And now we are in May… zip, zing!  The end of the school year is so close we can all see it.  The kids are excited.  I have to say I feel a little panicked and know we will be working hard to the end.  We have habitat learning in science.  We have state and country learning in social studies.  The children have to develop their portfolios and get ready to share their learning accomplishments with you in their final student led conference.  And of course there is still reading, writing and math.  It’s a busy, full time.

3E’s Wowza Museum !!!!!

            Thank you for coming to our third museum of the year.  The children are always excited to share their work.  It is the final step in the learning process – having an audience and an opportunity to share all they have done.  It gives their work greater purpose.

 

The children have learned more about our world through their personal explorations and from their classmates as well.  Through the research process the students have developed some important habits.  They are coming to understand the importance of reading materials completely before taking notes  so the words are their own rather than copies.  They understand more about paragraphing and have found ways to better organize their writing.  Many of the children felt that this was their best informational writing and presentation of the year.

Thank you for coming and touring the Wowza Museum and learning with us.

Writing Long, and Making Sure it is Well Done

            An expectation of the new Common Core State Standards is that students in third grade and beyond sit down and write extensively in a variety of ways.  “Extensively” means at least two or three well-constructed full pages writing. Students are expected to write narrative, informational and persuasive pieces.

We have been learning about each of these writing forms.  We used persuasion to decide on the Seven Wonders of North Hampton and in writing book reviews.  We have been writing narrative pieces throughout the year.  Most recently we are working to write about one vacation event with detail and description.  We are discovering this to be a challenging task.  Our informational writing skills have developed through our research work and have grown through the year.

It is a daunting task to write and rewrite…and rewrite again.  We are learning to plan and map out our writing in order to be able to give the piece of writing structure from the start.  We are learning to set a purpose and are trying to imagine the “audience” we are speaking to with our written words.  We are finding ways to add in and take out.  It is an interesting challenge.  You may want to ask your child how he or she is feeling about writing long and well as we work to meet this goal.

Fractions

We are continuing to work with fractions and learn about equivalence.  We have created fraction sets and have been using them to play a few different games.  One that the class seemed to enjoy was building a Fraction Wall.  One of the game cards is “free choice denominator.”  It never dawned on me to select 1, but it did to some of the children.  It made me smile to realize how well they did understand the fraction process.  And how a little competition can be a good thing  at times.  The more work we do, the more understanding spreads through the class.  They do appreciate challenges.

State and National Park Exploration

            I hope you have seen the information about the Parade of States and National Parks and that you know what your children is researching and presenting.  We began our formal exploration yesterday with children reading some of the several books available to them in the classroom.  The plan is to have the children read quite extensively during the first part of next week so they have greater understanding of their site and can begin a partial list of wonders they might highlight on their float.  Please be on the lookout for float guidelines and information in the middle of next week.   If you have any questions as we work through this process, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Bits and Pieces

• Book Fair – we are scheduled to visit the book fair Monday Morning.  The children will be browsing then and creating their “wish lists.”
• The Book Fair is open especially for Parents on Friday, May 10th from 8:30 to 10:30.  The Book Fair Co-Chairs would love to have you visit.
• Cursive – we have had the opportunity to learn the shape and form of all the upper and lower case cursive letters.  We’ll be working on words and sentences now.  We’ll see how that goes.
• On Wednesday we completed The Secret of Zoom.  It was a very satisfactory ending – the children triumphed over their cruel, greedy enemy.  I’m sure your child can tell you all about it.
• Could you help in reminding your child about the need to keep too much talking at a minimum?  This week it has gotten to the point of rudeness – children talking through each other and through directions, children talking during all of work time, children calling out over the classroom.  There are a couple leaders – but a lot of followers, and that keeps the leaders in business.  This week we wasted a large portion of our work time by talking it away.  We have too much to accomplish to keep that going – we don’t need silence, but we do need to put learning first.
• Outdoor Challenge with Mr. Caron – weather permitting will be going out for a challenge on Tuesday, May 7.
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