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!