This was a full and busy week. We had pictures on Monday, and the Shelter in Place Drill on Tuesday. We worked on our informational writing prompt, worked through a “3 minute” reading assessment and gave our best effort in a basic fact check for addition. Those things were a bit different and stressful for some. On the exciting side of things, we began our animal research project and began building our animal models for our zoo exhibit. We also were able to get all children started on their blogs. Many have completed their first posts, while others are still in the drafting process and will post soon.

Writing Process

Writing grows in so many ways. This week the children completed their informational writing prompt. This, combined with the narrative prompt they completed a few weeks ago, and the persuasive prompt they will be completing in another few weeks will establish their baseline expectation as a 3rd grade writer. We’ll grow from there. There is a lot to do as a writer in 3rd grade and so we write in many ways.

One writing opportunity is blogging. These pieces are designed to be short and illustrated with photographs and scanned images. The children have been working toward posting on their own blogs since the beginning of school. First we looked at our class blog and the blogs of past students to learn about what blogs are and could be. Next we wrote a blog post on paper.   These were illustrated and are ready for comments. This practice will be done with post-its. In the computer lab our next step was to learn about commenting. There are five parts to a quality comment: be positive, be specific, ask a question, add some information and use proper grammar. We practiced commenting and finally this week, Mrs. Wyman helped us set up our individual blogs. Our goal will be to submit a post for review every week so please check out our blogs often and leave a comment. These comments are concrete proof to the children that there is an audience beyond themselves and their teachers. It is motivating.

A second writing opportunity comes in artist-writers’ workshop. This is a designed as a quiet reflective time to create. At this point in the process, children have selected a small ceramic animal to copy and put in a setting four times. Each time they used a different medium: crayon, colored pencil, marker and watercolor. The goal was to make each image identical and to discover how each medium worked in our sketchbooks. Then next step was to select an image to copy. We’ve been sticking to animals at this point. Some children have created one picture, in the same time that others have created three or four. We are at the place where we will look at our work and write about it in two different ways. First we will write about the creative process, what we see and the choices that were made. And second we will use our pictures as a springboard for a story. This could be a personal narrative of how the picture was created, or it could be a fictional narrative inspired by the subject of the picture.

Learning about Informational Writing

We spent time this week reviewing and examining the features of informational texts. Now we have both organizational choices to make, as well as selecting the text features we wish to include in our writing. We looked at headings, captions, tables of contents, and indexes. We looked and emboldened words and glossaries. We looked at how illustrations, diagrams and charts add even more information to the words. We also looked at different examples on informational writing. We read many books, but we also looked at the trading cards designed by the Franklin Park Zoo. We began to design our own Zoo Trading Cards. We are looking forward to beginning our research process so we will be able to create and share our own informational pieces to teach you all about the animals in our zoo.

Learning How Multiplication and Division are Reciprocal

This week we learned more about multiplication and examined the patterns of repeated addition. We made function or ratio charts to see how the patterns grow. We also connected multiplication and division.   We looked at sets of things and broke them up into equal groups to show what the process of division. We’ve begun to look at sets of dot stickers to see if we can discover which operation is represented. When there are many groups that have the same amount of dots, it is multiplication. When there is one large group broken into smaller groups, it is division. When there are many groups of various sizes it is addition and one a portion of a larger group is shaded over it is subtraction. As I write this to you, it seems obvious, of course that is what we see and know. But for the children, this understanding is growing along with the strengthening number concepts. You can help by pointing out how math is all around. For example, if you purchase yogurt in fours or applesauce in sixes ask your child if he or she can figure out how many you’ll use in a month, if you use one or two packs in a week. If you know how many miles it is from your house to the practice field, ask your child to calculate the miles you’ll travel in a week or a month. At first they may be drawing out or tallying each thing, but later they’ll become more efficient. Thank you for helping bring math to life and showing that it is all around us.

Bits and Pieces –

• We’ve been reading The Trumpet of the Swan by E.B. White. We’ve met both Sam and Louis at this point. We are excited to look back at the predictions we made at the start of the book and update them now that we have more information.
• We’re continuing our conversations about the Theory of Multiple Intelligence and learning more about how we are smart. We are learning about pie charts and a working to graph how we are smart.
• Mrs. Haight helped us began making our paper mache animals for our zoo. We are excited about that!

In an around all of this work, we also talked a great deal about expected behaviors for 3rd grade. There is a lot of interrupting, to the point of interfering with learning and safety. We would appreciate you have a chat about this. Please don’t let your child tell you tales of what other children are doing. Please encourage them to think of how to do their best work when things are challenging. Continual shushing or asking others in the middle of a lesson to stop is as distracting as the distraction. Deciding to argue rather than ignore or physically move is a distraction too.  Walking through the group rather than around. Choosing to become angry and argumentative during table work, rather than allowing someone to believe something that may not be true is a disruption too. There are things we can all (me included in this) do to make our classroom more peaceful and successful. I know we can. We have a wonderful class.   We will grow in self-control and social awareness, just as we grow as writers, readers, artists, scientist, explorers and mathematicians. Thanks for your help!