Important Dates/Information
-Reminder that school starts 10 minutes earlier now! Doors open at 7:50a -Thursday Mar 2, EL Night Students will be showcasing all of their hard work! The focus will be on the process of how we got to where we are, more information soon to come -Friday March 10 *Full Friday!* School will be let out at 2:45p on Friday, March 10 to make up a snow day (the other extended Fridays will be Mar 24, Apr 14, Apr 28, May 12, and May 24) -Tue Mar 7, Art Opening Party, 3:30 - 5:00 The 3rd grade crew will have art from our bridge expedition on display at News Seasons Orenco Station for the month of March. The art opening party will be in the dining area. New Seasons, 1453 NE 61st Ave Homework for this week: -Read each night for at least 20 minutes -math flash cards (on Friday, I sent home an XtraMath flyer with a sign-up code to have access to an online flashcard program. Once students enter the code, they will be assessed on where they should begin with multiplication facts. If you'd like, you can receive email updates with your child's progress. If possible, please sign up using this flyer and let me know if you didn't receive one. Thanks!) -book report due next Tues 2/28 Math We have been doing a lot of fluency practice with our multiplication facts. In teams, the students have been quizzing each other on the facts and playing a game using a set of dominoes. On the iPads, we have been using a game called Mathmateer to get faster and faster at these facts! We also filled out a sheet that helped us connect and see the different ways of representing multiplication. We represented the problem 4 x 3 by using an array, the number line, equal groups, and repeated addition. We also learned about the commutative property of multiplication, so we were sure to write down that 3 x 4 will equal the same things as 4 x 3...12! Listen to your student explain how to play the multiplication dominoes game Ask your student to explain what the commutative property is Extend the learning by practicing multiplication facts at home Literacy We finished our read aloud book Upside Down Magic! We are looking forward to reading more books from the series in the coming weeks, as well as doing a character study on Nory. We continued to meet in our guided reading groups and focused on coming up with a variety of different words to describe a character. Listen to your student describe their favorite part of Upside Down Magic Ask your student to describe the ending of Upside Down Magic Extend the learning by reading a book together and discussing the character traits of a main character Expedition This week, we read the Footbridge Over Burnside bridge proposal that architects and engineers have proposed to solve the issue on Wildwood Trail. We came up with a list of things that were present in the proposal that we also think should be in ours such as having multiple perspectives of the bridge, including projected cost, materials, etc. Then, we critiqued each others work on the sketch designs of our bridges. We had a lot of good conversations around what it feels like to be critiqued and what makes good feedback. We focused on being kind, specific, and helpful. Everyone agreed that receiving feedback can be really hard, but it is something we are looking forward to doing to continue getting better. Our fieldwork to Cathedral Park at St. Johns Bridge was incredibly wet, but really fun! The students showed a lot of perseverance by putting on a smiling face and braving the rain throughout the whole day. The bus driver was really kind and allowed us to eat lunch on the bus, because it truly did non-stop rain. We will continue working on our art pieces into the next week with Ms. Shannon. Listen to your student explain what it felt like to both give and receive feedback Ask them to describe what kinds of things they can say to give someone kind, specific, and helpful feedback Extend the learning by discussing the bridge proposal found here: http://www.edcarpenter.net/portfolio/wildwood-trail-bridge/ Please let me know if you have any questions or comments!
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Important Dates/Information
-Reminder that school starts 10 minutes earlier now! Doors open at 7:50a -Thursday Mar 2nd, NEW EL NIGHT! Due to the snow days, we have changed EL night to March 2nd. This is to make sure all the crews have enough time to finish our expedition final products. -Thursday, Feb 16 - Fieldwork to St. Johns Bridge More information coming soon -Progress reports went home on Friday! If you haven't seen your student's report yet, check their backpack! Homework for this week: -Read each night for at least 20 minutes -math facts flash cards -two more readers responses will be sent home this week, due back next Tuesday 2/21 Math This week, we continued our study of multiplication. We added more rows to our multiplication chart and it is almost completed. Now that we have all grasped the concept of multiplication and know different ways to represent it, we will begin becoming fluent in these facts. To start that off, we played a multiplication game that involved running up to the board to quickly solve problems. We also began writing our own multiplication story problems! This was challenging for many of us, as it was at first hard to tell when to add in a story problem and when to multiply. We realized that you multiply when the same number is being repeated or there are groups of things. We can add when different numbers need to be combined. This, upcoming week, we will be going to the computer lab to type up our problems and are hoping to send them home for our families to do! So, expect some homework soon :) Listen to your student explain the process of creating a story problem Ask your student to explain when to add in a problem and when to multiply Extend the learning by creating multiplication story problems for your student to solve Literacy We are finally able to get back into the full swing of our guided reading groups. The snow days and short weeks really threw off our schedule, so we were all really glad to get back together in our groups for reading. Our focus for this week has been on character traits and building on our reading fluency and expression. We have been having a lot of fun using our fluency sticks to track our reading. This helps us not skip over words or lines and read with a steady pace. Our read aloud book Upside Down Magic has been a lot of fun to read. We have had a lot of good laughs with that book! Listen to your student explain what a character trait is Ask your student to describe the character traits of Nory from Upside Down Magic Extend the learning by reading a book together and discussing the different character traits of a main character Expedition This week, we are tackling an engineering problem! We read the beginning of a blog post from a Portland hiker who is concerned about a safety hazard on a trail. In Forest Park on Wildwood Trail, there is a portion of the trail that crosses W. Burnside St. There is always a lot of traffic and cars zipping by...so we brainstormed solutions to solving this. As a class, we decided that building a footbridge would be the most reasonable and effective solution. In our bridge groups, we collaborated to answer questions about what our bridge design and proposal might look like. Here is a link to the blog post we read about: https://exploreportlandnature.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/proposed-pedestrian-bridge-for-wildwood-trail-at-burnside/ We only read the first portion, I haven't yet told them there is an actual footbridge proposal, we will be looking at that later this week! Listen to your student describe the problem that we worked on solving in regards to the hiking trail Ask them to describe what type of bridge they think would be best for a footbridge Extend the learning by discussing this video and reviewing the engineering process https://youtu.be/fxJWin195kU Please let me know if you have any questions or comments! Important Dates/Information
-Monday Feb 6th Early Start Begins! To make up for all those snow days, school will be starting at 8:00a -Thursday Mar 2nd, NEW EL NIGHT! Due to the snow days, we have changed EL night to March 2nd. This is to make sure all the crews have enough time to finish our expedition final products. Donation Requests: -disinfecting wipes -paper towels Homework for this week: -Read each night for at least 20 minutes -book report reader's responses will be sent home on Tuesday, due back the following Tuesday -math facts flash cards Math During our short week, we continued to learn about how multiplication can be represented. We finished creating our giant multiplication table chart. It shows the arrays of all the problems from 0-10. Once we finished the chart, we looked at patterns and discovered tricks to remember times table rows. We discussed the 1x, 2x, 7x, and 10x rows. Then, we discussed how to thoroughly solve a word problem. Many of us were not showing our work or making our answers clear, so we went over the different steps to solving story problems. They include identifying the key information, writing down what the problem is asking you to do and how to solve it, solving it, checking your work, and labeling your answer and putting it in a sentence. Listen to your student describe the process of creating our giant multiplication table Ask your student to explain the patterns and names we came up for the 1x, 2x, 7, and 10x rows Extend the learning by creating story problems together and going through the steps for solving them Literacy This week, we focused in on story elements. On Monday we got to watch the Pedro Power play and afterwards we discussed the setting, characters, and plot (beginning, middle, and end). We have also been practicing doing the same for our new read aloud book Upside Down Magic for each of the different chapters that we have been reading. In the coming weeks, we will continue to practice this with our read aloud as well as the individual books we are choosing to read. Listen to your student explain what the setting and plot of a story is Ask your student to describe our read aloud book Upside Down Magic (we love this book!!) Extend the learning by reading a book together at home and identifying the setting, characters, and plot Expedition During this short week, we put the finishing touches on our bridge writing and art pieces. We also reviewed bridges by playing Jeopardy! We didn't get to finish our game, so we are going to look forward to doing that this upcoming week. Listen to your student list the different bridge words they have thought of from A-Z Ask them to describe how it was playing Jeopardy Extend the learning by practicing drawing bridges together as a family Please let me know if you have any questions or comments! Important Dates/Information
-Thursday Feb 2, No School Professional Development Day -Friday Feb 3, No School Grading Day -Monday Feb 6th Early Start Begins! To make up for all those snow days, school will be starting at 8:00a -Thursday Mar 2nd, NEW EL NIGHT! Due to the snow days, we have changed EL night to March 2nd. This is to make sure all the crews have enough time to finish our expedition final products. -Monday Jan 30 - Wednesday Feb 1 Scholastic book fair! This will be open to the students during lunch and after school Donation Requests: -disinfecting wipes -paper towels Homework for this week: Homework this week will be going home on Wednesday instead of Tuesday!! Since it is a short week, the students will be coming home with a bit more work that usual so that Thursday and Friday can be used as valuable learning time for both teachers and students! -Read each night for at least 20 minutes Math We are loving multiplication! We continued our look into multiplication by discussing the different ways that multiplication can be represented. We discussed that it can be understood as equal groups (what we called loops and groups), repeated addition, or in an array! We worked in depth with arrays and discovered the difference between representing 3 x 7 and 7 x 3. When it comes to arrays, multiplication can be thought of as "rows of" so 3 x 7 look like 3 rows of 7, while 7 x 3 looks like 7 rows of 3! This was quite confusing at first, even for Ms. Kerry, but with a lot of practice we quickly got the hang of it! Then, we found arrays around our classroom and with our reading buddies! Listen to your student explain different ways to represent multiplication Ask your student to to draw you a 3 x 7 array and a 7 x 3 array and discuss the difference Extend the learning by finding arrays around the house! Some example from the classroom were our calendars and our bookshelves Literacy Last week we learned about editing our papers! We discussed capitalization, punctuation, and thinking about our word choice. We read an awesome book called Punctuation Takes a Vacation. It was all about a class that let their punctuation take a vacation...but that resulted in chaos for reading! We practiced both of these new skills and will continue this week to edit our bridge writings. Listen to your student describe what happened in the book Punctuation Takes a Vacation Ask them to describe when words should be capitalized Extend the learning by reading a book together at home and tracking all the different punctuation marks you find Expedition As we finish up our bridge writing, the students are also working on a few other projects.We have beautiful watercolor and sharpie bridge artwork pieces that are coming together nicely. We have been enjoying each other's company while painting and listening to our new read aloud book called Upside Down Magic. We also are working on a Bridge A-Z chart, it has been challenging to think of bridge words that start with Z and X! Listen to your student list the different bridge words they have thought of from A-Z Ask them to describe the process of creating their bridge artwork Extend the learning by practicing drawing bridges together as a family Please let me know if you have any questions or comments! |
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