Week 21

A head's up on what is happening this week:

Block Assessment for Language Arts. This is the six week test that shows how well the student is doing.

A review of spelling words that were the most frequently mis-spelled words from the past five weeks.

Mathematics, we are moving into the basics of division, but the students are working hard on their multiplication.

Science, more science ideas with the specific topic being about "Volcanoes and Earth Movement"

Wednesday will be "Show & Tell"

Friday will be an Awards Assembly

Friday we will also go Swimming for the last time. (And if you have time I will be posting a Survey about how you feel about this opportunity, please give me some feedback).

And announcing here for my students benefit, yes we will be having FisherStore on Friday at 10:40 - 11:15 (squeezing it in, but the students have rightfully earned it).

Science Fair Links

The Science Fair for 3rd - 5th Graders is coming up on February 4, that is next Thursday.

Here are some links that might be helpful:



And here is a list of Experiments that were in our Science Studies Weekly:

Weird Day

A weird way to start out this week. My apologies for the way everything transpired today, but everything seemed to work out okay. I learned that I need to be a little more prepared for such an event. If you read this, and you have changed your address, phone number or contacts could you let me know about those changes. As I started calling I found three phone numbers were disconnected and one person I never received any contact information for, to be able to call in an emergency.

I am sure grateful to Mrs. Burt who had everything ready to teach an art lesson instead of computers, she kept the kids on task and concentrating on school, while I took care of business.

Well, this week will be short, but I still have to squeeze in five days worth of content. Here is an overview that I was planning on presenting with the students this morning.

Daily Grams: Capitalizing, Punctuation (with abbreviations), Proper and Possessive Nouns, how to use helping verbs, and a review of Past Tense verbs, and we will also do some Alphabetizing.
Spelling: working with words that have the /oi/ sound. There are only two ways to spell the /oi/ sound, either oi or oy. The easy way to remember which spelling to use is to follow the rule that if the /oi/ sound is at the end of the word use oy, because English words do not end in "i."
Handwriting: We will continue our discussion this week of how to do capital letters in cursive.

Reading: Our theme this week is the "Art of Illustrating." Our emphasis will be on understanding text structure (understanding what kind of text we are reading - to entertain or to inform) and chronological order. So for example did Goldilocks eat the bowls of porridge first or did she find a comfy bed to sleep on.  The students will be excited for the extra opportunities to be Illustrators.

Mathematics: We are ready to start into division, scary but I think an introduction helps the students solidify their understanding of multiplication. Keep up the great work with their Times Tables. I had 8 - 11 students pass of their times tables, last week.

Science: Aaron has been anxiously waiting for some guidance in finding some Science Fair Ideas, and we just never have enough time. Today, we were going to go over some of those ideas, but we will have to do that on Thursday. I will post some science fair links along with our ideas from that discussion then. Only two more weeks until the Century Science Fair!

Just a note of accomplishment, I probably shouldn't, but I wanted to congratulate all the students on some exceptional performances on their spelling and reading tests last week. They all showed improvement. For me, that means they are learning, my number one goal as a teacher. And again thank-you to all the students for handling this morning with patience and maturity, besides I have the best Third Grade class.

Parent Teacher Conferences

I would like to thank all the parents that came in during SEP's (Parent Teacher  conferences). It is always a joy to see and connect with the parents of my students. The best part is seeing the students interact with their parents and show off their progress and accomplishments.

Have a great weekend.

Week 19

Week 18 went by so fast, and yet it was probably the longest week of the year. (Ha, ha, it was the longest week of the year - so far). Coming up this week we have a lot of things planned, and yet there will not be much time to squeeze it all in.  I just finished grading the spelling test from this last week, and I am very impressed with how the students have developed their ability to do cursive, and on a spelling test. Overall, only a few students still struggle with cursive. This is a big hurdle in the third grade, so encourage what you see.

Here is this weeks schedule:
Monday: Music, Phonics, Spelling, Grammar, Reading Groups, Math, and Science.
Tuesday: Computers, Phonics, Spelling, Grammar, Reading Groups, Math and History.
Wednesday: Basketball, Phonics, Spelling, Reading Practice, Reading Groups, Math, Star Talk, and Show and Tell. * See below for further note about Show and Tell.  Also this is SEP Conferences starting at 1:45 and continuing until 7:00.
Thursday: Art, Phonics, Spelling, Reading, Reading Groups, Math, and Science. SEP Conferences 2:45 - 7:00.
Friday: NO SCHOOL
Monday: Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday - NO SCHOOL

Now for some details: