This is a test

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Homophones

We added to our Word Wall again! Our Word Wall consists of homophones that are commonly misspelled. A homophone is a word that sounds like another word, but has a different meaning and is spelled differently. Once a homophone is on the Word Wall, I expect it to be spelled correctly in children's work.

son - a male child

sun - the star in the universe that provides us with daylight and warmth

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some - a collection of something

sum - an answer to an addition problem; an amount of money

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guest - a person invited to go somewhere

guessed - when someone predicted without all the information

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banned - being stopped from doing something

band - several people playing musical instruments together;
length of material used to hold things together

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missed - to unsuccessfully attempt something

mist - lots of tiny drops of water in the air, making it hard to see

Test 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 Thursday 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 our practice. We used a sample from an actual MCAS test!

Extra Help - Math

Starting this week I will be holding extra help sessions on Tuesday mornings (7:50-8:20)and Thursday afternoons (2:35-3:05). In order to best meet the needs of each child I will be choosing a focus for each session. For example, this week there will be a focus on subtraction with regrouping. If your child needs or would like some extra practice in this area they are welcome to attend either or both days.

I am happy to see as many children who are interested. I only ask that you notify me to let me know that your child is coming.

Math Review

Holy cow! Third grade mathematicians have been working soooo hard! As you may know, we just took the Chapter 5 assessment. You will receive these at home soon. I have been very impressed with the results.

Now, we are preparing for our district wide mid-year assessment. All children grades 1-5 will be taking a grade appropriate version of this assessment. The third grade assessment will focus on Think Math chapters 1-5.

Therefore, the next few days will include a review of concepts that we've learned since September. These concepts include:

arrays
intersections
magic squares
fact families
counting coins
organized list of coins
addition with regrouping
subtraction with regrouping
regrouping with measurement
rounding numbers
comparing numbers
mystery numbers
combinations
adding on the number line
subtracting on the number line

Children are working in small groups to help each other review each concept. Wow! Room 221 really shows the meaning of community. They work beautifully together to be sure that everyone understands. It's very impressive.

On Wednesday, I will pull small groups based on difficulties children have as we review. Thursday, we'll play a Jeopardy math game. Finally, we will take the assessment on Friday! Ask your child what math concept comes easiest to them, and what math concept is most challenging.

Mrs. Abedon's Story

Mrs. Abedon was our guest teacher on Thursday. She is writing us a story about Room 221. In the story, all the students will take a field trip to Mars. Mrs. Abedon asked us certain questions so she could include our answers in her story. One of her questions asked, "If you could bring a person, who would it be?" Mrs. Abedon will write the story and then make sure it gets to us. We hope she sends it soon.

Poetry

Third grade poets are writing and writing and writing. Some of you may even have received a "poetic gift" over the holidays!

Most recently third grade poets have learned to include line breaks as they write. Most of the kids had been adding line breaks after they wrote the poem. They would add slashes to show where the line breaks should go. Third grade poets have been surprised at how different the shape of poems can be.

Yesterday, we looked at the power of strong words. We learned that poets choose their words carefully to affect the meaning and the sound of their poems.

Ask your poet about the 'strong" words they included in their poem yesterday.