Dear Families, This week we started our day by greeting each other during morning meeting with the greeting "what's the news?" Ask your child for more details. In math, we introduced division and multiplication story problems. Students began to explore the ways in which they are related. Then, we continued with our word work study. Students sorted through words that have the "ch" digraph and "tch" trigraph patterns in them. Breaking words down and knowing their patterns can help us become better writers. During literacy we read the book "The Mystery of King Karfu," by Doug Cushman. He is an author that has written a few mystery books that are great for third graders. His book helps us learn how to be good readers by looking back into our text for evidence for our responses. We also started our science experiments this week. Since we have been learning about trees and how they function we wanted to really show these concepts. We decided to place celery stalks and a single white carnation into a cup. Then, we added drops of red or blue food coloring into our cups. We asked the students to think about a hypothesis. What do you think will happen to the celery and flower? Ask your child what they thought would happen. In Literacy, we continued to work on our folktale variations. Students have been writing their own stories based off the original version of "The Three Billy Goats Gruff." We also have "horrible news," a dear, dear, friend we once held so close has departed. Mr. Said is no more and "he" has unfortunately left us. ( JUST KIDDING of course!) However, let us get to the point. . . OUR EULOGY: "Said" is dead! "Said" was a good friend that helped us with dialogue for a while. However, it's time to move on from "Said." As third graders we want to SHOW and not TELL in our writing. Watch how replacing said really helps our writing. . . "Get out of the cave now!" exclaimed Oliver James. The rocks were about to fall and cover the entrance. If Jimmy did not run right then he would be trapped forever. We also earned our next belt during recorder! If some students did not DO NOT FRET. . . I (Ms. J) can play the recorder too and I told students that I will personally help them during any recess if they ask. Remind them that this is a tricky task and learning the recorder is new.
We will work together to earn these belts and if we don't get our belt the first time. . . THAT IS OKAY! I learned how to play the recorder when I was in third grade. . . I have a secret to tell you. . . I didn't have "recorder belts" at my school but we did have to play songs and earn stars! SECRET: I didn't earn my stars the first time! Yes, it is true, Ms. J also needs time to learn things and slow and steady for me is my learning pace. I like to really think about what I am learning and sometimes I do not get things on my first try. I keep trying and I really do understand things better when I practice. I had to practice a lot to earn my stars and sometimes I had to play the song more than once. It was frustrating at times but I NEVER GAVE UP! SO please encourage your children and let them know. . . when they feel that learning the recorder is challenging it is alright to acknowledge that it is indeed hard but NOT IMPOSSIBLE. We just might not know the recorder song we are practicing. . . YET! See the power of YET? We are learners and that slightly "uncomfortable" feeling of "I don't know" is called LEARNING! Tell your children they can also call to play their recorder songs right from home too! Ms. Mustachio created a RECORDER PHONE LINE. If students call this line they can leave a message with their name, class, and song they want to play. After leaving a message Ms. Mustachio will listen to the calls and let the students know next class if they earned their belt! 617-340-9203 Love, Your Teachers
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
June 2019
Categories |