at home. I will be switching XtraMath from addition and subtraction to multiplication. Their log-ins for Xtramath can be found on the front page of their planners. On here you will also see a log-in for Prodigy. Prodigy is an amazing, interactive video-game like math resource. The students go on quests, solve common core math problems and "battle" each other through solving problems correctly. They kids are so invested and interested in this website! Check it out!
**Some students have asked if they could bring in multiplication flash cards to practice during reset time--absolutely! We have a few sets already, but feel free to send some in for your child, too. In Reader's Workshop, we have been focusing on Character Traits to get ready for our big Pumpkin Project. During this project, students will be choosing a character from their novel to represent on a pumpkin. They will be thinking hard about character traits that they found in the text to help them decorate it. There will be a writing portion included, where they will describe their planning and design for their pumpkin, as well as what character traits they were representing and why (citing text evidence). We have officially wrapped up science for the trimester and have now switched to social studies.Our first unit this year will be on the three branches of government This unit on government is placed in this trimester primarily because elections take place at this time of year. Students’ background knowledge of rights and responsibilities serves as the foundation for their understanding of the structures of power and authority in their local government. Third graders will be responsible for the standards on local- and state-level government. Thank you for all that you do to support your child. It does not go unnoticed! -Mrs. Ferreira
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Hi families! A shorter blog this week, but I wanted to get the memo out about a volunteer opportunity coming up in 3F! A letter went home today explaining it, but here is an upload of it in case it did not make its way to you. Please let me know if you would like to come in! The activity will take place on 10-30 from 1:30-completion. This week in Writer's Workshop, we learned how to revise and edit our writing with blue and red pens. We also learned how to provide feedback to a partner during the revising and editing stages. In grammar we learned about declarative sentences. The students also completed their first independent narrative! It was fantastic to see so many students incorporating all of the previously taught skills into their writing (types of leads, show not tell, dialogue, etc).
In Math, we are continuing Chapter 3, subtracting with and without regrouping (borrowing) in 3 and 4 digit numbers. The kids are getting the hang of it! Once we finish up this chapter, we will be moving on to multiplication. It is never to early to start practicing the facts at home. Xtramath is a great resource to practice. As students master addition and subtraction facts, it advances them on to multiplication. Reader's Workshop focused on story elements, specifically setting and plot this week. In Science, we gathered earth materials and tested each object to see if it repelled water or absorbed water. The students loved testing their predictions. Check out the photo section to see us with our reading buddies! Have a great weekend! -Mrs. Ferreira I'm pretty sure I blinked and it was suddenly Friday. We just finished up the 6th week of school (how has it been 6 weeks already?!). Our main focus these past six weeks was on developing routines to make our classroom run more smoothly. When the class shows me that they know a routine and carry it out quickly and accurately, (i.e. transitioning in a quiet and timely manner is a big one in our class!) they can earn pebbles towards a class reward. We have filled our class pebble jar for the second time! The students voted and decided on pajama day! Pajama day will take place on October 10th. Please, no slippers!
This week was a busy one! In Writer's Workshop, we continued with writing a personal narrative. The students are working very hard to grasp the idea that our writing is "never done." We have learned four different ways a narrative can begin, an emotion, an action, dialogue or description. Students created new leads to the same narrative and chose the one that they liked the best. This week, we also went back into our writing to find subjects and predicates. One common thing we are all working on is where to add periods into our writing. After identifying the subjects and predicates, students were better able to see where they may need a period or the word "and," for now. Today, the focus was on "show, not tell." I asked the students to draw a picture of my children at Confreda Farm with Marshall and Rocky from Paw Patrol. As I walked around and gave feedback, the students quickly became frustrated. "No, it didn't look like that!" "Wait, Marshall was to the left." "You drew them standing??They were on a bench!" "No, not a wooden bench, a bench made out of hay bales." Eventually, I asked what the problem was. Why could they not draw a picture that I knew so well in my head? "You did not give us enough descriptive details," they finally settled on. I then read a page from Owl Moon to the class and hid the illustration. It was amazing to see how accurate their drawings were from description, alone. Next week, we will divide into writing partners and try a selection from our narratives for our partners to draw. This will hopefully help the writers see where they have enough details and where they could use more. In Math, we completed Chapter 2, Addition. We had our end of the Chapter quiz today and the students did fantastic! Next week, we will continue onto Chapter 3, Subtraction. Before we move on to multiplication, we are really focusing on addition and subtraction fluency. Xtramath (link in resources) is a great way for them to practice at home. The students also love Fact Dash! Being more fluent with these facts will help their accuracy and stamina in math as the tasks get longer and more complex. Reader's Workshop focused on visualizing, which pairs so well with our "show, not tell" theme in writing! We also began reading How to Be Cool in the Third Grade and are digging into story elements. The focus this week was on characters (main and supporting) and character relationships (how do they change over time?) This was also the first week that we added guided reading to our plates for Reader's Workshop. I was very impressed to see the students I was not meeting with on that particular day carry out their reading job and work silently the whole time! In Science, we finished up investigation 1.3, How much water can a dry sponge absorb? This was our first time using grams as a measurement of mass, as well as our first time using balance scales! I was blown away watching the students follow a very detailed scientific procedure. 1. Weigh a dry sponge in the balance scale with grams 2. Soak a sponge overnight in a cup of water 3. Move the sponge to the balance scale without squeezing out the liquid 4. Measure the mass again with grams 5. Subtract the weight of the dry sponge Check out the pictures in the photos section! Enjoy your long weekend! -Mrs. Ferreira |
Mrs. FerreiraTeacher, Foodie, Mother, Wife. Archives
April 2019
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