Our first term is complete. Report cards are coming to you today. Please make time to read the information on the supporting document. Without that information the report card is likely to mean little. I hope that as you look at the numbers and letters on the report card, you will think about the work your child has been bringing home each week, what you’ve been reading on the blogs and what you’ve seen when you’ve visited the classroom. We have these opportunities to help you picture where your child learns and imagine how he or she functions within the social parameters of school. This term’s report card does not have a narrative (the other two will). Please find the accompanying Parent Teacher conference sign-up schedule. Hopefully this will bring more understanding to today’s document. During our conference we will also set 2 or 3 goals for your child. Please think about what is most important to you at this time. They could be social or academic goals. I will share those with your child and we’ll spend time working on them throughout the remainder of our year.

With Gratitude for Your Time

Goal Setting and Fall Portfolio Share

Thank you for coming to hear your child present his or her work and share learning goals. Third graders are just beginning to understand they are responsible for what they learn. They can learn a lot or a little – it depends on their attention and focus, their effort and persistence and on their abilities to reflect and set personal learning goals. The last in the list is a skill that is just beginning to emerge and with our support will continue to grow over the next few years.

Your children have been setting physical goals for a while now. These goals are things like practicing and learning how to play a sport, perform a dance or piano piece, participate in the kata and to ride a bike. These goals are clear and concrete. Academic goals are more hidden and harder to set because the goal is unclear. In third grade some goals are also tied to the concrete. For example, “I want to read bigger, fatter books.” or “I want to solve all four math problems every day.” Through the year and into next this will change as the children learn to experiment with ideas and options.

I thought the children did a very good job setting goals they can actually achieve and in setting goals we can track throughout the year. We will keep revisiting their goals and adjusting them as needed. It will be interesting to see how each of them chooses to document and share growth across the year.

3E’s Animal Kingdom

Thank you, also, for making time to celebrate your child’s learning at the Animal Kingdom. I hope you had time to read their thoughtful informational pieces of writing. They read and took notes. They worked hard to understand what they were reading – not an easy thing from someone whose only been on the earth for 9-ish years. They experimented with leads – questions, picture, dialogue and onomatopoeia were their options. We had many mentor texts to support their writing. Did you notice that some of the children invented characters to talk you through their information? Did you notice that some of the children tried to help you learn through comparison? Did you notice each author’s voice or how several of the children tried to engage you with humor? I am looking forward to our next research project related to mapping and global geography. I can’t wait to see how their ideas and abilities grow.

The children also learned a great deal about habitats around the world. They learned about food webs and food chains. Many of their animals are endangered. They understand how one change – the loss of one animal is never just one – it impacts and changes entire ecosystems. At first we thought it would make no difference if one animal is lost, but now we know different.

Our Special Scientist Project

We had great kick-off to this project by having Peter Gustafson (Mrs. Gustafson’s husband), director of the S.E.E. Science Center in Manchester, to teach us about the scientific problem solving, combustion, chemical reactions and fun. With just two plan pieces of paper he helped us discover one of the most important things scientists do – they experiment with ideas. He also helped us understand how scientists collaborate and work together. They are out to improve our world and to achieve this they need to share ideas to grow new and better ones.

We learned the three things needed for combustion. See if your child can remember what it took to make the turkey baster cannon fire. Combustion needs three things – can they tell you? We also learned about catalysts to chemical reactions. It was interesting to learn that science is like following a recipe – the right amount and combinations work perfectly. Talk to your child about what s/he remembers. It was fun and interesting. Be on the lookout for information about our Who Am I scientist project. It will require some of your help at home – thank you in advance for that!

Time in math – Learning our 5’s table

This week we’ve been exploring the connection between telling time and knowing the 5 times table. The children have been working to read analogue and digital clocks. They’ve been thinking about how many of one thing they think they can do in a minute and then checking to see how much time as elapse. We’ve also straightened out the time on a clock to show how it is a time line.

Bits and Pieces

• This week our challenge with Mr. Caron was one where we could practice either self-management or social responsibility. Each student chose what he or she would work on and then we problem solved our way across a “swamp.”
• We’ve begun our 4th chapter read-aloud, School According to Humphrey  The hope is that this will be a way of opening the door to new series that are slightly more challenging and on the edge of reading independently. It’s already happening as the Humphrey books have been discovered.
• We’ll be starting cursive next week – exciting too.

Thank you for all you do!