October 16 - 19

We had a short, but very busy week in 3A.

Reading Workshop

This week we worked on the comprehension reading strategy "visualization" using "Where the Wild Things Are" as a mentor text. Visualizing strengthens reading comprehension skills as students gain a more thorough understanding of the text they are reading by consciously using the words to create mental images. As students gain more deliberate practice with this skill, the act of visualizing text becomes automatic. Students who visualize as they read not only have a richer reading experience but can recall what they have read for longer periods of time.

The students were asked to close their eyes and listen to the story, without looking at the pictures. This allowed them to practice "visualizing" or making mental pictures of the story in their minds.

Congratulations to another one of our students for flying to India this week!

Writing Workshop

The students started writing an elaborative piece about their own imaginary monster based on the book "I Need My Monster" that we read last week. First they were asked to draw the monster that lives under their bed. Based on their pictures, the students filled in a planning page to organize their ideas and write descriptive words about their monster. After completing the graphic organizer the students began to write their paragraphs describing their imaginative monster. Their paragraphs will be completed next week.

If you are interested in the story, please click on the link below to watch a short film based on the book "I Need My Monster."

I Need My Monster

Word Study

This week the students reviewed the 20 high frequency words that we've already covered. As part of the review, they wrote sentences using the words and put their list into alphabetical order. The students wrote their Word Wall Word Review test on Thursday.

Sharing - "Author's Chair"

Each day our Writer's Workshop ends with sharing in the "Author's Chair". This usually takes about 5 minutes where the students are able to share their writing with the class. During this time the "audience" is asked to share what is called "TAG": TAG stands for - Tell one thing you liked about the writing, Ask one question, and Give one suggestion.

The students were excited to share their journal entries with the class.

Math

This week in math we covered Patterns in Charts. The students identified and described number patterns in hundreds charts and in calendars. They used the patterns seen on hundreds charts to skip count forwards and backwards by 5s starting at any number within 1000.

Social Studies

In social studies we continued to work on our mapping unit. The students learned about map keys, map scales and landforms. A landform is a feature on the Earth's surface that is part of the terrain, such as mountains, plateaus, plains, valleys, rivers and lakes.

Bus Safety

On Wednesday our class participated in our annual Bus Safety presentation with 3B.  They had a great time playing a Jeopardy game to test their Bus Safety Knowledge!

We celebrated a friends birthday from 3A on October 18th. Thank you so much for bringing Tim Bits to share with the class!

 Fred Penner Field Trip

The students had a wonderful time at the Fred Penner concert on Thursday. Thank you to Mrs. Stanski for organizing our trip and for teaching many of Fred Penner's songs to the students prior to the concert. Also, thanks so much to Mrs. Mirau for volunteering your time and joining us on Thursday!

Have a super weekend everyone!