Week in Review

 

I very much enjoyed meeting all of you at Curriculum Night last week. Thank you for taking the time to come. I truly hope you all will find this blog helpful. This blog is meant to be interactive. That is to say, I hope it generates two-way conversations. If you find something particularly helpful or would like to see a particular tutorial or just want to leave a general comment, please do. Or click on the envelope in the sidebar to leave me a private message.

 



MATH: We started subtracting with regrouping. We used the conventional method aka, borrowing. We also practiced the expanded form method and we used proof drawings to prove the accuracy of our work.


How you can help at home- Familiarize yourself with the expanded form method as well as proof drawings for subtraction by watching the homework helper tutorial here.


LITERACY: We read The Trial of Cardigan Jones by Tim Egan. We used details from the text to help us make inferences or predictions about the main characters guilt or innocence regarding the theft of a pie. We used the following graphic organizer to help us organize our thoughts.

We broke into three groups for spelling. Some students focused on learning words from a list of the most frequently used words in writing for third graders. Other students focused vocabulary words from our read aloud Charlotte's Web. A third group of students focused on words following the vowel-consonant-silent e pattern.

In writing, we used sentence stretching as a strategy to revise our paragraphs about our favorite things.

How you can help- Your child is bringing home a list of spelling words for this week's test. Take a few moments during the week to quiz your child. Or you can click on the spelling link in the sidebar for a pdf of this week's words.

When questioning your child regarding the books
(s)he reads ask, "What happened in the story to make you think that?

SCIENCE: We started measuring mass. We used paperclips as an unit to weigh different objects. Students discovered the need for a standard unit. We learned that in the metric system that unit is the gram. We learned that milligrams are used to weigh very small objects and the kilograms are used to measure larger objects.

MISC: The walkathon is scheduled for this Friday. Make sure your child dresses appropriately for the weather. Also, students will be using classroom computers to access varioius educational software programs. Headphones are required for some of the programs. While we do have access to a shared set of headphones, I strongly urge parents to send an inexpensive set of earbuds to school for your child's sole use. We will store the earbuds in ziploc baggies in our desks.