Latest Learning in Third Grade

Hello Third Grade Families! 

Reader's Workshop: We are in the midst of a unit on reading nonfiction texts. The unit started with reading informational texts and focused on finding the main idea and supporting details. The second part of the unit will move into narrative nonfiction and biographies. 

Writer's Workshop: We are also working within nonfiction writing about a topic we are an expert on! We will be publishing this piece of writing using Google Slides. 

Math: We completed our unit on multiplication and are currently working in Unit 3 which focuses on multi digit addition and subtraction. Encourage your child to use a strategy that they are successful with. We are generally most successful with a number line! 

Science: We are gearing up for our study of weather and natural hazards. This is always a favorite in third grade. We will be completing an engineering activity as part of this unit. More details to come in Friday Folders! 

WIN Groups: Our first rotation of WIN groups will be wrapping up this week. We will move into a third week rotation of social emotional focused groups leading up to winter break. 

 Over the last few weeks....

We have been busy in third grade this fall! 

We did a mini unit on genre! We "tasted" different books and tried to figure out what genre the book would fall into. We used clues like the cover, title, book description, pictures, and reading the first few pages. 

We completed a mystery unit in Reader's Workshop. We started by having our very own mystery to solve: The Case of the Missing Elephant and Piggie Books. We had to use our clues and information to figure out what had happened! 

We had some lovely weather for the Fun Run! 

We have been enjoying having third grade guest readers! What great fluency practice! 

We met our book buddies in Mrs. Hall's first grade class. 

We practiced our expectations for the lunchroom! 

It snowed! We have such a lovely winter view outside our classroom. 

We disguised turkeys to escape being eaten on Thanksgiving during Third Grade Team time! 

And right before break we took some time to thank adults in our building! 

October

Hello Third Grade Families!

Upcoming Dates
October 18th: Conferences
October 19th: No School
October 23rd: Pasta Dinner
October 26th: Fun Run

For those of you who follow us on Instagram know that we have had a busy first few weeks of October.

Math: We have started the second unit in Bridges which focuses on building visual strategies for multiplication. We have been organizing various items like stamps and dog toys into arrays. We took the opportunity to build even more arrays in our Array City!

We are moving into using proportional reasoning in multiplication. We did an exploration using a seascape and Chloe the clownfish. We know that Chloe the clownfish is 4 inches and the sea anemone is twice as long as Chloe so it must be 8 inches!

Lastly, we have been building cube trains, making multiples strips, and skip counting to build our understanding of multiples and factors.

We continue to enjoy our well earned choice time! I am continually impressed by the creativity in our classroom! Check out the telephone and record player made with Legos! 

Thank you to all the families that joined us at Indian Brook. We thoroughly enjoyed Nature Friendly Friday. We will be visiting Indian Brook two additional times this year to see the same areas in different seasons. 

Literacy: We are finishing up our first reading unit with a quick study of genre. We did a little book tasting today to dive into different genres of books. 

We are also finishing up our first writing unit: personal narratives! 

Updates!

Hello Families!

You should have received a couple of notes home this week about upcoming events in third grade.

This Friday, the entire third grade will be participating in various nature stations at Summit to practice for some future field trips in nature. All third graders will be rotating through nature related stations and eating lunch outside from 10-12:30. If your child did not order a bag lunch from school please send them with a lunch from home on Friday. We are always looking for volunteers so if you are interested in helping with a station this Friday send me a note or email. We will also be looking for families to join us on future nature trips, so look for information in the coming weeks!

On Tuesday September 25th, Summit will have Open House from 6-7pm. This is a great time to see your child's classroom and learn about the 3rd grade curriculum. Hope to see you all there!

We have entered our fall assessment window. I am enjoying spending time getting to know your students as readers, writers, spellers, and mathematicians. Your third graders have been working so hard completing these beginning of year assessments.

You should have received a green paper in Friday Folders about signing up for fall conferences. Please return at your convenience so I can confirm times for families!

On Mondays in the fall, and full time in the spring, we have a UVM student teacher named Ms. Locke who will be joining our classroom! We are so excited for this opportunity!

As always, please feel free to reach out to me through email, phone, in person, etc., with questions, comments, concerns, and celebrations!

Thanks!

First Two Weeks!

Wow! The first two weeks of school have flown by! I am having so much fun with your children every day! We are enjoying our time getting to know each other and build our classroom community. 

Reading: Our first unit focuses on Building a Reading Life! We learn about picking just right books, keeping track of our reading patterns, finding a good spot, and celebrating our successes. As a class we reached our goal of 20 minutes of reading stamina so we have earned the opportunity to open new reading spots on Monday! 

We wrote about our best reading spots! 

We practiced reading at our table spots and building our reading stamina! 

In math our first unit focuses on addition and subtraction using hands-on materials. We started the year by creating people glyphs to get to know the mathematicians in our classroom. We learned that most people in our class like to work alone (red hats). 

We also have been introduced to our workplace routine (math games) and learned three new workplaces: Make the Sum, Target Twenty and Subtraction Bingo! We talked about what makes a good workplace partner. 

We have enjoyed some fun team building and get to know you activities! We started with a series of hula hoop team challenges! 

We had a whole class rock, paper, scissors tournament! 

And we designed, constructed, and tested parachutes to drop off our new playground! 

Lastly, we had third grade team time where we talked about using self-control in third grade. We acted out various scenarios demonstrating great self-control and poor self-control. There were lots of laughs!