Happy International Dot Day!   We’ll have fun making our marks today. Talk to your child about his or her favorite dot making experience. Some of the dots have to be brought home and baked so they won’t be coming home until Monday. Other dots have been saved so we can create our own gallery just as Vashti did in The Dot. We hope you’ll be able to stop in to view our beautiful dot gallery.

 

Rights and Rules – Social Emotional Learning

We’ve spent part of each day this week discussing how we would like to make a difference in the world. We began the week by reading, We Are All Born Free that shares The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948. We learned that rights are things that every person deserves. In 3E we believe we deserve to feel happy, safe, respected and able to learn. We spent time discussing how we would like to be treated and cared for. We agreed that we also deserve to be forgiven. We all deserve to have the chance to learn how to make better choices and to learn from our mistakes. We read The Bad Seed, Do Unto Otters, How to Lose Your Friends, Most People and If Everybody Did to guide and broaden our discussions. (If you’d like to borrow any of these books to read together as a family and continue the discussion at home, please let me know. I’m glad to share.)

The rules we decided should guide our classroom behavior are as follows.

In 3E we promise to:

Be respectful.

Treat others as we’d like to be treated.

Be responsible.

Be nice.

Be caring.

Listen to others and take turns patiently.

Forgive others.

We agree that following these rules may be hard sometimes, but we are all committed to doing our best. The children have been fully involved in our discussions and all are willing to make an effort toward building a positive learning community for all.

Reading Grows

As I get to know your children, one thing that I’ve been struck with is how eager and ready they are for reading. As a class they are able to choose “just right” books and have next choices in their book boxes or in mind so they are prepared to read for the full reading block. They’ve been reading nonfiction, picture books, poetry and “old favorites.” At this point in the year class favorites are Dogman, Bad Guys, Dragon Breath, Galaxy Zack and the I Survived series. Many of the books are getting passed from reader to reader. I am looking forward to the start of book clubs where we will build comprehension strategies for deepening understanding. They are a thinking class. I am looking forward to some rich discussions.

Bits and Pieces:

• We’ve begun our unit of study about multiplication. The class seems excited about this. It’s a little surprising as they realize how much they already know.
• We’ve continued our science exploration of Stability and Motion as we learn about the forces of flight. We’ve learned about balanced and unbalanced forces. We explored Newton’s Laws of Motion and we’ve made some paper airplanes to see how shape influences flight. See if your child can explain the opposite forces that must be overcome so an airplane can fly. This week we attempted to make handheld propellers to learn about lift. Only Izzy’s took flight. It was exciting to see at least one of our models working. We all had fun trying.
• We’re nearly finished with our second chapter read-aloud, Word After Word After Word. See if your child has a favorite character. I wonder if they’ll be able to tell you how real and unreal are both true. Ms. Mirabel explained that to the class in the story. It is an interesting idea.
• Be on the lookout for reminders about our field trip on Tuesday. Children will snacks and lunch in backpacks that they can carry all day long.
• Picture Day envelope are coming home today. Grade 3 will have their pictures taken on picture re-take day in early October. We will send you the date as soon as we know it.

As always thank you for taking the time to read this memo, to review your child’s work from the week and to talk to your child about what is happening in the classroom.