Hat Day

I totally forgot to send home the flyer at the end of the day today! Tomorrow is Hat Day! Summit Street School has filled the sunband jar again!

Information Writing

Reminder: If you have not returned your Flynn permission slip, please send it to school as soon as possible. 

We are currently working through our information writing unit. On Monday we started publishing our pieces using Google Slides. We have been studying different mentor texts and we are trying to emulate their writing by adding pictures, fun facts, and jokes along with our expert writing. We are experts on a variety of different topics ranging from Rabbits to Dragons to Minecraft! We can't wait to share our published pieces! 

Friday Fun!

On Friday we got to play some Minute to Win It games in our classroom! 

Here are some of our favorites: 

Trying to get an Oreo from our forehead to our mouth without touching it! 

Getting Cheerios on a piece of spaghetti!

Tossing Cheetos onto a shaving cream covered plate!

 Later in the day we had some Third Grade Team Time! We read a book called Turkey Trouble, and then tried to disguise our own turkeys from being eaten for Thanksgiving. We love getting to work as a whole third grade! Come check out the finished product in the stair case by our classroom! 

Have a great break! Don't forget to read! 

Informational Texts

Today we launched new units in Reader's and Writer's Workshop! We are diving into reading and writing lots of informational texts. During Writer's Workshop we looked at strong examples of informational texts and noticed how they are structured and what they sound like. We noticed that informational text writers are really teachers! They use a teaching voice and structure to give their readers new information. 

In Reader's Workshop we learned about how to "rev" up our minds to read nonfiction. We learned to look at the structure of the text and think about what we already know about the topic. This will help us anticipate what information might be coming! 

It can be a great opportunity to read some extra nonfiction at home! Reading nonfiction takes a different set of skills than fiction. Third graders spend lots of time trying to pick out the main idea not the main topic. 

(For example: this page is about how animals adapt to their environment, rather than saying this page is about animals) 

Challenge your child to discuss the main idea with you at home when reading nonfiction! 

Catching Up

We have been SO busy in third grade I have been neglecting this blog! Here are a few things we have been up to lately.

Reading: We are just finishing up our first reading unit: Building a Reading Life. This unit focused on building strong reading habits and reading for understanding. We read Stone Fox and talked about really thinking about what is going on in the story. We learned how to make predictions, ask great questions and tackle tricky words! Next up: Non-Fiction!

Writing: We are also just finishing our first writing unit. We have been writing personal narratives and stretching out those small moments stories! Next up: Writing informational pieces

Math: We are continuing to work through a multiplication unit! We have been building our strategy toolbox and have talked about different fact strategies to use when multiplying different numbers. We also have been practicing graphing and the different parts of a graph. Next up: Multi-Digit Addition and Subtraction

Science: We are finishing up our first science unit about Forces and Interactions. We have pushed sheeps down a ramp in a jeep, we have explored with swinging pendulums and flicked ping pong balls and golf balls. To finish up our unit we will do a little exploring with magnets.

In addition to all this great learning:

We visited our Kindergarten buddies! We love reading with them! This time they showed us books they have in their book boxes! We got to revisit some favorite stories from Kindergarten.

We wrote encouraging letters as a third grade team to students in Puerto Rico. Summit Street School raised $350.00 to donate to Puerto Rico through our coin drive! Great work! 

Thanks to Mrs. Hutton and all the parent volunteers that helped organize the Fun Run! We had a blast! 

In Ms. Pacy's WIN group we built "bone bridges" this week using pipe cleaners and Q-tips! We only had a certain amount of materials and had to make a bridge longer than a piece of paper and that could hold 10 plastic pumpkins! We had a great conversation about different bridge designs after we tested all the designs! 

Lastly, we enjoyed some choice time! Currently, one group is auditioning for some open roles in their Tinker Bell play!