October 9 - 12

With Monday being a holiday we had a short, but very busy week in 3A.

Following is a snapshot of our week:

Student of the Week

Congratulations to our Student of the Week! She is a wonderful member of our team and a role model for her peers.

Reading Workshop

We worked on the comprehension reading strategy "visualization" using "Where the Wild Things Are" by Maurice Sendak 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. 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.

While the students listened to Where the Wild Things Are, I asked them to visualize the story without looking at the pictures. Then they were given two very detailed sentences to illustrate by drawing what they see in their mind. After illustrating the sentences, the students were allowed to see the actual pictures from the book. This was a fun activity to show the students how visualizing helps with comprehension when reading. 

Home Reading

Congratulations to the following students for making it to the first destination in our Amazing Race Reading Challenge!  They have read 600 minutes in our home reading program and were so excited to fly to India!

Writing Workshop

This week we continued to work on proper paragraph structure in our writing. The students were asked to write a descriptive paragraph about their pet rocks. They focused on writing proper topic, detail and concluding sentences.

They loved sharing their paragraphs during "authors chair."

The students used the chrome books to type up their paragraphs. The pet rocks, along with their descriptive paragraphs, will be on display in our hallway next week. Please feel free to come take a look!

Journal Writing

Your child was asked to share about his/her Thanksgiving Weekend during journal writing.

Back and Forth Journals

The students continue to work on turning point form notes about the week into complete sentences where writing in their Back and Forth journals. Please be sure to respond back to your child. They love reading your messages.

Word Study

The spelling pattern focused on this week was the short /e/.  Each day the students participated in a different activity, such as cut and sort, fill in the missing letter, and draw the meaning to reinforce the short /e/ spelling pattern.

Math

This week we began our  Number Sense and Place Value unit in math.  We covered the following curriculum goals:

•  identify the place value of digits in two- and three-digit numbers, and understand the value of the digits. 
• represent three-digit numbers with base ten materials. Students will write numbers represented by base ten blocks.
• understand how to represent numbers in expanded form and how to recognize a number written in expanded form.  

When the students are finished their work in math, they have been spending some time on Mathletics to reinforce the skills being taught in class.

Social Studies

We began our first unit in Social Studies this week on mapping.  I read the story "Me on the Map" by Joan Sweeney and we also discussed the differences between a map and a globe.

Art

Scream Blow Painting

This week our art project was inspired by the book "Monster Mama" written by Liz Rosenberg. The students began their "Monster Mama" portraits by drawing the screaming faces. They also coloured their faces with wax crayons to create a resist.  Next week the students will finish their art work by blow painting in the hair.  The "Scream Blow Paintings" will be on display in our hallway in time for Halloween.

When the pictures are finished they will look like this:

Have a great weekend everyone!