It is hard to believe this is the last Friday memo. The children have grown in so many ways.   Congratulations to them. They have grown academically, socially and personally this year. They are kind friends and eager learners. It has been a good year.

Portfolio Building and Reflection

            Thank you for coming to view your child’s portfolio and tour the room. I’d like to compliment the children, on both, their efforts and the portfolios they shared with you.   Our portfolio process began soon after the children shared their learning profiles and goals with you in the fall. Every two weeks (their choice of timing) after that they considered the work they’d done, thought about the learning that work represented and selected a piece they were proud of to post on our portfolio wall. The children used this collection of work to create a digital portfolio that will stay with them through the years. They enjoyed looking back through their past collections. They have grown A LOT since kindergarten and first grade. It was fun and rewarding to see that with certainty.

In addition to selecting work to show growth as readers, writers, mathematicians and learners, each child selected the photographs to share. They added captions and wrote reflections explaining their accomplishments. Creating a portfolio means making many choices. Describing learning is a challenging task and the final step of presenting, and answering questions adds another level to the project. A major area of focus in the 3rd grade social emotional curriculum is to know one’s self as a learner and as a contributing member of a group. The goal setting – portfolio development and presentation cycle is an important part of this learning. Each one of your children worked through this process and deserves to feel proud of their third grade accomplishments and of how they were able to share them with you.

Completing Our Gratitude Quilt

            Each of the children completed their illustrations for our gratitude quilt and created their patterned border with halves, fourths, thirds, or sixths. We are grateful for: art, books, choices, drums, electricity, freedom, girls and glasses, hands, imagination, justice, kindness, life, manners, neighbors, oceans, peace, quails, Revolutionary War, stars and the sky, trees, united, vegetables, eXtra time, youth and zzzzzzzz’s. When these are the things 8 and 9 year olds stop to notice and appreciate, it does give you the feeling that we do indeed live in a wonderful world. Not only that, the quilt is beautiful when it all comes together.

Putting the Finishing Touches on Our Diary and Magazine

            All of the writing is finally completed for our class magazine. The children selected a title and created a cover design. They began illustrating their section of the cover and we hope to have this finished today so we can make copies for the class. It will be fun to read each other’s work and learn about animals through our country.

We spent time in art creating Broc, the narrator of The Diary of Broccoli. We have (serendipitously) thirteen entries from February through now, sharing what we have learned about growing from seed to fruit. When the final diary is put together each of the entries will be told by a different Broc. They are fun. I hope that these will be completed over the weekend. The ball is definitely in my court now. My worry is that report card comments will take precedence and the books will have to be sent to the children in their first weeks of summer. I suspect this will be the case.

Bits and Pieces

• 3E Celebration on Monday – We are planning a celebration for Monday. I’ve not pulled together the details of that day. We’re sure to enjoy our time together and have fun.
• We put the final touches on our blog posts. I hope the kids will keep writing on their blogs and posting over the vacation. Please see the information sheet with directions, passwords and user names in their Friday envelope today. The children can write on their blogs anytime they have your permission over the summer.
• On Wednesdays I’ll keep posting math problems on the blog.  The goal is to keep math skills growing. Hopefully this will provide a way for the children to keep up with facts and maintain some of their new understanding with multi-digit multiplication, division and fraction.  I have enclosed a math fact summary and a packet of math activities in their Friday envelopes that I hope will provide some ideas for fun math work at home as well.
• I will also keep posting book recommendations most Mondays. You will find book reviews and suggestions to encourage summer reading there. I will be sending home summer reading suggestions next week.
• Bring empty backpacks next week we have a lot to fill them with!

This has been a week of celebration and hard work. It is amazing to realize that in six and a half days the 2014-2015 school year will be over. This week the children worked to build their digital portfolios. They’ve been sorting through the work they’ve collected all year and preparing themselves to present this to you. They can see their growth and effort in the work they have collected. Many of them are surprised, pleased and proud of what they’ve done as they should be. I am so glad we have this tradition of stopping to take note so that each child has a sense of accomplishment. They see the results of their effort and have an awareness of next learning steps as well.

Building Portfolios

The children used the fall work they shared with you at their goal setting conferences in November as their anchor for launching the portfolios. Their goal is to document what has been important to them this year and to share how they have changed as learners. They have looked through their work and selected what they feel documents the accomplishments they are most proud of.

It is interesting to see what is important to each of them and how they feel about their growing abilities and independence. It is interesting to be an observer of this process and to notice which children are able to consider an audience other than themselves or one in a future time. Developmentally 8 and 9-year olds are just beginning to recognize the benefit of thinking about their thinking. They are beginning to analyze the steps of their learning process to repeat what worked well and the change what might lead to a better outcome.

Information Writing and Page Design

Almost all of the writing is completed for our class magazine and the children are working to design their pages. Our magazine shares informational narrative and poetry written to teach others about the animals they researched from their states. Some of the children wrote the stories in a question and answer format. Others wrote in first person and still others used a diary format to share the information. We hope to have this finished by the beginning of next week so we can make copies for each family in the class. It will be fun to read each other’s work and learn about the animals important in the state we studied.

Food Chains

Coinciding with this writing work, the children have also completed the artwork and steps of the food chain or food web featuring their animals. All of the children understand how things work in the natural world from sun to decomposers. It is interesting to see if the children were able to imagine their animal in any other place than the top of the food chain.

Bits and Pieces –

• Our quilt of gratitude and kindness is nearly completed too. Today we are putting the borders on the squares. We’ll be using halves, thirds, fourths, and sixths to create the patterns for each square. We are looking forward to sharing this with you when you come for our conferences.

 

 

 

 

• The children continue to amaze me with the work to understand division and fractions. Many of them are eagerly working through two and three step problems. They are noticing that they are understanding and learning more and more.
• Blogging – several of the children have talked about blogs and blogging over the summer. I hope the children, with your permission, will continue to write posts over the summer. I will continue to post book reviews on Monday, math problems on Wednesday and project suggestions on Friday throughout the summer. The beauty of our blog is that I monitor all posts and comments before they are shared publically and I have subscribed to a version that means we have no adds on our site. It will be interesting to see if any of the children find time to post and comment once summer begins.
• As always, the class would be super-psyched to receive comments on our class blog and on their individual posts as well.
• Typing Pal – is a keyboarding program that each child is set up to use through the eboard. All the children have done some of the exercises in school and know how to use the program. It is great practice and will really help them as more and more of their writing will be done on computers. Once they’ve practiced they can apply their new skills by creating a post on their blogs.