CarnivalOur school carnival is quickly approaching! We have been signed up to do the Road Trip basket this year. Please send in any items that you would like to donate that goes along with the Road Trip theme! I am also in the process of creating a craft for our class auction. Currently I am planning on creating a magnetic fishing game. The students will paint the individual fish. Check out the picture! Our carnival will be on Saturday, March 14th. Field TripPlease review the document below. Chaperone packets will come home on Monday! Curriculum UpdateMath: This week we will be starting unit 5. This unit focuses heavily on solving a variety of single and multiple step word problems. We will continue to act as detectives to solve these word problems throughout this unit! It is my hope that they will all find solving these "puzzles" fun by the end of the unit!
Social Studies: I had high hopes that we would be able to squeeze in a pioneer day this week, but it will have to be next week. With our testing (reading test) day being on Monday and our field trip being Wednesday, we will be struggling to get to that point. More info will come home this week about our plans! Writing: This week we will be celebrating on writing on Tuesday. We will be celebrating by building forts and reading with our flashlights. Due to the nature of our celebration, this one we will be doing with just our classmates! I look forward to sharing this writing with you at conferences. We will move into realistic fiction this week and be working on developing plots to different stories. Reading: This week we will be continuing our study of biographies. We will be thinking about the internal and external characteristics of the people that we are studying. Reminders: Monday - Mrs.Gitler will be in the school but out of the classroom doing reading tests. Tuesday - Writing Celebration - please send in flashlights! Wednesday - Field Trip! Please wear BE the 1 shirt and review the letter above. PE - Tuesday & Friday **Please check out our Family Book Club page for info about our next book!**
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Valentine's Day was so much fun! We had a blast celebrating by experimenting with candy. We watched raisins dance, tested the acidity of Pixie Stix, tried to make candy hearts float, blew up balloons using Pop Rocks and more! Thank you to all who volunteered and to all who donated. I am beyond grateful for your continued support! Please check out a few pictures below. Weekly UpdateReminders:
Math: This week we will official wrap up our 4th math unit. We will be working on multistep word problems while acting as Gitler's Gumshoes. Ask your child about the detective work that they are completing in class! Our test will be at the beginning of next week. Social Studies: We will be looking at the influence the British had on Michigan and the United States this week. We will be moving into pioneers shortly. Grammar: This week we will be taking an intense look at our current writing pieces and being sure that we are using third grade grammar throughout. Writing: We will be working to publish our final copies this week. We plan to have our celebration next week on Monday! Reading: This week we will be starting our Biography unit. We will be taking a closer look at Thomas Edison's life and how the time in history had an influence on his life story. Field Trip:
Our filed trip will be taking place on February 25th to the Grand Rapids Public Museum. A permission slip went home last week with the basic details of the trip. Please be sure to send in $3 for your child no later than this Friday. If you would like to be a chaperone (we will not be limiting the chaperones due to this being our only trip) please send in $7 to cover general admission. If you have a museum membership you may use it to cover your admission (not your student's). Chaperones will be meeting us at the museum at 9:50. Body Safety Presentation: On Thursday we will have our body safety lesson that is put on for all of the 3rd grades in the county. A person from the Children's Advocacy Center will be coming in to talk to the kids about what a safe touch is and what an unsafe touch is. She speaks to the students about who safe people are to talk to and what they can do if they feel uncomfortable about something. I have watched this presentation for the past 5 years and the lady does a very nice job. If you have any questions or concerns about this, please contact me. Typing Pizza Party: On Thursday, February 12th, the students will not need a lunch!! They have worked very hard to earn the typing pizza party at Park Elementary. The Tech Department will be providing a pizza lunch. Please send your child with a side and a drink. Valentine's Day: Our Valentine's Party will be taking place at 2:30 on Friday. We will be doing some candy science as part of our celebration. If you are interested in helping with an experiment, please send me an email! We will be exchanging valentines earlier in the day. Have your child only fill out the "from" line to make passing the valentines out quick and easy! I am looking forward to celebrating Valentine's Day with this "sweet" science. Math: We will be wrapping up subtraction by talking about how to use addition to check our answers. We will be looking at how to use fact families to solve word problems. This unit will be wrapping up next week following some multi-step word problems. Social Studies: We will continue to learn about the fur trade and the explorers this week. Students will continue to travel back in time and write in their travel journals about the things that they have learned. Grammar: This week we will focus on the three types of sentences. Students will practice writing simple, complex, and compound sentences this week. Writing: This week will be all about revising our writing and creating final copies. Reading: This week we will focus on pulling meaning from our non-fiction text so that we can teach others about what we have learned. We will be using our main idea and graphic organizer strategies to help with this task. Reminders: PE - Wednesday Thursday - Typing Pizza Party Thursday - Body Safety Presentations Daddy Daughter Bowling - Feb.14 Book Club (Hatchet) - Feb.19th Students Become TeachersThis week was filled with new types of learning. During math, the students switched roles with me and became the teachers. They taught each other how to subtract, draw proof drawings, and some even created Show Me videos to explain their thinking. On Thursday, students had a chance to put their teaching to the test with a group of 2nd graders. It was so much fun listening to the kids take on the teacher role! They learned how to scaffold learning and carefully taught the subject before releasing for practice. I am so proud of the hard work that they put into their teaching and can hear a big difference in how they explain their thinking now! Guys GroupLast week was our first Guys Group meeting. Mr.Tom and Mr.Field came in to assist me in teaching the boys how to tie a tie (way better than Youtube!). The concentration on their faces as they tried to master the beginner's knot was so sweet. Many boys kept those ties on through the remainder of the day (though I am not sure if it was due to the inability to remove them)!
Following our tie activity, the boys were given a set of items: a long length of string, a balloon, a straw, and a piece of tape. They were told that they had to figure out how to make the balloon travel the length of the string in a straight line. Just as the bell rang, a group erupted into applause as they figured it out! It was such a fun day! I am looking forward to our next group meeting (TBA) and our first Girls Group meeting (Feb.26). Students have been working hard on explaining what they are doing as they are solving problems. Here are a few videos created by students in the class! Keep checking back. There will be new videos posted throughout the week!
Rob Rounding Davis Subtraction Gaby Subtraction Ethan Subtraction Jonah Subtraction Jonah & Gaby Subtraction I hope you all enjoyed your extended mid-winter break! We are back at it this week and will begin with our math facts as usual on Tuesday. Please be sure that your child is studying these facts each night. If your child is done with their facts, please use Moby Max or flashcards to practice a few times a week (multiplication & division) to be sure they retain the information.
Last week we had a guys group meeting planned that ended up being canceled. We will reschedule that meeting for this Thursday! Please send in a tie with your son. We plan to practice tying ties and playing some fun games. This is an opportunity to learn some leadership skills and form new friendships. I will be planning a similar meeting with the girls in a few weeks! This week we will be using our exceptional math skills to teach others. We will have an opportunity to create Show Me videos as well as teach some second graders how to subtract with regrouping. This unit has been a nice break from the harder math that we have done in the past! The students are really doing well! We are almost ready for our next book club meeting. It will be taking place on Thursday, February 19th at 6:00pm. The book that we will be celebrating is Hatchet. Please be sure that you have read the book so that you are able to attend! I am really looking forward to this meeting. More details to come! Valentine's Day Valentine's Day is just around the corner (I can't believe it!) which means, there is a lot of talk about what our party will be! I am planning on doing candy science as our party. I figured we could see what all of that sugar can really do through a series of fun experiments. I am looking for a few volunteers to help with running an experiment group. If you are interested in donating an item for our science experiments, please let me know! Please email me if you are interested in either one of these things. I am forever grateful for all of your support! We will be passing out Valentines in class. If your child is interested in bringing in valentines, please have them sign only the "from" line to make passing the cards out quick and easy! We have 26 students in our classroom! Math: This week we will be putting our math skills (and teaching skills) to the test. We will be taking some time to teach second graders and create videos that demonstrate our knowledge. Social Studies: We will be starting with our presentations on the legends that we read. We will then start to talk about the fur trade and explorers. Grammar: This week our focus will be on sentences having a subject and a predicate. We will be looking over old writing and identifying sentences that were incomplete. Writing: This week we will be working on our glossary, planning our pictures, and writing our captions for our informational writing. Reading: This week we will be using graphic organizers to help us to organize information from our informational text. Reminders: PE - Tuesday & Friday Feb.10 - Parent Club meeting 9am Library - Friday |
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