Another week has gone flying by – it has been full of reading, writing, math, cursive, a bit of science and a challenge.  We always seem to be looking forward to something that doesn’t quite fit in.

Working to Think of Others

Social Emotional Learning

This week we read Interrupting Chicken and talked about how challenging it is to get things done when we have to stop and start over and over again.  It was funny to realize throughout the day how often and how quickly thoughts pop into our heads and then out of our mouths in the middle of something else.  The class is great at knowing when someone else is interrupting and they are working to be more aware of when they are the one interrupting.   Little Red Chicken will help to remind us.

We also had the opportunity to participate in the River Runner challenge with Mr. Caron.  After going over safety rules, the children had to work together as a team to move twice across the swinging logs from one end to the next.  The second part of the challenge was to split up into two teams that moved in opposite directions crossing in the middle to reach the other side.  This required thoughtfulness, care and effort.  It was so great to hear classmates offering help, providing compliments, and being willing to step back to give a friend a turn or the space needed to be successful.

Considering What We Know About Others

Learning How We are Smart – Social Emotional Learning

We are continuing to uncover the ways we are smart by thinking about what we know about each other.  We read Velma Gratch and the Way Cool Butterfly.  We used Velma, the main character, as a model to help us discuss what we knew about her and how we could use the actions from the story to make inferences about how she was smart.

To do this for ourselves we are considering favorite activities and how the various intelligences look in different settings.  We are using what friends say, along with what we know about ourselves to create a pie graph showing how we are smart.  Next week we will complete this project and work to write a paragraph or two explaining the evidence we have that helps us understand all the ways we are smart.  We plan to share this with you at our fall goal setting conferences that we’ll schedule at the end of October.

The Importance of Reading Stamina

Last weekend I had the opportunity to attend the New England Reading Association’s annual conference.  While there I heard Penny Kittle speak.  She is the author of several professional book and works as an English teacher and Literacy Coach at Kennett High School in Conway, NH.  I don’t often think about high school readers, but what she said really impacted my thinking.  In third grade we are working to make sure the children read and comprehend books like Super Fudge by Judy Blume and If You Were There When they Signed the Constitution by Elizabeth Levy by the end of the school year.  These goals change somewhat depending on what your child is reading now, but that is what we are working toward.  To reach this benchmark, the children must be reading lots and in a wide variety of genre.  We are working to help all of the children see themselves as readers of stories and information. We are working to help them love reading and that can only happen if it is enjoyable and meaningful.

Reading can be hard work.  It is often times easier to look through a book or to skim and scan rather than digging deep and working to understand. What Penny Kittle said made me even more aware of the habits I need to encourage so that thoughtful reading grows this year.  She is sending her students to college or a workplace.  To be successful means being able to read a lot and understand it well.  The average number of pages of required reading a week for each college course is 300.  That means a student taking four courses will need to read and understand 1200 pages of challenging material each week.  The amount is a bit less in a workplace, but the reading there must be done at a faster pace.  If students have avoided reading in high school, they are going to struggle mightily.  While high school is a long way off, we can help lessen that struggle by what we do this year.

After just the first month of school we have increased our focused reading time in the classroom from 20 minutes where everyone was actually focused with a book (some were skimming, but none of the children were walking around or talking) to 35 minutes.  Our goal is 45 minutes of focused reading time where children are reading both fiction or nonfiction texts that they are enjoying and understanding.  When a person is reading and understanding a book that is a good fit, we typically find that the person is reading a page a minute.  So when we reach our goal we can hope that third graders are reading about 225 pages a week in the classroom and 80 pages at home.  That’s a great start in helping children develop the skills they’ll need for success in college and/or the workplace.

Bits and Pieces

• Thank you to all who were able to make it to the 3^rd Grade Curriculum Night.  We hope you found the overview helpful and enjoyed seeing your children in action here at school.
• Ask your child about the interesting details they are working to include in their narrative writing.
• Find out what is happening with Emily and Jackson in our chapter read aloud, Emily and Jackson – Hiding Out.
• Talk to your child about the NECAP practices.  Please reassure them that all they need to do is to try.   Some items will feel confusing, some will feel hard, others will feel easy and some will seem tricky – it is like that for everyone. We hope they will approach the testing with optimism and determination.

We had a fabulous Dot Day.  If you haven’t had a chance to see some of our work, please go to the blog.  We shared some of our work that day, and yesterday some of the class wrote about the gallery when we were learning about how to write blog posts.

Thursday we worked in small groups to create blog posts about some of the different routines we have in the classroom.  It was challenging to imagine an audience that doesn’t know so well from our routine, so the writing is a little rough, but all in all they are great first attempts.  We hope you have time to read them and would love to have some comments.  It is exciting to know others are connected to our classroom.

A Focus on Who We Are as Writers

            This week we focused on the qualities of a good piece of narrative writing.  We are working to understand how character description, setting, dialogue and interesting details work together to make writing “sing.”  We know that ideas are important.  We know that details are good and that the whole piece needs to be organized.  We have each worked to complete one piece of narrative writing.  We are going to use a checklist to independently assess this work, and then set goals to strive for as we begin our next personal narrative next week.  Our goal is to write at least three different short pieces over the course of the next few weeks.  From those drafts the children will choose one to revise, polish and publish.  They’ve been doing a great job with that work.

During our writing lessons explored expanding ideas and using interesting details.  We have worked to develop descriptive detail through our senses.  Our first exploration was of an apple. We described what we saw, felt, smelled, heard, smelled again and tasted.  We also explored the difference between taking time to think of all the ways we could describe an experience and describing an experience with the first reaction or quick glance.  We each have different tendencies – the children know if they are ponderers or “glancers”; each has its important place with learning and getting things done.

We read Frederick by Leo Lionni and Seed by Seed by Esme Codell.  Both of these book highlight long ponders.  I don’t know of books that honor the quick glancers, if you do please let me know.  Both are important approaches to be aware of.  Knowing you have choices can be an empowering thing.

How We Are Smart  – Social Emotional Learning

Knowing Yourself

This week we identified our top four intelligences and described what we knew about ourselves that made us think that.  This week we worked to add in our other intelligences.  We took an informal multiple intelligences survey created by another teacher, Laura Candler.  The children were given a list of 24 statements to rank – 5 if it was always true to 0 if it was never true.  There were three questions for each intelligence.  The children rated the questions.  Their ratings were totaled according to each category.  This gave them a sense of how someone else might see them as intelligent.  I think this survey allowed some of the children to consider interests, habits and traits they may not have recognized.

Using the survey data, a chart summarizing the traits and their own knowledge of themselves the children will create a pie chart to represent how they are smart.  To support this thinking we read Shel Silverstein’s, A Missing Piece.  And together we worked to define what it means to be 100%.   They are becoming more aware of themselves and proud of who they are and how they are smart.  It is interesting to consider each intelligence and how interest, experience, opportunity and effort can make them develop and grow.

Emily’s Fortune and Emily and Jackson – Hiding Out

            We completed Emily’s Fortune this week and began the sequel.  We are excited to find out what will happen to Emily and Jackson.  We have lots of questions – Are they safe?  Did mean Uncle Victor really leave?  What about the Catchum Child Catchers?  Do they have to worry about that?

We are gathering details from our read alouds and thinking about what we read with a writer’s mind for choosing words that create images and really impact our senses.

Bits and Pieces –

• 3^rd Grade Curriculum Night is September 26 at 7pm in Mrs. Oliver’s music room.
• Our first outdoor challenge is on September 26 – we’ll be outdoors as long as it isn’t raining
• Ask your child about Base 10 Riddles – what they are and how you solve them.
• Maybe they’ll even tell you about their personal narrative.

We are doing lots and enjoying what we do!

These last couple of days have been tough – almost too hot to move, and your children have really given it their all.  One of the things we are working on is building habits of stamina and focus.  The heat of the past days have doubled that challenge, but the children have done well through it all.  You’d have been proud of them.  We are all grateful that cooler days seem to be heading our way.

Establishing Our Class Constitution –Social and Emotional Learning

Developing Relationships With Others

This week we began listing things we each try to do to be successful.  We combined this discussion with one from last week where we discussed how our actions affected others.  We listed behaviors that would be helpful so that everyone could learn and do his or her best.  Individually the children looked through those lists to select the behaviors most important for their learning.  They also selected the behavior they find most challenging – most chose being focused, quiet or not distracting to others.

This week we read Junkyard Wonders by Patricia Polacco.  (I highly recommend this book.  There is much to talk about through this amazing true story – caring, kindness, difference, strength, change and confidence.) We used it as a basis for examining learning differences and challenges.  Those discussions lead us to our final list that we worded into our classroom constitution.

We of 3E will: 

Treat each other kindly

Be honest

Treat others as we would like to be treated

Respect others

Get to know each other, share and make friends

So that each and every one of us in 3E can do our best learning.

Each week we will spend some time reflecting on how well we each lived up to our constitution – what did we do well and what we could work on.  Certainly if we can work in our classroom and school, both individually and collectively, according to our statement we will have an amazing year of learning and friendship.

Intelligence Grows – Social and Emotional Learning

Knowing Yourself

Since introducing Multiple Intelligence Theory we have been trying to identify how different book characters, both real and fictional, are smart.  “How Are You Smart?” is the title of a book that shares brief paragraphs and poems about accomplished people who display strengths in each of the intelligences.  That is why we have adopted that question as we explore interests and individual preferences to understand how we learn, what our individual strengths are and “how we are smart”.  We are working to become more aware of our inner voice and what is happening inside our minds.  This is developmentally challenging.  Third graders are in a transitional stage when it comes to this kind of reflection.  They are becoming more flexible in their thinking and better able to connect experiences through inferences.  Even with incomplete knowledge of situation or topic, they are beginning to able to make reasonable judgments based on what they know and think.  It is exciting to see the children puzzle through this hard work.  How often do you stop to think, “in choosing this, how will it influence learning?” Or “when I do this, how am I helping others learn.”

Right now as we struggle with questions like “what do you do to be successful” or “what is happening in your mind when you understand” the answer is often “I don’t know” or “I’m not sure.”  Through the course of the year the children will become more aware of what is happening in their minds.  John Dewey said, “Reflective thinking is called for when people recognize that some problems cannot be solved with certainty.”  Being aware of options and choices, outcomes and consequences is something that will grow through our work to understand ourselves as learners.

Again we used the story of Patricia Polacco as told to us through her books Dear Mr. Falker and Junkyard Wonders to realize that how we are smart grows and changes.  She did not learn to read until 5^th grade and she was placed in a classroom where all the children who were considered different were schooled.  At that point in her life she would not have been considered word smart at all, but as we looked at the huge pile of books she has written we knew she definitely was word smart now.  Through her example we know we can do anything and we can develop any intelligence we set our mind on.  We know that “how we are smart” grows and changes through our choices and efforts and that’s a pretty exciting thing to know.

Becoming Flexible with Numbers and Amounts

                  This week we began our Numbers of the Week routine.  It is something that will be happening in each of the 3^rd grade classrooms and has been designed to help the children think more flexibly by asking them to do a variety of things with the same amounts.  The routine can also help them develop understanding of different terms and mathematical vocabulary.

On Monday the children write the amounts in standard, word and expanded forms, along with representing the amount in two different ways with base 10 blocks.  On Tuesday they find the sum and the difference and check their work with rounding to the nearest ten.  On Wednesday they generate alternating patterns by adding and subtracting.  On Thursday they write problems for others to solve, and on Friday they find two different ways to represent the numbers with money.

This week the numbers were small – 13 for the number of students in 3E and 39 for the number of students in 3^rd grade.  These amounts helped us understand each part of the routine.  We’ll see what next week brings when we compare the number of students in 3^rd grade with the total number of primary students in our school, Pre K through 3.

As I write this and stop to think of all the reading, writing, word study, science, math and social/emotional learning work that we have been doing for the last twelve days I am amazed.  Already we have accomplished a lot.  Your children are hard working and fun loving.  They are becoming more aware of how to use time wisely and make more skillful transitions from one activity to the next.  They are considering how their actions affect success. They seem to be settling into the routine of our day and week and growing in confidence.  All wonderful things.

Bits and Pieces – ask your child about:

• …Emily Wiggins, the main character of our chapter read aloud,
• … our personal narrative work,
• … starting cursive handwriting practice with the “clock climbers,
• … preparing for Dot Day, September 16^th,
• … finding and leaving comments on our blog (We’d love to hear from you.), or
• … what s/he is reading and writing.

There is a lot going on in 3E.  Your children are wonderful!