Grade 3

It has been a busy couple of weeks in room 25!

Lent is well underway- the children have learned about the dignity of the human person, how each of us are created in the image of a creative, communal, powerful, and loving God, and therefor every person has equal value.  We have talked about what it means to be the Body of Christ and how we can encourage and support people around us through the Corporal and Spiritual Acts of Mercy.  Through CRS rice bowl videos the children are learning more about the world around them, the value of education, and how the spare change they are putting into their rice bowls can truly change a life!

In addition, the children had the opportunity to make their own Stations of the Cross.  They learned about 3 different artists- Landkamer, Fujimura, and Rouault- and created a unique art piece, inspired by their work.  Each item they selected to place on their piece holds a unique meaning and the Stations are beautiful.  Currently they line the walls of our classroom- I will send them home with your student on Good Friday, but until then, here are some photos.

Last week we had our first ever STEM day.  It was a wonderful day and I am grateful to my colleagues on the STEM team for organizing such an engaging day, culminating with the wonderful family STEM night.  During the day our class met with our 6th grade buddies and built towers using only index cards and a 24″ piece of masking tape. It was great fun watching them design, test, and redesign. We also had a guest speaker come and talk with the students about how her degree in anthropology led to a fabulous and unexpected job in STEM.  It was a great day!

This week in Math we will wrap up our unit on fractions.  We are continuing to work on practicing strategies to help us easily multiply in our heads.  This week the children will tackle 7’s.  Thanks for continuing to help them practice at home, repetition is key!

In reading we have started our Spring all class read aloud; Charlotte’s Web.  This book is rich in themes of friendship and love.  While reading this book the children will be learning about Figurative Language- and how to incorporate these language tools into their writing.

This week we will begin our next science unit on fossils.  We will be reading a non-fiction book and several non-fiction texts.  It is always a favorite unit for students!

 

SEE YOU AT THE AUCTION FRIDAY!! 

 

Lent is upon us.  This week the children learned all about the meaning of Lent, Ash Wednesday, Jesus’ 40 days in the desert, and the three ways the Church invites us to grow closer to God during the season of Lent; Alms, Prayer, and Fasting.  Each child made 3 goals or promises for Lent and then turned those Lenten promises into prayers.  They each placed one burnt match on our cross to represent those prayers.  It was a lovely time of reflection and learning.

Multiplication March is underway!  This week the children found creative and engaging ways to help them learn their 2’s times tables.  Today in class they made their own board games and practiced their facts with each other.  Next week we will work on or 4’s times tables ****hint they are a double double**** . In addition to multiplication facts the children will begin to explore fractions next week.

For the next couple of weeks the children will take a break from Writer’s Workshop to write their science adaptation paper.  This week they are working on the visual representation of their organism, the climate it lives in, and the adaptations (behavioral or structural) which it needs to survive.  They are really enjoying the creative nature of this science unit and have learned a lot about climate regions and how they influence or change organisms over time.

 

Dates:

Tuesday March 12th:Dress Uniform- Class Pictures!

Thursday March 14th:Dress Uniform and lunch in the classroom (Grandparent’s Day for younger grades)

Friday March 15th: No Hot Lunch . Pipers will be here at 8am . Stations of the Cross 2:30pm in the church

March 21st: 2nd Trimester Report Cards

 

 

 

 

 

It is good to be back!  The children settled in nicely after the many days off due to the snow storm and our scheduled mid-winter break.  I look forward to a full, five day week next week.

Reading: The children are continuing to enjoy reading novels together in their book clubs and are stretching themselves with great non-fiction texts in both science and Achieve3000.  I will be giving the children a lesson on how to “take Achieve3000 to the next level” next week, if you are interested in learning more about how you can better utilize this fabulous reading tool at home, email me and I will send you the details/strategies.

Math:  This week the children used a number of strategies to solve challenging division word problems.  Today they took these skills and applied them, along with their growth mindset, to collaboratively solve a  challenging logic problem.  Many strategies were implemented, and many solutions proposed, but they have YET to find an possible solution.  I told the children I would post the problem here and have challenged them to try to find a solution over the weekend.

 

 

 

Multiplication March is right around the corner!  In class we will begin practicing our multiplication facts with a variety of tools, tricks, strategies, and games.  I will send home a handout towards the beginning of March with a series of creative ways you can help your child practice multiplication facts at home.  Get ready to break out the decks of cards and have some fun.  Memorizing multiplication facts does not need to be all flash-cards after all!

Science: Our climate/adaptation unit is well under way.  Ask your children what adaptations a plant or animal would need to survive in the desert or rain forest.  Be prepared to hear some great vocabulary such as, epiphytes, drip-tips, nocturnal, decomposer, producer, waxy bark, and ephemeral.  They are really enjoying this interactive unit of study.  In the next couple of weeks the children will get to create a plant or animal, decide where it lives, and detail the necessary adaptations for survival.  They will write a corresponding research paper- it is a challenging and engaging unit of study.

Writing: The children are continuing to use our “Rockin’ Paragraph” format to craft engaging and creative stories.  They are learning to work through the entire writing process; brainstorming, utilizing graphic organizers, writing rough drafts, self-editing, and publishing final drafts.  Look for these stories to start coming home in yellow folders soon.

 

 

I hope you are all doing well, staying warm, and enjoying the biggest snow event this city has seen in 70 years.  It has been quite something!  While I have been enjoying family time, lots of long walks, and snowball fights with my daughter, I miss the children very much and am looking forward to seeing them soon.  I wanted to make you aware of upcoming dates (and changes to our schedule)- I will update this page if these dates change further.  Hope to see you soon.

Wednesday, February 13th: All School Mass- CANCELLED!

Thursday, February 14th: Valentine’s Day Card exchange 

Thursday, February 14th: Spelling Bee grades 3-8, 1:30 Egan Hall

Friday, February 15th: Faculty/Staff retreat, No School

Monday/Tuesday, February 18th &19th: Mid-Winter Break, No School

We are having a wonderful transition back from Christmas break.  The children seem excited to be back to the routines of learning and are eagerly engaging in new tasks.

Math: The children are continuing to work with the strategies of multiplication: equal groups, arrays, repeated addition, and number lines.  This week they will complete their lesson on properties of multiplication with a re-teach poster/project.  Next week we will take these same strategies and put them to work with division.

Math Facts: I know many of you are already beginning the arduous task of memorizing those pesky multiplication facts.  In class we are currently focussing on ensuring your child has a solid understanding of the concepts of multiplication and division.  In the next couple of weeks I will introduce the class to a variety of tools which will help them begin to memorize math facts.  Each week I will send home a specific set of facts, along with creative tools, to help your child master those facts. While we will move onto other math concepts in class, for the duration of the year we will continue to work on memorizing multiplication facts and each Friday we will have a designated math time, Fluency Friday, to work exclusively on multiplication fact recall. 

Writing: We are continuing to build on our “Rockin’ Paragraphs” in our writer’s workshop time.  This week the children will take what they are learning about weather in science to write an Inference Poem about a weather disaster.  It is a great, cross-curricular, lesson.

Science: The children have been hard at work exploring our next science unit; weather and weather disasters.  This week they will complete a weather graph, and complete their design project.  The students were tasked with designing a house to withstand a weather related disaster.  To inform this project the students spent time researching weather related disasters on two interactive web-sites; weatherwizkids.com and weather.thinkport.org . They learned a ton and are putting this knowledge to work designing creative and safe homes.  Look for these projects, along with their weather graphs and poems to be on display at our open house Sunday, January 27th.

Religion: This year the children get to learn the Apostles Creed prayer.  This week the children are helping to illustrate one section of the prayer- creating a visual prayer for our wall.  It is a beautiful way to both interact with and learn this important prayer.

Catholic Schools Week:

Sunday, January 27th: 10:30 School Mass-Students wear dress uniform or dressy cultural attire . Open house 12:00-1:30

Monday, January 28th: Free Dress- bring a can of food for St. Vincent de Paul

Tuesday,  January 29th: Celebrating Our Volunteers  

Wednesday, January 30th: Celebrate our Diverse Nation- students may wear cultural attire to school (or school uniform)

Thursday, January 31st: Teacher Appreciation Day- students may dress like a teacher

Friday, February 1st: Purple and Gold Day!!!  Assembly 1:30

 

What a busy week.

The children participated in Hour of Code with their 6th grade buddies;

They led a beautiful Mass; learned about Our Lady of Guadalupe; used what they are learning about multiplication to make Equal Group Christmas Trees; completed their amazing magnetic design projects; and ended the week with their first art class of the year in the Mezzanine-

This next week we hope to see you at the Winter Concert Tuesday 7pm in Egan Hall, and at our Engineering Design Open House Friday 9:15-10:00 in the classroom.

Have a blessed 3rd week of Advent.

 

Welcome to Advent!  I love this time of year and feel so blessed to work at a school where we get to focus, not only on the fun of Christmas, but the joy and hope of Advent.

Math: This last week the students continued to work on mastering subtraction and regrouping.  They worked collaboratively and independently, utilizing a variety of tools and strategies, to struggle with this challenging concept.

In addition to our hard work in subtraction, the class is beginning to engage with the concepts of multiplication and division.  Ask your child about our “how many crackers” math activity we did on Friday.  I loved watching the children problem solve how many ways they could distribute 36 “crackers” evenly amongst their friends.  The conversation following the activity was particularly engaging.  The children were discussing the relationship between equal groups, multiplication, division, and even fractions.  It was a great discovery lesson.

Reading: The children are continuing to be active participants in book clubs and our reading of Fish in A Tree.  They are working on compare/contrast, vocabulary, and character traits.  It is fun listening in on their conversations.

Writing: The children completed wonderful Fall writing prompts this week.  As they come home in folders on Monday (along with their creative fairy tale writing and the December job applications) take a moment to look over them with your child.  Are they using our awesome Rockin’ Beginnings, including 3 relevant details, and wrapping up their paragraphs with great Clincher Conclusions?  I am really enjoying reading their creative, well-structured, work.

Religion: This last week we had a great set of lessons about Reconciliation.  The children studied Rembrandt’s famous Prodigal Son painting and read/discussed the story of the Prodigal Son from Luke.  We connected this story to Reconciliation.  This Monday the children will have the opportunity to participate in the Sacrament of Reconciliation as a lead in to the Advent Season.

Art: On Friday I led the class in a lesson about synesthesia and Vasily Kandinsky’s art work.  We read the Children’s Book “The Noisy Paintbrush”, a historical fiction book about Kandinsky and his experience with synesthesia.  The children then listened to classical music and painted abstract paintings- using shapes, lines, and color to express how the music made them feel.  They are on display in the 2nd floor hallway if you have a chance to stop by and see them.

Science: Our unit on magnets is well under way.  With all of our “investigation” completed the students will move into the “imagine, plan, create” stages of the engineering process.  This week they will identify a problem and create a product, which uses magnetic property, to solve this problem.  The following week they will design/build this product in class.  This is one of my favorite units and I absolutely can not wait to see what designs this creative class comes up with.

 

Upcoming Dates:

• Friday Dec 7^th – Dress Uniform, All School Liturgy
• Thursday Dec 13^th – Trimester 1 Report Cards go home
• Tuesday Dec 18th – 3rd-5th Music Conference
• Friday Dec 21^st – Noon Dismissal
• Dec 24^th – Jan 4^th – Christmas Break

 

I hope you all were able to enjoy this long Veterans Day holiday weekend.

The children had a chance to wrap up our Social Studies Unit with a bang this last week.  From our Stem activity- where the children designed and built a canoe which needed to float and safely hold passengers(pennies).

 

To our fabulous Native Plants and Native Peoples field trip at the UW Botanical Gardens-

It was a great wrap up to a wonderful unit of study.

This week we start our first science unit- all about magnets!  The children will research magnetic property, investigate how it works, and design a solution to a problem utilizing  magnetic property and all they have learned.  At the end of this unit we will host an open house/science fair where you can come and see all of their products/designs first hand.  More information regarding date and time will be coming soon.

In math we will be moving onto 3/4 digit subtraction with regrouping.  Students will be introduced to a variety of strategies to help them solve these challenging problems.  We will incorporate a variety of visual math to help students really “see and understand” this difficult, abstract, concept.

The children are adding new comprehension strategies into their book clubs.  Many groups will be doing vocabulary searches this next week, building a robust vocabulary and helping them understand the text they are reading at a deeper level.

This week we will take a short hiatus from our all class read a loud of Fish In A Tree to allow more time for science investigations and the corresponding non-fiction reading books that are a part of our new NGSS aligned science curriculum.  I look forward to watching students dig deeper with these, content rich, leveled readers.

Dates:

Thursday, November 15th: Grandparents and Friends Day- join us for a wonderful time of food, fellowship, and festivities.  Our lunch is from 11:00-11:45- children bring a lunch to share with their guests.  This is a DRESS UNIFORM DAY

Monday, November 19th: DRESS UNIFORM 3rd and 6th graders lead the school in our Thanksgiving Mass- we would love to see you there!

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here are some shots of our week in room 25:

From learning about the properties of addition and creatively reteaching them-

Collaboratively utilizing new strategies to work through challenging addition problems-

 

Studying the geographical regions of North American Native People, completing a variety of graphic organizers in a jigsaw, and putting it all together reteaching each other-

Fabulous Halloween art led by terrific parent volunteers-

To the wonderful Halloween Carnival put on by our fabulous Middle School Department-

It was a wonderful, creative, and collaborative week in room 25!

See you all at conferences.

Upcoming Dates

• Oct 29^th, Nov 5^th – Student Parent Teacher Conferences in Egan Hall
• Nov 1^st – All Saints Day Mass, Dress Uniform
• Nov 7^th – Field Trip to UW Gardens to visit Native People’s Tour
• Nov 9^th and Nov 12^th – No School
• Nov 15^th – Grandparent and Special Friends Day
• Nov 21^st, Nov 22^nd, Nov 23^rd – Thanksgiving Break

 

What a gorgeous week!  We had a great week working on projects, creating art together and utilizing growth mind-set while learning new math concepts.

Social Studies:  The children wrapped up their Native American research projects and began presenting these projects to the class on Friday.  We will complete these creative presentations on Monday.  This coming week your children will become the experts and teachers as we take their knowledge of individual tribes and utilize it to learn about the Native People groups in the  5 regions of the US.

Math: We started off our addition unit with an exploratory lesson- “how many ways can you solve an addition problem”- it was great fun to see the children struggle and persist, challenging themselves to explore mathematical concepts in a more creative way.  We saw visual representations, creative uses of number lines, place value blocks, splitting strategies, etc.  This week we will build on these ideas,  continuing to learn the  properties of addition and specific strategies for addition.

Reading: In addition to our fiction reading in book clubs and Fish In A Tree, the children interacted with a number of non- fiction texts this week.  They completed Achieve 3000 articles, striving for 75%, 88%, and 100% accuracy.  They also interacted with non-fiction books and web sites to help them complete their SS research.

Religion: This week, in our Brain Talk self regulation series, we met Miss Hipp and The Professor.  Ask your children how Miss Hipp works together with The Professor to help us use the thinking parts of our brains to help us regulate, hit the pause button, and be deciders!

On Wednesday we attended our first all school Mass, it was a beautiful time of worship together.

This Friday is Jog-A-Thon celebration day!  We will have a celebration assembly and in the afternoon our class will celebrate running the most laps with a popcorn and movie party!  Thanks for all your help in making this such a successful event each year!

Reminder: The conference sign-up is now available-  

• Oct 19^th – Endowment Dinner
• Oct 29^th, Nov 5^th – Parent Teacher Conferences
• Oct 23^rd – Individual Student Photos
• Oct 24^th – Unity Day. Please encourage your child to wear orange free dress on this day to honor the acts of kindness and inclusion.
• Oct 26^th – Youth Group Haunted House 5pm
• Nov 1^st – All Saints Day Mass, Dress Uniform
• Nov 9^th and Nov 12^th – No School