Celebrating Student Learning

Thank you so much for finding time to meet with your child so she or he could share work from the first third of our school year and goals they have set to guide learning for the remainder of 3rd grade.   One of the main pillars of our Social Emotional Learning curriculum is centered on self-awareness.  The children each spent a portion of time thinking about their multiple intelligences and how they are smart.  They reflected on strengths and challenges and selected work samples to show current abilities and understanding.  This process of self-reflection shows how clearly the children are able to see themselves.  We hope seeing the chosen work, hearing the work habit descriptions and knowing the goals set for the up-coming terms will help you better understand the report card sent to you next Tuesday.

We will use these student presentations to ground our conversation at parent teacher conferences in the first week of December. Please find the enclosed conference sign-up and descriptive information to help you understand how our standards-based report cards work.  Your children are self-aware.  They know strengths and challenges and have set reasonable and attainable goals that will promote learning.  They deserve to feel proud of their efforts and their ability to present themselves to you.  It is not an easy task.

Celebrating Science

On Monday the three classrooms of scientists joined together to share their Who Am I? projects.  They sought out scientist partners and shared the artifacts they had chosen to illustrate the work of their scientist.  It was interesting to see the similarities and the differences and an exciting way to gain recognition of how science surrounds us in so many different ways.

On Tuesday our celebration continued with our trip to the S.E.E. Science Center at the Amoskeag Mills.  Highlights for the class were making silly putty to see how states of matter change in a chemical reaction, learning about static electricity, conduction and insulation with the Van de Graaf generator, and gravity combined with forces of motion at the harmonograph.  There were also opportunities to explore light and shadow, symmetry and reflection, ramps and velocity, magnetism and simple machines.  I think it is safe to say that we have a class full of students who are excited about science and discovery.  They are very interested in the world and how it works.

Informational Writing

Over the past month the children have been researching a science topic of their choice.  They have been learning about tornadoes and lightning, the Sun and Jupiter, fish, sperm whales and dolphins.  Others have been exploring prehistoric animals, turkey vultures, service dogs and insect eyes.

While the children researched, the class modeled the process together in learning about trees.  We read many different books, looked at different articles and websites to explore the importance to trees.  We explored the question – Does cutting down one tree matter? – and divided into groups to share our argument and to support our opinion with the facts and information we had gathered.

We used familiar texts shared with the class, to identify three different formats (there are more, but we are beginning here) for organizing information.  They are descriptive, compare/contrast and sequential.  Each of these formats has an associated graphic organizer.  The children are working to organize their researched information in his/her chosen way to discover an original way to present it.  At this point their work is allowing them to see holes in their understanding and is prompting them to develop further questions to guide another round of information gathering before they share their what they have learned with you and each other.

Bits and Pieces

• We’ve completed our second set of cursive letters – the “kite string” letters.  We have learned how to write i, u, w, t, p, r, s and o.
• We are reading Nuts to You.  This is a story as told by a squirrel.  It is great fun because it is funny, fun and a real challenge to organize our thinking to keep track of the characters and settings.
• We are exploring time and measurement.  We are all learning how to read analogue clocks and writing it out in digital format.
• We are continuing to learn with Leo Lionni identifying the themes in his writing and developing a list of precepts to guide how we think and work together.

It’s hard to believe that Friday is here again.  We have so much to do that our days do not feel nearly long enough – and yet they are.  There are so many things I wish we had completed.  I’d planned on telling you about finishing our How We Are Smart pie charts.  I thought I’d be telling you about how we had explored different formats for informational writing to prepare for a 3E Museum.   And I’d hoped I would be letting you know we had completed a first set of learning goals and were ready to share them with you .

While we didn’t find time in our week to bring closure to any of those things,  we worked on parts of each of them and we learned and explored many other things.  The week was full of the things connecting us to each other and to the world beyond.  Woven into almost every part of our academic work this week was an element of Social Emotional Learning – learning about ourselves, establishing effective social relationships and building empathy and understanding.  Ask your child about the connections they are making and building as he or she learns together in  3E.  One important connection was made on Monday when your third graders sang their appreciation to our Veterans.  They sounded wonderful.  The line of veterans on the stage with them applauded their efforts – the words they sang and what they did truly mattered.  That was the first special event of their week.

Walking On Logs

In the afternoon we had a challenge – the first that everyone was able to take the risk to try.  Not only did everyone take a risk to try, everyone met with success.  For us the challenge featured cooperation, thoughtfulness and focus.  It took all of us to make sure that everyone was able to walk across the logs and it took all of us doing our part to support him or her.  It felt really good to walk back to the school from the challenge course knowing that everyone had a sense of accomplishment and pride in him or herself and in our class.  Day by day we are strengthening friendships and building trust.

Celebrating Quirks

On Wednesday our celebration of the Quirks was an all day affair.  First we created the characters – an exercise of partnership, communication and collaboration.  Next we brainstormed character traits for each of the characters.  We traveled the room carousel-style jotting down traits after reading what had already been written on the paper so there were no repeats.  We worked to describe the characters more deeply than fun, cool, or nice and we mostly succeeded.  The teams used those traits, along with some of their own ideas, to write paragraphs about each character using the format from The Important Book.

In addition, everyone read and explored at least two sections of Erin Soderberg’s website.  We learned that the author of the Quirks got many ideas for her story from her own family and that she started writing the series for her children to read.  They help her make the books just right for 8, 9 and 10 year olds.  We learned that the Quirks began as a family of four, but slowly changed as the story evolved.  And most surprising, was seeing the covers from the books as they are published in England.  Niblet is so totally different.  We realized different illustrators imagine the words differently – we do too.  The collection of “quirky” things on the site is worth checking out – the biggest ball of twine, the largest fiberglass fish and the amazing list of actual town names from across our country.  Have fun exploring these with your family too.

We ended our celebration with a checkers tournament.  We played for 20 minutes and made 980 moves.  In The Quirks – Welcome to Normal they have a record setting contest that is chosen from suggestions slipped into a suggestion box.  We collected suggestions too.  The checkers tournament was selected.  Now that we’ve played once we have a record to break throughout the year.  It was fun.  Our final Quirky task (hopefully done today) will be to write a letter to the author.  We hope she’ll check out our blog to see and read how much we’ve enjoyed her books.  61 days left before we can read The Quirks and the Quirkalicious Birthday.

Learning With Leo Lionni

For the past two weeks we have been reading a book a day by Leo Lionni and listening to discover what we think the author’s main message was.  We have collect nearly 150 precepts from this work.  Things like:  follow your heart, be kind even when others are not, be satisfied with what you have, always remember to dream, notice what’s around you, and many, many more.  We have been taking time to discuss which of these to we feel most important to follow and use as our guide.  We have also been learning how to back our opinions with evidence from the text. This is challenging and we have been trying to decide what are the pieces from the story combined with our own lives and experiences that give us our personal ideas.

In the weeks to come we’ll be choosing one of the precepts and working to create an original, illustrated fable in Leo Lionni style to challenge our thinking and understanding even further.  Ask your child about the books and what precepts they feel most strongly about.

Bits and Pieces

• Our Field trip to the SEE Science Center is Tuesday, November 18, 2014.
• We began our 5th chapter read-aloud.  It’s called Nuts to You and is the story of an exciting adventure.  A squirrel tells it!  We’ve just begun it.  We’ll let you know what happens.
• We are half way through our second set of cursive letters – the Kite String Letters.  These swoop up into the air, sometimes dipping low like for an i or u and other times dipping only slightly like for s and r.
• We enjoyed Celebrating Scientists today in our class.  Thank you for your help and support with that project.  We look forward to gathering together as a grade on Monday to learn more about science and the work of different scientists.

The end of the week kind of snuck up on me.  We’ve begun recording fall reading videos.  We’ve been setting writing goals to meet end of the year expectations and we’ve begun to apply what we know about multiplication and division to telling time.  We’re learning about trees and using that topic to explore informational reading and writing in a variety of formats.  And finally, we began cursive writing with the clock climbers – a, d, g, q and c.

S.E.L. – Learning With Leo Lionni

We’ve continued reading books by Leo Lionni as a way to help us think about how we treat one another with kindness and empathy.  It can be challenging to look at situations from another’s perspective.  It is something important to consider.  We wondered as we were reading:  Was Cornelius bragging when he told the other crocodiles of the things he could see because he could walk upright?  Or was he just different and able to share?  Is there something wrong with you if you don’t like to try new things?  Is there something wrong with you if you always want to do something new and different?  If someone takes what you wanted when they didn’t know (birds taking the ripe berries that the mice wanted), should you start a fight to get it?

These are some of the themes and questions we’ve been discussing. We’re trying to think of others, as well as ourselves.  Hopefully this will help us regulate our behavior and help us curb interruptions and distractions.  We are learning that we can’t all talk at once.  We are learning how to act responsibly or respectfully.  We are trying to think of what is kind and helpful to our class.  We are learning to balance the needs and wants of the one, with the needs and wants of the whole.

Elaboration Strategies for Writing

            One writing expectation that seems a bit daunting at this point in the year, is being able to write between 3 and 5 pages in a writing session.  This feels like a lot and so this week we began to explore elaboration strategies.  We worked in four different categories:  description, action, dialogue and inner thinking. We began with a skeleton story:

I went to the beach.  I wanted to learn to ride on a wave.  I rode one all the way to the sand.

Then we divided into four small color-coded groups – one color for each strategy.  After about five minutes we returned to the group to see what we could add. We were excited about how the story grew and became more interesting.  It was interesting to note how “inner thinking” suggestions really added depth and voice to the writing that wasn’t there before.  Those thoughts and ideas share information about the character in quiet ways.  We hope that we will be able to use these strategies on our own to grow and deepen our writing.

Bits and Pieces –

• We have finished The Quirks in Circus Quirkus.  Ask your child who his or her favorite character is?  We’ll be celebrating this reading accomplishment with a Not So Normal challenge next week.
• Our class thinks learning cursive is fun.  They are excited to see how the letters are formed and how they connect.  We’ll be working on a letter a day for the next few weeks.
• Ask what facts your child knows about trees.  Can they tell you about the two major types of trees?  Can they explain the layers of the tree – both inside and out?  Do they have a favorite kind of tree?  We’ll be using the information we’ve learned together as a learning tool for making visual presentations of information so we’ll be ready for our first 3E Museum at the end of the month.
• We have a challenge with Mr. Caron on Monday, November 10 – this is a change from the original schedule.
• We are going to the SEE Science Center in Manchester, Tuesday, November 18.  Permission slips will come home Monday.