January 19, 2018

Upcoming Dates/Reminders:

• Today- 2nd quarter ended.  Report cards are now scheduled to go home on Friday, February 2.
• Reading minutes due Monday.
• Wacky Wednesdays are back!  January 24 is Team Spirit Day, January 31 is Pajama Day, and February 7 is Neon Day.
• January 24 (Wednesday):  The 4th graders have created goods for market day.  We will go shopping as a 3rd grade class.  Your child is welcome to bring 5-7 dollars to school on this day to shop with along with a plastic bag to carry their goodies home in.
• MAP testing:  We took the language and reading portion of the test this past week.  I will give the math portion on Wednesday, January 24.

Curriculum Highlights:
Bible:  This week we continued reading about Joseph ruling in Egypt and saw his brothers arrive to buy grain.  We read about the brothers visits and how Joseph wanted to see if their hearts had changed.  We talked about how God changes our hearts when we let Him in.  We also continue to work at Psalm 1.

Performing a reader's theatre about Joseph

Math:  We have been rounding to the nearest hundred and tens place within our story problems.  We have also begun multi digit addition up to the thousands place.  Students need to "prove" their work with a proof drawing right now to explain how they found their answer.  This takes time, but explains the process of addition well.


Science:  Have you heard all about our beetles and crayfish?!?  This week we were busy building them a habitat and then observing these creatures through books, videos, and using our eyes!  We will be focusing on habitats, physical characteristics, behaviors, and defenses of these animals as we make our observations.

Literacy:  We are so busy in our nonfiction unit.  This week we began finding the main idea sentence in paragraphs as well as the supporting details.  This is tough work as we put these sentences into our own words (paraphrasing).  I am impressed by the students hard work ethic.  These reading lessons will lead into a nonfiction writing unit coming up.

We even had a day where some piglets came to visit us!

Have a wonderful weekend!
Lynae

January 12, 2018

Upcoming Events/Reminders:

• Reading minutes are due on Monday.
• Wacky Wednesdays are back! January 17 is Hat day, January 24 is Team Spirit Day, January 31 is Pajama Day, and February 7 is Neon Day.  
• January 19 (Friday)- 2nd quarter ends
• January 26 (Friday)- Report cards go home
• January 16-18- I will be giving the MAP test to your child in the mornings.  Please make sure your child is on time and ready to go.  
• A huge THANK YOU to all of you who help so faithfully by being library volunteers, lunch helpers, or simply supplying items like Kleenex or Clorox wipes for the classroom.  I appreciate you all so much.  

Curriculum Hightlights:
Bible:  This group has such a love for the word and reading scripture from their Bibles!  We have been reading about Joseph and how his brothers sold him into slavery.  We have looked at the dreams of Joseph, Pharaoh, and of the cupbearer and baker.  The students have discussed how God is always with Joseph and they see His faithfulness.  Most days the kids don't want to quit our Bible lesson and we end up reading a bit more than planned.  I love their hearts.
We are also working at memorizing Psalm 1.

Literacy:  We have begun nonfiction in reading.  This week we looked at the different text features in nonfiction text, identified them in books are are currently reading, and learned how to paraphrase information.  These are really big concepts and we will be practicing this for a bit as we prepare to write our own nonfiction book.
In Writing we published our personal essays by typing them.  You should be receiving an email from your child with the finished product.  I was impressed at how well the kids did with stating their opinion and then providing evidence to support their thoughts.

Identifying text features in nonfiction books

Paraphrasing sections of a nonfiction article

Math:  Tests from our previous unit came home today.  We have begun our new unit dealing with  place value, rounding to the nearest hundred and tens place, and multi digit addition and subtraction.  This week we worked with a lot of manipulatives to help us understand the concepts of place value up the the thousands place as well as how to round numbers.

Science:  We have begun a new unit called Changes in Motion.  This week we defined motion and talked about motion words, direction words, and speed words by doing several different experiments.  We also did an experiment dealing with physical motion verses forced motion.  This is a fun unit with a lot of hands on activities and the kids are loving it!

Exploring motion with describing words of speed and distance.

MUSIC NOTE FROM MRS. BOER - This week your child came home with a BLUE FOLDER with a homework page in it. The expectation is that the BLUE FOLDER go back and forth between school and home along with your child's recorder. Eventually it will be holding recorder music for your child to practice. When your child brings it back on music class days, they will receive a sticker to put on it as a way to keep track of how often they remember to bring their folder and recorder to school. The homework page should be completed by the next class session.

Have a great weekend!
Lynae

December 22

Enjoy the photos of everything we did this week in 3rd grade.  I look forward to seeing your children again on January 8.

Creating Michigan Geography Books

Hunting for places in Michigan

Starting our day in prayer for a friend

Crafts at the Christmas Party

So many fun games to play at the Christmas party!

Playing games at the middle school

December 15

Upcoming Dates/Reminders:

• Next week we will not have word work due to the many Christmas activities.  I will be spending time next week reassessing your children in spelling.  
• We will still complete Math homework (due Friday). 
• I will send reading minutes this coming week but only 75 minutes are due.  I will have the kids turn this in on Friday (Dec. 22) so that you do not need to keep track of any papers over Christmas break.  
• December 20 (Wednesday)- Positive options will come for our chapel (10:20-10:45) and receive the baby items that we have gathered for them.  Our class has collected 71 items so far.  Thank you for your generosity!
• December 20 (Wednesday)- Our class will be reading Christmas stories with the 6th graders.  Please have your child bring in his/her favorite Christmas book to partner read with a friend!
• December 21 (Thursday)- We will have our class Christmas party in the afternoon from 2:15-3:00.  Thank you to Peggy Gorno, Kerri DeVries, Sara Knoester, and Sue Stock for planning this event for the kids.  We could use two more volunteers for the games, so if you would like to attend please send me an email and let me know.  
• December 22 (Friday)- We will be at the middle school from 8:45-10:30 or so to play math games that the 7th graders have created!  
• December 23-January 7- Christmas Break
• January 8 (Monday)- Class resumes
• Gingerbread house board- If your child is done with their gingerbread house, will you please return the board to school?  We will reuse these again next year.

Curriculum Highlights:

Bible:  Luke 2:6-20 is due on Friday, December 22.  We have been practicing in class each day and many students have this memorized.  I will have students say it to me by Friday if they have not turned in their slip from home.  In class we continue to study Jacob and his marriages to Leah and Rachel.  This week we talked about how Jacob deceived others but we also saw how he was deceived by Laban.  Through it all we talk about how God uses those we least expect to bring forth His salvation plan.

Math:  We have wrapped up studying elapsed time and taken this portion of our math test.  We have now begun reading and creating pictographs and bar graphs with multi-digit numbers.  My goal is to wrap up this unit next week.  

Literacy:  We are reading Caleb's Story in class and enjoying a whole group book discussion.  Each student has also written the "evidence" of his/her personal essay by creating two examples to support the big idea.  We also crafted an introduction and conclusion this week.  This is a tough concept but everyone is doing a really nice job!  Next week we will edit our work and then begin our final copies. 

Social Studies:  We have wrapped up our geography of Michigan unit by studying different regions in Michigan.  Next week we will put the final touches on our Michigan books that we created on our ipads.  

Have a wonderful weekend!

Lynae