General Announcements
This week, we took the district performance task. That is why you did not get new spelling and vocabulary words. This assessment mirrors what the students will see on the state test in the spring. We are working each week with test tips, practice, and discussions so it will not be overwhelming for them. This district test was taken over a few days, and on the off days, we worked with informational text. We talked about the different types of comprehension questions, captions and illustrations. They learned to read around the page before jumping into the paragraphs. This helps give them information about the topic before being asked to read a longer piece. They learned that the other features on the page will give them equally important information.
We began a new narrative piece. The class began by creating an elf. Once they created it, they gave it a name, talent and years working for Santa. Before jumping into thinking of story, the class was asked to write a text message between their elf and Santa. We hung them up in the hallway today. Monday, the students will read each one and hopefully get some ideas to write about. Then we will begin writing a short story with their elf as the main character.
Other books we read:
Our new series has the students breaking up the multiplication tables into smaller ones, then adding the smaller products together. This is really helping with the early understanding of the distributive property. We also tell the kids that if they forget a fact, they can rely on this to help. We began multiplying with tens, two digit by one digit. As we learn the facts, we are also learning the multiplication facts families include division. But because one of the third grade skills is to know the 0-12 tables fluently, we are adding a self paced practice of the fluent facts. After the students practice, they mark of their progress sheet, then take an oral "test" with an adult in our room. Once they pass, they go to another table to master. If you want to practice at home, we have games posted in our Math and Science google classroom. On abcya.com they have online fact cards to practice as well.
Social Studies
We focused a lot of attention on Science this week, but we did talk about the three branches of government.
Science
The next few science experiments continue to work on the concept of absorption. The class did their research for the next few experiments. The experiments will get the students to practice weighing sponges, dry, damp and wet. We bring the data they found together, and we will learn about averages, and why it is important for many trials. During snack, we listen to a book online, but every other week we try to watch Peep in the Big Wide World. They are short episodes that focus on simple science concepts. The kids like to pick out what they know. We watched one about melting snow, and it goes with our unit of study right now. Here is the link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocrjmVQq9fA&disable_polymer=true
- Holiday Shop: We will be visiting Monday right after our lunch and recess, 12:30-1:00. The children can shop and wrap presents.
- Report Cards: They will be posted in Aspen on December 10th. You will see some 2's in the area of division. The reason is, we have just begun working with it in depth. We did not feel the class has had enough practice with the practicing different methods to divide numbers. We worked on division in relationship to multiplication.
- School Store: School store will be open for classes on December 19th. We are signed up to visit that day at 10:45 AM. Students can earn two blue school store dollars when they complete a mission on Zearn. This is a self paced program, but working on it from home does help speed up the amount they can cover. The blue school store dollars are hole punched three times. So the students can use one dollar three times.
- Popcorn Days: Our first popcorn day of the month was cancelled due to the snow storm. The next popcorn day is the third Tuesday of the month, the 17th I believe.
- The Army Band Concert is scheduled for December 17th.
- We have a Lippitt Chorus concert on December 18th and a Lippitt Instrumental concert on December 20th.
- Pajama Drive: Pj's will be collected from November 8th until December. They will be donated to the Pajama Program. As always, we will watch "The Polar Express" the day before winter break to celebrate the pajamas we collected for this season.
- The class earned their next fire flame party AND earned ALL ice cream scoops from all itinerants this week! We are so proud. Your children are working together to be the best they can be behaviorally in all areas of school. We are really working on being active learners.
- Thank you for the Clorox donations. We will never turn any wipes away, so feel free to send some in at any point. We are heading into the cold and flu season.
This week, we took the district performance task. That is why you did not get new spelling and vocabulary words. This assessment mirrors what the students will see on the state test in the spring. We are working each week with test tips, practice, and discussions so it will not be overwhelming for them. This district test was taken over a few days, and on the off days, we worked with informational text. We talked about the different types of comprehension questions, captions and illustrations. They learned to read around the page before jumping into the paragraphs. This helps give them information about the topic before being asked to read a longer piece. They learned that the other features on the page will give them equally important information.
We began a new narrative piece. The class began by creating an elf. Once they created it, they gave it a name, talent and years working for Santa. Before jumping into thinking of story, the class was asked to write a text message between their elf and Santa. We hung them up in the hallway today. Monday, the students will read each one and hopefully get some ideas to write about. Then we will begin writing a short story with their elf as the main character.
Other books we read:
- We started to read "Maybelle in the Soup" by Katie Speck. This is a short series of books about a cockroach who loves fine food. The books are shorter, and are good for kids overwhelmed by larger chapter books.
- "Olaf's Night Before Christmas" by Jessica Julius www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MH5dwB5ZzU&t=294s
- "Goodbye Autumn, Hello Winter" by Kenard Pec www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDM7kyi5OOg
- "Memoirs of an Elf" by Devin Scillian www.youtube.com/watch?v=liHmg1RS96g
- "The Winter Train" by Susanna Isern www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pUXonCSWvE&disable_polymer=true
Our new series has the students breaking up the multiplication tables into smaller ones, then adding the smaller products together. This is really helping with the early understanding of the distributive property. We also tell the kids that if they forget a fact, they can rely on this to help. We began multiplying with tens, two digit by one digit. As we learn the facts, we are also learning the multiplication facts families include division. But because one of the third grade skills is to know the 0-12 tables fluently, we are adding a self paced practice of the fluent facts. After the students practice, they mark of their progress sheet, then take an oral "test" with an adult in our room. Once they pass, they go to another table to master. If you want to practice at home, we have games posted in our Math and Science google classroom. On abcya.com they have online fact cards to practice as well.
Social Studies
We focused a lot of attention on Science this week, but we did talk about the three branches of government.
Science
The next few science experiments continue to work on the concept of absorption. The class did their research for the next few experiments. The experiments will get the students to practice weighing sponges, dry, damp and wet. We bring the data they found together, and we will learn about averages, and why it is important for many trials. During snack, we listen to a book online, but every other week we try to watch Peep in the Big Wide World. They are short episodes that focus on simple science concepts. The kids like to pick out what they know. We watched one about melting snow, and it goes with our unit of study right now. Here is the link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocrjmVQq9fA&disable_polymer=true