End of the Year Updates!

WOW! I cannot believe we are at the end of our year together! Is it just me, or did this year seem to go by fast!? Needless to say, it has been a wonderful year with a fabulous group of third graders. The kids have worked so hard and are definitely getting antsy for summer vacation J. I sure will miss them next year, but know they are ready to take on fourth grade! The next 3 weeks come along with a lot of fun mixed in with some academics! Check out what we will be doing to complete the end of our year together in THIRD GRADE!

Reading: Students are finishing up their book club books with their small reading groups. I have had such a great time reading these chapter books with students. It is amazing to see my students grow as readers and see the enthusiasm they share when they get to an exciting part in the story, have a new prediction, or a personal connection with the text. Over the summer I hope to see each child continue to read just right books while practicing fluency and comprehension. Research shows the importance of reading each and every day to sustain the skills that they have learned throughout the school year. If you are in need of a just right book for your child or would like a book recommendation, please feel free to e-mail me!

Writing: To end the school year, students will be working together to complete a classroom newspaper called The Teasley Times! We will discuss common themes found in newspapers, and students will decide on a non-fiction topic that might be of interest to other Somerset students or parents! I am excited to see what they come up with. The newspaper is always one of my favorite pieces to have students complete. Stay tuned for your copy of The Teasley Times!

Math: We finally finished ALL of our lessons in the Math Expressions curriculum! Just in time for the Smarter Balance state test J. After we finish testing, students will work in groups to create a math game based on one or more of the skills they have learned in third grade! These might be board games or card games with themes based on some of their favorite games they enjoy playing in their spare time. Students will make detailed instructions, design, and create a final product of their game to share with the class. On the final day, all classmates will have the opportunity to try them out!

Over the summer, please remind students to continue to practice all multiplication and division facts, as well as addition and subtraction. This will really help them in fourth grade! Xtra Math and Dreambox (websites) will also be available for them to play online this summer.

SCIENCE: We have had a blast learning about the bones, joints and muscles in the human body. This week we will see how they all work together as we learn about coordination, stimulus, and response. At the end of the week we will play HUMAN BODY JEOPARDY to review all of the science concepts we learned this trimester. We also will have another visit from the Pacific Science Center to learn more about the Human Body this month!

SOCIAL STUDIES: The summer is truly a great time to have some conversations with your child about the geography around us! If you are traveling, bring along a map so that students can use their geography skills to map their route. It is helpful to refer to the cardinal directions, states, countries, continents, and oceans.

UPCOMING DATES:

Monday, June 1^st: Smarter Balance Math

Tuesday, June 2^nd: Smarter Balance Math

Wednesday, June 10^th: Parent Volunteer Assembly

Friday, June 12^th: FIELD DAY!

Friday, June 19^th: Summer Reading Assembly!

Friday, June 19^th: END OF THE YEAR PARTY!

Monday, June 22^rd: LAST DAY OF SCHOOL! (School ends at 11:00)

A big thank you to all of you for helping make this such a wonderful year! I am so blessed to work with such amazing Somerset families. Please stay in touch and have a fabulous summer!

May

What a beautiful weekend we had! I hope everyone was able to enjoy some time in the sunshine. We are on the countdown to the end of the year and have a lot of fun things coming up including in school field trips brought to us by the Pacific Science Center, more exploring with the human body, the third grade spring music concert, and more! We also had a wonderful time in our field trip to the Seattle Children’s Theater. A big thank you to our parents who chaperoned the trip, it was a fun day! Here is what we are up to in third grade.

MATH: In unit 7 students will be exploring fractions! Specifically, students will understand the meaning of fractions and see that fractions must be equal parts of the same whole. The class will work to represent fractions in a variety of ways including fraction bars, number lines, and fraction strips. They will also compare fractions with the same numerator or the same denominator. Last, third graders will learn to find equivalent fractions. This tends to be a difficult concept for third graders! A few ideas to help at home: relate fractions to time (quarter after, half past, quarter til), practice fractions with money, or talk about fractions while cooking or baking! Any real life experiences to help students gain a better understanding of the concept are welcome and helpful.

SCIENCE:  Students are continuing to learn about the human body! Last week we began learning about some of the main bones in our bodies, and how they compare to bones in other animals. Students had the opportunity to dissect an actual owl pellet! In our pellets we observed rodent bones including ribs, skulls, femurs, tibia/fibula, pelvis, and more! We even had a student identify a possible frog in her pellet…a first for me to see while teaching this lesson! I am sure some of my kiddos shared their bones with you J. They were excited to bring them home and share what they learned!

Up next: Joints and muscles! Students will explore what it might be like if they did not have the use of their opposable thumb! We will discover the importance of joints and muscles and how they allow us to move and do daily activities. At the end of each investigation students will bring home an I-Check, a formative assessment to check for understanding of the concepts. Keep a look out for these in your child’s backpack so you can see the specifics of the concepts being learned!

READING: Book clubs! The class is really enjoying our new book club structure. Each student is responsible for coming to book clubs prepared with a short summary of their assignment, a question they had while reading, words that stuck with them, and a completed skill of the week. They have been going really well, and as always, I am impressed with the great conversations students have centered around the chapter books. After finishing book club projects and presenting, many of the kids were inspired to choose one of the book club books they hadn’t read as an independent reading book! Students should continue to select just right CHAPTER BOOKS to read at school and at home. Please ask if you need help finding just right books for your third grader.

WRITING: It was really fun to work on free verse, haikus, and other styles of poetry this last month! Our next writing project involves students writing book reviews. These reviews will hang in our hallway and hopefully give others ideas of books to read! They will include story elements, a brief summary (without giving away the ending), a lesson, and recommendation. After reviews, students will be making a class newspaper, The Teasley Times! Each person will take home a newspaper to share with families. Stay tuned for more information later this month J.

DATES TO KNOW:

May 20^th: 3^rd grade Somerset concert! Come join us in the gym at 6:00!

May 22^nd: No School

May 26^th: Memorial Day: No School!

June 1-3: Smarter Balance Math Testing: More information to come.

Happy Spring!

Happy Spring! I hope everyone had a wonderful and relaxing Spring Break! The kids certainly deserved it after a long week of testing. They did a fabulous job and I am so proud of their hard work and perseverance throughout the week.

Over the break my husband and I were able to spend some time relaxing and enjoying the sunshine down in Arizona! Hopefully some warmer weather for Washington is just around the corner. J We have so many fun things going on as the students begin their final trimester as THIRD GRADERS! What a great year it’s been! I can’t believe we only have 10 weeks of school left! Here’s what we are up to in the upcoming weeks.

READING: I have loved watching students participate in Book Clubs and grow as readers over the last several months. Students continue to be engaged in their books, act as leaders during discussions, and ask thoughtful questions related to the text. When students complete their books, they have the opportunity to complete a Book Club Project! I enjoy seeing kids so excited to create Power Points, comics, epilogues, etc. related to the characters, setting, and plot of their story. After break, students will dive into new book club books. We will also continue our Journeys curriculum in the whole group setting where we read a common text as we focus on comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and vocabulary goals. I have a very active group of readers. Thank you for your encouragement of reading at home as I know it plays a big role in their love of reading.
WRITING: This trimester we have a variety of fun and exciting writing projects! To start, students will complete a research project on an animal of their choice. Students will research the animal’s habitat, description, diet, and other interesting facts. They will take notes and practice putting these notes into their own words as they create detailed paragraphs around these topics. To end, students will complete a Power Point presentation to share their animal with the class!
MATH: In unit 6 students have been analyzing triangles and quadrilaterals. There is a ton of vocabulary in this unit, but our class did an excellent job classifying these polygons, finding similarities and differences, and even created a geometry land to share their understanding of the shapes! In the coming weeks we will explore perimeter and area. Students will compare areas and perimeters, use side lengths in area and perimeter calculations and problems, and use concepts of perimeter and area to solve real world problems.

SCIENCE: During unit students get to explore the bones, joints, muscles, and coordination systems in the human body! Investigation one is all about bones and the function of the skeleton. Not only will students recognize the name and location of some of the main bones in our bodies. They will also discover that some of these major bones can also be found in animal skeletons as they explore rodent bones in owl pellets (eekk!). Students will determine the number of bones in the human skeleton, will compare bones, and learn the name, location, and orientation of the most important bones in the human skeleton.

SOCIAL STUDIES: We will be taking a short Social Studies break until our Human Body unit is complete. J

Dates to Know:

May 1st: FIELD TRIP! We will be heading to the Seattle Children's Theatre to watch the play Robin Hood. Look for the permission slip in your child's homework folder this week!

 

STEM, Book Clubs, OREO, and MORE!

Welcome back from Mid-Winter Break! It sounds like lots of families were able to travel to the sunshine last week! (jealous!) Although I stayed in Seattle, I enjoyed a few fun outings with my husband, hiking Poo Poo Point in Issaquah, and spending time with friends. The weather was wonderful, too! It was fun to hear some exciting stories from the kids’ week off. Check out what we are learning this month in room 208! Also, tune into the bottom for important dates involving Smarter Balance testing and our Somerset Auction!

MATH: This week we are beginning Unit 5 which primarily focuses on solving different types of word problems. To begin, we look at problems with unknown addends and factors. This is followed by solving comparision word problems and problems with extra, hidden, or not enough information. Finally, we will spend more time looking at multi-step word problems. We will use different strategies such as underlining and highlighting information, or solving problems using the step-by-step method. The biggest thing I notice in this unit is students simply looking at the numbers and making a guess on which operation to use. My hope is that they can relate these problems to real world experiences and identify the appropriate operation needed to use to solve the problem accurately.

We also continue to work on multiplication fluency each week! Please help out at home by quizzing your child or allowing them to practice on multiplication.com. The goal is for all students to know facts 1-10 in 7 minutes or less by the end of the school year! They are off to a great start.

READING: This week we are focusing on the author’s purpose for writing a story. When identifying the author’s purpose, think about PIE! Is the purpose to PERSUADE, INFORM, or ENTERTAIN? We also get to read an excellent story about a police officer and his partner, Aero, a loving K-9.

I continue to be impressed with book clubs and they are my favorite part of each day! Each group is getting really into their story, comes to the club prepared to share insights that are important to them, and work together to answer questions, make predictions, and dig deeper into the story! Ask your child about the book they are reading in their book club!

WRITING: This week we will begin opinion writing! The writing model we will use will include a specific OPINION, the REASON they have that opinion, EXPLANATIONS supporting their reason, and will close with restating their OPINION. We are calling this OREO writing. I am excited to see how kids express their opinions and continue to help them share their thoughts and ideas in organized paragraphs. Up next, book reviews! These are always my favorite. I love how excited the kids get when writing their reviews and how they help other students to be inspired to read new books.

SCIENCE: I am so excited about our upcoming STEM unit, A Long Way Down: Designing Parachutes. To understand the world we live in it is important that we provide kids with engineering and technological literacy and experiences. The goal in this unit is to introduce the field of aerospace engineering by guiding students in hands-on activities, discussions, and readings. We will start by reading the storybook Paulo’s Parachute Mission, which introduces them to aerospace engineering and astronomy. Through this story students will begin thinking about problems that might arise when designing a technology on Earth that will be used to explore another planet with different atmospheric conditions. Students will  also ask questions about how parachutes work, design models, and conduct experiences involving a parachutes canopy size or suspension line length, and how it affects how quickly or slowly it falls. Like engineers, students will: ask, imagine, plan, create, and improve!

SOCIAL STUDIES: We just took the trimester 2 unit assessment. Social Studies will return in the spring!

 Dates to Know:

Somerset Auction: March 28^th

Smarter Balance Schedule: This year students will participate in the Smarter Balance test. There will be two sections that they will participate in, two days of ELA testing, and two days of Math testing. The ELA tests will be from March 23-25th. The Math test will be from June 1-3. Please visit http://www.k12.wa.us/SMARTER/default.aspx to learn more about this test. More information to come!

 

 

 

 

February Fun

READING: My students continue to impress me each day with the meaningful conversations they are having in their book clubs! I love the fact that they are all getting so into these chapter books and are independently practicing comprehension skills that we have been working on all year.  Each student has shown that they are a responsible member of their group by coming to book club prepared and ready to engage in great conversation. Along with our great work in the small group setting, students continue to complete independent daily 5 choices each day. Keyboarding is a choice that has been recently added and the class is having fun learning how to type in home row, use correct posture, and attempting words without looking at the keyboard! Typing Master can also be practiced at home. Please see the educational links tab to connect directly to the site. Thank you for your support with your child reading at home each night. I have noticed a big improvement in reading engagement from the beginning of the year until now!

WRITING:  Over the past few weeks, students have been practicing writing clear paragraphs with a strong opening sentence, supporting details, and a clear closing sentence. We wrote a 5 paragraph procedural writing piece as a class. Students chose something that they are an ‘expert at’ and wrote their own 5 paragraph procedural paper. Look for them in the hallway!

This week we will continue our practice with paragraphs, focusing on a favorite places writing piece. Students will choose a favorite place in or near the Seattle area. They will share a description of the place, details about what makes the place so wonderful, and who they recommend the place to. The audience for this writing is anyone new to our school. We will create a favorite places book to keep in our office. We will also send each students’ writing to the organization in which they write about.

MATH: You may have heard that we have started ‘math teams’ in our class! Each team represents one of our Seahawk players, and while each group meets with me every day, students also have a variety of math activities to support their learning throughout the week. We have all had fun with these. We are almost done with Unit 4. To end, we will continue to focus on addition and subtraction and their relation to one another. In our upcoming unit, students will continue to work with addition and subtraction, specifically analyzing different types of story problems. Students will solve tricky problems with too much information, multi-steps, or hidden information! Stay tuned for more information.

SOCIAL STUDIES: I am so excited about these upcoming heritage presentations! I have received great feedback from the kids, and it sounds like they are really enjoying talking with their family about their background.

In the coming weeks, students will compare and contrast their lives to students lives in countries around the world. We will also learn from one another’s heritage presentations. Last, students will take the trimester 2 assessment which covers lessons 4 (immigration), 5 (cultures), 7(diversity).

SCIENCE: The kids are excited to start our next science unit! To begin, we will explore Investigations 3 and 4 in our Foss Measurement Kit where kids will learn about measuring capacity and temperature. Students will determine the difference between a tool and a unit. After mid-winter break, students will participate in hands on STEM activities while designing and testing parachutes!

Upcoming Dates:

February 13^th: Valentine’s Day Party! 2:15-3:30

February 16-20: Mid-Winter Break-NO SCHOOL

February 26^th: Festival of Cultures

 

Happy New Year!

HAPPY NEW YEAR! I hope everyone had a wonderful and restful holiday break. I know I enjoyed spending time with family and friends, going for hikes at Cougar Mountain with my dog, and watching the Seahawks win a few games to give them home field advantage for the playoffs! 2015 is going to be a great year. I am excited for all of the learning experiences we have coming up!

READING:  Our class did such an awesome job with the Mouse and the Motorcycle whole class literature circle. It was the perfect way to prepare kids for the book clubs they will be participating in after winter break! When kids come back, we will be placing a big focus on ‘accountable book talk’ during literature circles. My goal is to help students take responsibility for their reading, participate in meaningful conversations around just right books, and independently focus on CAFÉ skills and goal setting while reading. The class is really excited to begin reading chapter books in the small group setting, while continuing to explore new genres of chapter books independently. Kids will continue to focus on reading skills in our Journeys textbooks as a whole class, and will practice comprehension, accurate reading, fluency, and expanding vocabulary throughout a variety of fiction and non-fiction texts.

WRITING: Have you seen our 5 paragraph ‘How to Eat a Candy Cane’ writing pieces in the hallway? They turned out fabulous! After break, students will continue to work on paragraph writing. A few skills that kids should take away are how to write an opening sentence, closing sentence, and details focused on one specific topic. Kids should also be using appropriate punctuation and indentations. After writing a whole class ‘how to be successful in third grade’, students will write their own five paragraph ‘how to’ on a topic of their choice, and publish! Stay tuned for more information on our writing prompts and activities in the second trimester.

MATH: In Unit 4, students will be looking at place value and place value drawings to add and subtract whole numbers. We will explore different methods to add and subtract and identify the relationship between addition and subtraction. Students will also be rounding numbers to the nearest 10 or hundred and solving word problems related to addition, subtraction, rounding, and estimating. This unit will involve ‘math groups’ where students will be a part of a smaller group for the teacher lesson. Independently, students will have opportunities for math computer activities including fluency practice and dreambox, participate in individual practice, complete math writing activities designed to help students to explain their thinking, and play partner math games related to the days lessons. This structure will be very similar to our Daily 5 routines we have done so well with in reading! I am excited to expose students to a variety of math activities during the math block, and also to have more opportunities for smaller group teaching on specific skills.

SOCIAL STUDIES: In Unit 4 students will have the opportunity to learn about Immigration and different ways and reasons people decide to move from one country to another! Students will also recognize ways that our community is diverse, learn about different students around the world, and focus on the language, clothing, holidays, traditions, and way of life in different countries! We will summarize this unit by having students research their own heritage and complete a heritage project! This is a great way to celebrate the diversity here at Somerset. Stay tuned for more details to come about this at home research project!

SCIENCE: Next up: Measurement! Once again the third grade teachers will be participating in a STEM training involving a new and exciting added piece to our science curriculum that we get to teach our students! We will begin the new science unit in the next few weeks.

Upcoming Dates:

January 19^th: MLK Day. NO SCHOOL

January 23^rd: Pizza and Bingo Night

January 26^th: Professional Day. NO SCHOOL

Happy Holidays

As we approach the holiday season I want to take time to share my gratitude toward each of you! I feel so fortunate to work in such a wonderful school community full of thoughtful and supportive parents and hard-working and sweet students. It truly makes me love my job and enjoy coming to work each and every day. I hope all of you have a wonderful and relaxing time spent with loved ones. I am looking forward to spending time with my family, celebrating my husband’s birthday, and watching the Seahawks beat the Niners! J Happy Thanksgiving!


MATH: Unit 3 has sure been jam packed with lots of new concepts and skills for our class to learn! Students have done a great job with measuring length, mass, and capacity. We also spent quite a bit of work on telling time using an analog clock, adding and subtracting time, and finding elapsed time! This, I have discovered, is a very hard concept for a lot of our kiddos! With the use of several different strategies on paper, using number lines, or using mini analog clocks, kids are starting to get the hang of solving word problems related to time. At home please continue to have conversations about time with your child! It would be a great idea to refer to the analog clock often, as well as ask questions related to time passed doing specific activities. For example: If it is 5:20 when your child starts math homework, they finish the math homework at 5:47, and still need to read for 20 minutes, a good question might be, “what time will it be when you are finished with your reading homework?” or, “how long did you spend on your math and reading homework together?” Thanks so much for your help with this skill! The more practice they have and real life connections they can make with time, the stronger they will understand the concept.

 
Next up: Reading, analyzing, and creating horizontal and vertical bar graphs and line plots!

 
READING: We have been busy working on our CAFÉ skills in reading! I have been so impressed with the kids’ excitement for reading during the Daily 5. Students are doing an excellent job balancing their daily 5 choices throughout the week. I have especially been enjoying watching their growth and improvement in the ‘respond to reading’ choice. This involves responding to one of two questions about the chapter book they are reading independently in the classroom. Students are asked to give a complete answer, share evidence from the text, and come up with a connection, quote, or prediction to support their answer. They are doing a great job! In December students will be practicing all of the CAFÉ strategies we have learned so far and participate in a whole class literature circle reading The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Cleary. Students will be making predictions and inferences, identifying cause and effect and sequence of events, and practicing vocabulary and fluency skills while reading this fun book.

 

*Side Note: Recently we have been discussing the importance of reading books from different genres! While third graders really seem to love the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series here at school, they have been encouraged to branch out and explore new authors, series, and genres! Ask your child about the books they have explored in our classroom. If you would like recommendations for books to read at home, please contact me!


WRITING: This month our class will begin to practice procedural writing by writing a descriptive and festive 5 paragraph piece on ‘How to Eat a Candy Cane’. Students will focus on their five senses and descriptive word choice while writing an opening, closing, and three detailed paragraphs on their opinion of the BEST method in eating this sweet treat! They even get to munch on a candy cane of their own to discover their unique methods, as well as pay close attention to what the candy cane looks, smells, tastes, feels, and sounds like! Keep a look out for these in our third grade hallway.


SOCIAL STUDIES: It seems simple to us as adults, but understanding where we live on planet earth is a very abstract thought for kids. It's not easy for kids to visualize that we live on a continent, in a country, in a state, in a city, and in a community within that city. We've been observing maps, learning the location of the continents, oceans and regions of the United States. Anytime you go on a trip, it would be great for kids to look at a map or globe to find out where they are going - which continent, which state, which city - using these terms. They could even use the compass rose to determine the direction you will travel.

In December each child will go in depth to learn more about a particular state of choice and write a state report. We'll learn about Washington state together, and then each child will choose a state of interest! It should be fun!


SCIENCE: We finally finished up our Motion and Matter unit and I have to say, the kids had a blast! I have been so impressed watching them carry out investigations to make different discoveries about magnetism, motion, and mixtures. The science notebooks share great evidence of student learning and understanding the big ideas from the different investigations.

Next trimester students will participate in more STEM investigations, and will also be learning more about metric measurement!


Other News...

 Report Cards: Report cards will be sent home with your child on Friday, December 5^th. Remember, this year we are using a new report card program for sharing student progress. Because we just met in the beginning of November, the report cards should be pretty predictable. FYI: The new common core standards are related to where students should be at the END of third grade. Please do not be discouraged if you see a 2 on your child’s report. This simply means they are approaching where they should be at the end of the year, and are likely on a good track. Thanks for taking this into consideration when viewing your child’s report. As always, let me know if you have any questions.

 
Winter Wish Drive: If you can, please stop by the foyer and check out the Winter Wish Drive wall. Mittens are posted with items needed by families this season.

 
Weather Report: It's cold out there! Please make sure your child wears a coat and if you can do it, hat and mittens.

 

Art Imagination:  Thank you to Britta Knapman for taking on the role of Art Imagination and Auction Project volunteer this year. The kids had a fun time making and framing festive prints with metal, as well as creating different designs of their own! It is such a fun time for kids to have these creative art opportunities in the classroom setting each month.

Toy Maker: Stay tuned for more information about our upcoming Toy Maker experience on Friday, December 19th! Permission slips will be sent home on Monday, December 1st. Toy Maker Rick Hartman will be here to help students create toys related to our Motion and Matter science unit!