New FCA - weekend adventure

You may have noticed the new FCA on your third grader's homework tonight. The new challenge for Room 221 authors is to vary their sentence beginnings. Put simply, their sentences should not begin with the same word again and again. Often in personal narrative writing children begin their sentences with I... I... I... or And... And... And... Miss Winters gave the children a chart to write down the first word of each sentence so they can check to be sure their using different words each time (or most times anyway. :o)

Our Classroom... the globe?

If you were to have looked in Room 221 this afternoon, you might have been a little confused. Your first question may have been something like, "Why is there masking tape across the floor?” We are currently learning about the four different hemispheres of the globe (northeastern, southeastern, northwestern, and southwestern), and in order to help us master these four hemispheres, we have divided our very own room. We have the “equator” separating the northern half of our room from the southern, and the “prime meridian” separating the eastern half of the class from the western half. We have many fun activities planned to help your children master the different spheres and eventually, be able to identify the different spheres that continents can be found in!

Math: Problem of the Week

Each Sunday night, I plan to post a new Problem of the Week.I hope it offers your family an opportunity to work together to solve a fun and challenging math problem. It's important to emphasize that this challenge is not necessarily designed for your child to solve on their own, this is something to work on together!

*Please note, this is not a mandatory activity, but something your family may choose to participate in.

Challenge #1

On Thanksgiving Thursday Carissa ate some cranberries. The next day she couldn't stop thinking about how good the cranberries were and ate seven more cranberries than she had eaten on Thursday. Each day after that she ate seven more cranberries than the day before. By the following Wednesday night she had eaten a total of 161 cranberries for the whole week.

How many cranberries did Carissa eat on Thanksgiving Thursday?

Extra: Since Carissa would probably get sick eating so many cranberries, let's pretend. If she were to continue this pattern, each day eating seven more cranberries than the day before, on which day would she eat 499 cranberries for her daily total?

Helping Your Child with Math

There's a lot you can do to create a math-friendly atmosphere at home. For starters you can display a positive attitude towards mathematics - even if you find it difficulty or unpleasant, or think you were never good at it.

A math educator, lecturer, and workshop leader says, "One of the most significant things parents can do is to help their children understand the normalcy and the value of struggle in mathematics... Learning math ultimately comes down to one thing: the ability, and choice, to put one's brain around a problem -- to stare past the confusion, and struggle forward rather than flee." People who struggle with math assume they just don't get it and never will. Those who do not struggle believe their success is the result of ability, but then may lose their confidence the first time they hit a stumbling block. You can help your child expect, cope with, and work through the mathematical difficulties and frustrations they encounter.

You can also explore math together as a family. Just like you read to your child each night, you can find ways to include everyone in the family, without focusing on the stressful parts - speed and memorization. Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Your child can practice rounding at the grocery store. If you are trying to keep track of the running total you can ask them to round each item to the nearest dollar. If an item costs $6.27, your child can figure out that rounds to $6.00

If your child is ready for more of a challenge they can do the rounding, and keep the running total in their head.

2. Your child can help you figure out the cost of your items after you apply your coupons. Give the amount of the item and show them the coupon. They can estimate the cost.

3. Challenge your third grader to track the number of minutes they spend watching television, reading, doing homework or eating. They can graph their data and compare the results on different days.

4. Play 20 questions with numbers. Think of a number - you can adjust the number based on your child's skill level. Ask your child to figure out your number by asking questions that can be answered with yes or no. For example, a child might ask, "Is your number odd?"

5. Play with math in the car. Challenge your child to find license plates whose digits add up to a certain number. Or you can skip over the letters and read all the digits as a large number. If the license plate read, '6G1 T43' the number would be 6,143.

6. Challenge your child with math riddles. For example:

I have 6 coins in my pocket. They are worth 30 cents. What coins might I have?

Again, you can adjust this game based on your child's skill level.

Have fun with math! :o)

Miss Winters - Part 2

Miss Winters will be the lead teacher again this week. Although I will miss working with your children, I will again take the opportunity to observe some other teachers and catch up on those things on my list that I never get to do.

I will be in the building and meeting with my scheduled conferences. Please don't hesitate to contact me with any comments or questions. :o)

Thanksgiving

We went on an awesome website this morning that you may want to check out. Do you want to know the truths and myths about Thanksgiving? Plymouth Plantation has created a website to teach you the truth about Pilgrims and Native Americans. So much of what we know is based on ONE letter about "the first Thanksgiving" written by a Pilgrim in 1621. The children learned that this primary source gives us some answers, but also leaves historians with many questions. Let your third grader share the rest of what they've learned at:

http://www.plimoth.org/education/olc/index_js2.html

The Room 221 community also discussed what Thanksgiving means to different people. Although I encouraged children to celebrate and enjoy their own traditions with family, I also asked them to pause and remember that not all people celebrate Thanksgiving. Some families who are relatively new to this country do not choose to celebrate the holiday. In addition, many Native Americans don't choose to celebrate Thanksgiving because they consider it a Day of Mourning.

Whatever you choose to do tomorrow, I hope you enjoy time with your family.

Are Third Graders Getting Enough Sleep?

Third graders in Room 221 read an article from Time for Kids about sleep today. We learned that many children do not get enough sleep because they are so busy or because they do stimulating things like watching television before going to bed. The article said that school age kids should get 9 - 10 1/2 hours sleep per night so that their brains are able to function at an optimum level. Children who get less sleep tend to have issues with memory and concentration.

Your children will continue their thinking about sleep by creating a line graph showing their own sleep habits. Each school night they will pay attention to the time they go to bed (lights out, covers up) so they can plot it on their line graph. We will look at the results in a few weeks and reflect on what we notice.

Please do your part by helping your child to get to bed at a reasonable time!

Short Week

Due to the holiday there will not be spelling words, weekly math or a reflection journal this week. We will resume our usual schedule on Monday, November 30.

I am also happy to report that I will be teaching again this week. Although I enjoyed getting so much accomplished last week (and Meaghan did a FANTASTIC job), I MISSED teaching! I look forward to working with the kids this week. :o)

The Reasons for Seasons!

Today Room 221 began to learn about the cause for the different seasons we experience year after year. With help from the book The Reasons for Seasons by Gail Gibbons, we learned that the seasons change depending on the Earth's relation to the sun. To help us understand better, we pretended a flashlight was the sun and used a globe to see the different positions of the Earth depending on the season. Be sure to ask your children why it is so cold in the Winter and so warm in the Summer!

Publishing!

Room 221 authors are publishing their first story! The authors learned how important it is to do a final edit of their writing to make it easier for the reader to read. For 15-20 minutes, Room 221 was buzzing as third grade writers read their stories out loud to themselves and marked checks where they found mistakes in capitalization, punctuation and spelling. When they finished finding the mistakes, children went back through their writing and fixed them all up. The children spent 45minutes in the computer lab typing their carefully edited pieces into the computer.

We will keep an anthology of the stories in the classroom for all to read. We will also send home a copy of your child's story so they can share it at home!

MCAS Prep

It's really here! The time for MCAS prep has begun. Most of the preparation we do for MCAS is solid teaching and learning of the third grade curriculum and meeting the needs of your children. However, I also think it is important for your children to learn how to take a standardized test. Taking a standardized test is indeed a skill, and not one that comes naturally. Therefore, Reading Workshop on Fridays will now include instruction on test taking strategies.

The first strategy we learned was reading the questions first. If the children read the questions before they read the text, they will be better prepared to recognize the information they need as they read the text. Ask your child how they felt about yesterday's practice. We used a sample from an actual MCAS test!

Reflection Journals

You probably noticed that your child's Reflection Journal did not come home this week. Sorry about that! Our day was jam packed yesterday trying to fit in every piece of learning. I promise we will complete our letters to you MOST weeks!

Take Over Week

Next week Miss Winters will be the lead teacher in the classroom. She has been working hard, learning about your children,and practicing her teaching skills. She is well prepared to teach your children next week. The school routines will be the same.

Although I will be in the building most of the time, I will not be in the classroom during the school day. However, I will be checking in before and after school each day. therefore able to answer any communication you may send. I will, of course, return to teaching on Monday, November 23. However, Miss Winter's second take over week will begin on Monday, November 30. Unfortunately, her last day with us will be Tuesday, December 8.

As always, don't hesitate to contact me with any questions you may have.

Weekly Math

This week you may have noticed an extra homework assignment. We have begun assigning Weekly Math. Weekly Math will be assigned on Monday and should be returned no later than Friday. The problems are review of the content we have studied in math so far this year. Please help your child to plan their working time carefully so that they are not completing the entire assignment on Thursday night.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Spelling Rules

Have you ever wondered why the 'p' is doubled when you spell the word skipping? Now you can ask your third grader!

Skip is considered a 1-1-1 word because it has 1 syllable, 1 vowel and 1 consonant after the vowel. If you add a vowel suffix (a suffix that starts with a vowel) to a 1-1-1 word, you usually double the final consonant. For example, the word run is a 1-1-1 word. If you want to add 'ing,' a vowel suffix, you know you need to double the 'n,' the final consonant. However, stick is not a 1-1-1 word because the vowel is followed by 2 consonants. Therefore when you add 'ing,' a vowel suffix, you do not double the final consonant.

Look at your child's spelling list and ask them to identify the words that double the final consonant, as well as the words that don't. They should be able to recognize when the base word is a 1-1-1 word.

Happy spelling!

T-Rex

Last week we did a fun investigation of the Tyrannosaurus Rex! We had four spools of yarn; each spool represented a different measurement of the T-Rex. We looked at the size of the T-Rex's head, the length of it's arm, it's height, and it's length. Going out into the hallway, we one at a time investigated each spool to see how many third graders it would take laying down to represent the different measurements. Through our investigation we found it took one and a half third graders to represent size of a T-Rex's head and one third grader to represent the length of the T-Rex's arm. We were shocked to see it took ten third graders to show the height of a T-Rex and eighteen third graders to show the length! It was a very fun experience and it definitely gave the students a better perspective on the size of dinosaurs.

Dinosaur Project

Today your child will bring home a description of a dinosaur project. The project is due on November 20. The children can choose from one of 4 projects. There are FCAs (Focus Correction Areas) for each choice. These delineate exactly what we are looking for from these projects. Please take some time to review this project with your child. They should begin thinking about which project they would like to do.

Don't hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns.

No Spelling Words This Week

The children will not be taking a spelling test this Friday. The concepts and skills we are learning this week in Fundations will be reflected in their spelling list for next week.

Weekend Adventures FCAs

Although there is no school tomorrow, the children do have their typical Monday homework tonight. They should write a paragraph describing one thing they did this weekend.

I thought it might be helpful if I was more specific with all of you about their FCAs (focus correction areas):

1. Small moment - The children should write about a small moment in time. It could 10 minutes, or even 3 minutes of their day. They should not write about their entire day, or even an hour. For example, jumping in the leaves is a small moment. Fall clean up day is not. We call the big topic (not a small moment) a "watermelon."

2. Hook/topic sentence - The children have been learning that the beginning of their writing should "hook" the reader so that they want to read more. However, their paragraph should also include a topic sentence towards the beginning of their paragraphs. (A topic sentence needs to be within the first few sentences, but doesn't necessarily have to be first.)

For example, if I'm writing a paragraph about jumping in the leaves, my topic sentence might be: 'I was having fun with my girls jumping in the leaves.' However, the first sentence of my paragraph could be a hook like, 'The leaves flew in the air and floated down all over my body.' The hook makes the reader want to read more. The topic sentence makes it clear to the reader what the paragraph is about.

In the actual paragraph it would read, 'The leaves flew in the air and floated down all over my body. I was having fun with my girls jumping in the leaves.'

3. PN (Proper Nouns) - The children have learned that the first letter of every proper noun should be capitalized. Therefore I will be looking for capital letters at the beginnings of names, months, days, streets, etc...


I hope this clarifies things for you. I don't expect you to correct your third grader's paragraph, or help them make it "perfect." However, I thought knowing the FCAs might assist you in supporting your child if he/she needs it.

Please don't hesitate to contact me with any comments or concerns.