Thank you for connecting with what we are doing in our classroom. Thank you for checking 3E News and your child’s blog. Thanks for commenting. It means the world to them to know they’ve made connections with you. Also, thank you for talking with your child about the positive ways he or she can add to our classroom community. We can feel the difference. Our classroom feels more like a place where learning can happen. Hopefully we’ll keep growing so we can work together to do better and better things.
Self-Management – our S.E.L. focus this week
There are five areas of social emotional learning. They are called pillars because all academic learning stands upon their framework. They are self-management, self-awareness, relationship skills, responsible decision making, and social awareness. Of course they all work together and are closely intertwined, but we’ve been focusing our discussions on self-management this week. That means we’ve been trying to be more aware of our own feelings. We’ve listed good and bad feelings and the in between feelings. We tried to think about making choices that lead to positive outcomes. And lastly we’ve tried think about goals we’d make for ourselves in this area that would help promote both social and academic growth.
I think many of you would be proud of the effort your son or daughter is making to think about how his/her choices affect others. We certainly can and will make more growth in this area, but this week more and more children are choosing to stay focused on the task at hand. More and more of our class are working at transitioning smoothly from one activity to another. And more and more of our class are feeling proud of changes they are making.
Global Geography
We’ve begun to learn about the continents and how varied, and yet, similar they are. We’ve been reading about them and looking at them on maps. We’re learning terms like equator, hemisphere, and peninsula. We’re also learning how people fit into geography and create neighborhoods, towns, counties, and countries. We’ll combine this learning with what we are learning about our animals.
Reading and Writing Like a Scientist
We’ve been researching and learning to take notes about what we understand as we read. Learning from informational text is a challenge. There are many words that we can pronounce and read through that we do not understand. We are learning what to do in this case. Scientists are specific, so we need to be as well. We are practicing observation. We are learning to be more descriptive and precise, but that takes time.
This week we all did an experiment with seltzer and raisins. What happens to the raisins when we put them in a cup of seltzer? Some of the children had done this before. For others it was a first time. Their descriptions of the process will serve as our jumping off point for learning how to record observations with detail and data. Experimenting is fun!
Bits and Pieces:
How is homework fitting into your life? I mean that sincerely. In 3rd grade we are hoping to instill in children the need for quiet time and focus on assignments. We hope that homework is completed in 35 minutes or less a day . We want kids to relax. We’ve chosen “due on Friday” to insure that families can enjoy their weekends. If you find a “due on Monday” time works better for your family – by all means do that.
We worked to understand the difference between the set (repeated addition) model and an array with multiplication. We are all pretty sure of the commutative property with multiplication.- We met with Mrs. Marriotti this week to learn more about mindfulness and dealing with frustration and disruptions.
- At the end of last week we met with Deputy Fire Chief, Jason Lajoie. He spoke to us about Fire Safety and gave us calendars created by the state. He encouraged our third graders to participate in this coming year’s
contest. It would be great if that is something your child would like to do. The artwork must be completed by February 24th. If you’ve misplaced that information I have another copy and could send it home again.