Week in Review

YAD: I was reminded yet again why Young Authors Day continues to be one of my favorite days of the school year. It was wonderful seeing so many parents at the event. The breakout sessions gave student writers a chance to celebrate their successes with a small group of Eastgate Eagles ranging in grades from kindergarten to fifth. In the gym, students were invited to watch Tyee Middle School students, some of them former Eastgate Eagles, perform dramatized versions of their stories. In the library, students had a chance to hear real-life writer Bonnie Becker share about her journey to becoming a published author. The weather cooperated for our all-school BBQ, a delicious way to wrap up the events.

READING: We've been reading Gooney Bird the Fabulous and using it as a springboard for our discussions on making inferences, or reading between the lines. Specifically, our work has focused on making a logical guess regarding the hidden moral of a fable. We used explicitly stated facts from the text to support our opinions and rated our inferences from unlikely to certain.

WRITING:  We worked on finishing our Young Author Day stories and celebrated by writing fanciful "About the Author" pages. A student volunteer would choose a special talent (s)he wanted highlighted for the page.  As a class, we generated ideas about who the most celebrated professionals of the chosen talents were and how they compared to our student volunteer. We came up with ideas about  how commercially successful our YAD books were and added other imaginary details. Each individual 'About the Author" page was a group effort with everyone contributing ideas and conducting internet research while I scribed.

MATH: We began multiplying non-unit fractions with whole numbers. This is a two-step process involving dividing the whole number by the denominator of the fraction and then multiplying by the numerator. We also began finding equivalent fractions. Students learned to multiply the numerator and the denominator by a common multiplier. The big take away this week was how helpful committing those basic multiplication facts to memory has been. The majority of the students have memorized most of the facts and so flew easily through the computations and still had enough mental energy to grasp the bigger concept. If your child has still not learned their tables, please continue to work with him or her at home.  Due to YAD, there will be no math homework over the weekend.

SCIENCE: We began our new unit on rocks and minerals. We discussed the importance of making observations of rocks with the minds and the eyes of a geologist. This means we have to be detailed and precise. Students practiced this by doing their first observation with mock rocks. They took various measurements and noted the color and texture of the rock.

SOCIAL STUDIES:  We began tackling the big ideas behind economics specifically supply and demand.

MISC: Next Thursday and Friday, third graders will take the MSP. We have been practicing using the online tools for these tests in our classroom. Please make sure your children eat a nutritious, non-sugar-crashing breakfast before school and that they get plenty of the sleep the nights before each test. Also, please make sure your children wear running shoes on Monday. They will begin the running portion of their assessment.