Walk-a-thon

What a great time was had at the walk-a-thon this week!  We were blessed with wonderful weather that day and had a fun time running the track and enjoying the many stations that were placed around it.  Thank you to all of you who donated to this event as well as to all of you who came out and supported us as we ran.

Our great looking group!

All of the Pine Ridge 3rd Graders

What's happening in 3rd Grade:

Reading:  We focused this week on using strategies to sound out words we don't know as well as retelling our stories using a retell rope.  Reading Workshop is quickly becoming a favorite time for many of the kids.  I am amazed at how focused the students are during this time.  I just love to watch them get into their books!

Writing: This week we wrote our rough drafts for our personal narratives.  We have added extra details as we read our stories to a partner and we are ready to start editing.  The students are writing for longer time frames each day and I am proud of how hard they are working!

Math:  This week we added the 3's and 4's to our multiplication and division facts.  We also learned about the distributive property where 5x8 would be the same thing as (5x3)+(5x5).  This is a tough concept so we drew a lot of pictures to help us understand what we were doing.  The students remained positive and as long as we read the problems slowly and draw pictures, we do just fine.

Bible:  This week we learned how to use the table of contents in our Bibles as well as how to find a chapter and verse.  We then started finding some favorite verses in the Bible and writing them out onto a "favorite verse" ring.  We will be adding to this ring all year long.  The kids were really excited about learning how to "use" their Bibles and I just love their enthusiasm for the Word.

Science: We used our prior knowledge about particle size of earth materials and every student created their own brick!  This was a very fun experiment and the kids are excited to return to school next week to see how their brick has dried up.

Upcoming events:

• No school September 28
• No spelling next week due to the shorter week.
• Reading Minutes will be due on Tuesday.
• Psalm 8 due on Tuesday, September 29.  If your child wants to say it to me on Tuesday that is fine.  Otherwise, record the helps needed and return the pink form.  If memorization is tough but your child can tell you what the Psalm means to them, then let me know that instead.
• Grandparents day is October 8

Have a great weekend!

Lynae

Swimming Week

This week we have been busy swimming and taking the Discovery test.  Your children are doing an AWESOME job in swimming lessons and also did their best work on the Discovery tests.  You have every reason to be incredibly proud of them.  Those two items took up quite a bit of time for us in 3rd grade and so our week was not a normal one.  Yet, there was so much learning that occurred.  This week I am going to give you the top 3 things that struck me as fabulous in 3rd grade.

1.  Our rocks are done polishing!  The day we took the rocks out of the polishers was a big day for our class.  We talked a lot about how God is our ROCK and his desire is for us to SHINE for him each and every day, just like a perfectly polished rock.  We placed our rocks on a platter and each morning since every child has chosen a new rock.  As we pray, each child prays a prayer of thanksgiving and then adds their rock into the center bowl.  We have watched the level of rocks (blessings!) increase and overflow!  No, our eyes are not always closed during these prayers, but what a great way to see God's blessings being poured out to us!

2.  Every child has chosen a story to focus on for the personal narrative unit in Writing.  Your child came home today with a copy of his/her timeline about the story he/she wants to write about.  This weekend I have told the class that they need to simply tell that story to as many people as they can.  The more they share their story, the more details they will hopefully remember and they can add those details later to their writing.   If your child is telling you about an event that you shared with them, try to give him/her a few extra details as well.  :) Remember, this is a "seed story" or a small moment.  It is not about the whole day at the amusement park but rather what it was like waiting in line for that favorite ride.

3.  Spelling word work began this week and the students did a wonderful job!  We have been busy learning the procedures that go along with this spelling program and also how to sort our words into categories.  Hopefully your child has been able to explain this to you each evening at home as well.  If you have questions, always feel free to contact me.

Upcoming Events:

• Reading minutes are due Monday.  
• Spelling word work will come home Monday.  Tests are always given on Friday.
• Psalm 8 will be due September 29.
• Swimming lessons continue this week with the exception of Wednesday.  Feel free to come watch from 12:40-1:20 at the Aquatic Center.
• Walk-a-thon is this Wednesday from 1:00-2:15 at the High School track.
• No School on September 28 due to Staff Development
• Grandparents day is October 8.

Blessings!

Lynae

What a great week in 3rd grade!  All of the boys and girls are gaining confidence in the classroom and are becoming great friends with each other.  I am so proud of how they pray for each other each day.  We begin our day by sitting in a circle and doing a round robin prayer.  EVERY child is praying and often it is for the needs of others.  There is simply no better way to start the day!

Upcoming dates:

• Swimming lessons run from September 14-25.  We will be at the pool from 12:35-1:20 each day.
• School pictures will be on September 18.  Order forms for pictures and the yearbook went home today.  
• Homework folders will begin on Monday, September 14 along with reading minutes and spelling word work.  
• We will be taking the Discovery Test next week.  I plan on giving the Reading portion on Tuesday morning and the Math portion on Thursday.  Please make sure your child eats a good breakfast that morning and is ready to go.
• Walk-a-thon is September 23.  The students brought home information about this event this week.
• Book order forms went home today.  Simply click on the red Scholastic icon on the right of the blog if you would like to order any books.  I will submit the order on September 18.
• No School September 28 for Staff Development.

What we have been doing in 3rd Grade:

Bible:  We finished our unit on the book of Ephesians this week.  As we reviewed what we learned we created an Ephesians book to share with our families.  Your child brought this book home in their Friday folders and should be able to review the unit with you.  We will take a small assessment on this on Monday.  We have also been working at memorizing Psalm 8 as a class.  I will send home a copy of our Bible memory next week Monday in the homework folders so you can study at home with your child.

Math:  We looked at many story problems this week involving multiplication and division.  We are learning to read SLOWLY so we can figure out exactly what mathematical operation we need to use.  Many students are drawing pictures to help them solve the problem and that is great!  We added the 10's and 9's to our multiplication facts this week.

Science:  We are almost done with our rock tumbling and hopefully polished rocks will be coming home next week!  In class we did several experiments that taught us about particle size with different earth materials as well as how water reacts to different particle sizes.  A special thanks to the Bruxvoort family for providing the class with yummy ROCK candy on Friday!

Reading:  I love watching your children read.  Everyone finds a comfy spot in the room and gets right to work!  This week we focused on asking ourselves questions about our story as we read, making predictions, and also inferencing.  The students worked so hard and I am very proud of them.

Writing:  Our stamina is increasing in Writing every single day.  The students are continuing to try out different small moments (seed stories) that they may want to write about for a personal narrative.  We focused this week on adding details to our writing as we work as well as circling words that may be spelled incorrectly.  The favorite part of writing comes when a couple friends get to share what they wrote that day!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Lynae

Second week in!

We made it through a hot week of school.  I keep telling the class that we are spoiled to have air conditioning in our classroom and they believe me every time we share it with another class.  We had a few afternoons with Mrs. DeZwaan's third graders joining us for Bible and Science.  It was a full classroom but we all kept cool!

Everyone is adjusting beautifully to Pine Ridge.  We are settling into a nice routine and our learning pace is starting to pick up.  This week I started assessing students on their reading and spelling levels.  We also had a blast learning about rocks, reading each day out of our good fit books, going to the library for the first time, writing personal narratives, and learning about the armor of God.  Here is a quick look at our week in pictures. (Many more are on smugmug.)

The class LOVES reading!  We focused on the story elements this week of characters, setting, events, problems and solutions.  We are practicing these elements all together as I read the book The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and then the students practice the strategies taught in their good fit books.

We are working at thinking of many different stories for our personal narratives in writing.  Soon we will choose a story that we have a lot of details we can write about.  This week we brainstormed different people and places.

We continued to look at the book of Ephesians in Bible.  We had a great lesson on the armor of God and the importance of putting that armor on every day.  Look at what happens when we keep on the armor as we go through our day and also what happens when we take it off.  The kids loved this visual lesson and we had a great discussion about how God desires for us to walk closely with Him each day.  To do this well, we need to start our day getting ready with Him.  God desires the best for us and wants us to STAND!

In Science we continued to study rocks.  We learned that rocks are made of minerals and also got our rock polishers up and running.  This is a favorite part of the day for many students!

In Math we continue to learn about multiplication and how we make equal groups.  We are drawing a lot of pictures and using manipulatives to help us understand this concept.  We also started to see how multiplication and division are related this week.  We focused specifically on multiplication and division of 5's and 2's.

Upcoming Dates:

• No School Friday, September 4 or Monday, September 7.  Labor Day break.  
• I have created a sign-up genius at the top of this blog for volunteering to help with lunch.  These opportunities are on Wednesdays and are from 11:55-12:20.
• We use our whiteboards and markers every day in Math.  Several students could use a whiteboard eraser as well.  An old sock works great for this!
• Swimming Lessons are September 14-25.  We will be at the pool from 12:35-1:20 each day.
• Homework folders will start coming home the week of September 14.  We will begin reading minutes and Spelling word work that week as well.  
• Walk-a-thon is Wednesday, September 23.  
• No School on Monday, September 28 for a staff development day.

Have a great long weekend!

Lynae

A Great first week!

It was a great first week!  We are growing as a classroom community and learning what it means to respect and care for one another.  I am having so much fun teaching your children!  I have included a few photos that I took this week but you will always be able to find more pictures on the smugmug site.  (There is a link at the top of this blog that will take you directly to my smugmug page.)

Decorating our Writing notebooks

Getting into our good fit books

Choosing Good fit books!  Fun!

Learning how to work together as a team

Here is a look at what we did this week!

Math:  This week we began multiplication with 5's.  To teach this concept, your child learned that multiplication is really one long addition problem.  For instance, your child should be able to tell you that 4x5 is the same is 5+5+5+5.  All students learned how to draw a picture to show each multiplication problem that they are working on.  We call these drawings equal share drawings as multiplication can be used to represent equal groups.  This can be a tough concept to start 3rd grade with and I am so proud of how hard the class has worked this week!

Science:  We have begun our first Science unit called "Earth and Me".  In this unit your child will learn about rocks and minerals, different earth materials, land and resource use, erosion, landslides, earthquakes, and volcanoes.  We began our unit by having every child choose a rock and then write a descriptive paragraph about the rock they had chosen.  We then sat in a circle and placed our rocks in the center.  The kids took turns reading their descriptions of their rocks and having their friends guess which rock was theirs.  This was a very fun activity and all of the students were very brave in reading their writing to their classmates.  

Bible:  Our first unit in Bible is focused on the book of Ephesians.  We learned that the author of this book is Paul and that the book of Ephesians was actually a letter sent to the church in Ephesus.  (The kids thought it was really cool that a book of the bible was actually a letter instead!).  I was completely amazed this week at the amount of knowledge your children had about Paul.  What an amazing thing to witness the sheer joy that comes from your kids as they recount so many wonderful facts from the bible!!  We focused specifically this week on the gift of salvation.  We made salvation hearts (hanging up in the hallway) and as we did we talked about how we can not save ourselves; but God has made a way for us!  We had a wonderful class discussion about salvation, Jesus' death and resurrection, and the promise of forgiveness.  

Reading:  This week we have talked about what reading is going to look like in 3rd grade and what we each need to be successful readers.  We also set goals for what we each want to accomplish this year as readers. On Thursday the children went book shopping and picked out their first "good fit" book they will be reading.  We also learned about a "FIVE FINGER TEST" to see if our book is just right for us.  The class has begun reading from their good fit books in class, but I will not send these home until the week of September 14 as I simply want to get your children comfortable to the workshop routine. 

Writing:  The class did a writing sample for me this week on a personal narrative of something that they did this summer so I could see where the class was as writers.  I was amazed at how many of them just wanted to keep on writing when I told them to stop!  We also had a lot of fun decorating our Writing notebooks on Friday morning.  Next week we will begin our first writing unit on personal narratives and continue to work on writing procedures in the classroom.  

Upcoming dates:

• No School on Friday, September 4 or Monday, September 7 for Labor Day recess. 
• If you have not returned your child's HC baton, please do so by September 2.
• Swimming forms need to be signed and returned in order for your child to participate in swimming lessons.  Our class is scheduled to receive lessons on September 14-25.  We will be at the Holland Aquatic Center from 12:30-1:30 each day.  
• Wednesday, September 2, we will be having Convocation at the High School Gymnasium.  You are welcoming to join us as we celebrate the beginning of another school year as a collective student body.  Our class will be walking to the High School that morning for this event.
• Interested in covering Writing notebooks next week for the class?  If so, send me an email.  I would love any extra help.  :)
• September 18- Picture Day (Life Touch)
• September 23- Walk-a-thon in the afternoon

Have a wonderful weekend!

Lynae

First Day!

We had a great first day at Pine Ridge!  Isn't this a great looking group?!?  There was a lot of excitement in the air as we met new friends and also reconnected with ones from last year.  Our first few weeks are going to involve a lot of procedures and getting comfortable in a new building.  I am so humbled to be able to walk along side of each of you as we teach these precious children more about Jesus and HIS love for them. It is going to be a wonderful year.

Our first day was full of activity.  In the morning the students experienced their first chapel at Pine Ridge, met new friends in a scavenger hunt, learned a lot of new procedures and went to Art.  We had a taste of a Reading and Bible lesson in the afternoon.  The students are settling in nicely and are doing a fabulous job!

A few reminders for this week:

• This Wednesday, September 2, is Parent Night at Pine Ridge.  I will be going over classroom information from 7:00-7:30 in the classroom.  If you are not able to attend simply send me an email and I will be sure to send the information home with your child in their Friday folder.  Mr. Howell will also go over general Pine Ridge information from 7:35-8:00 followed by the 5th and 6th grade teachers presenting classroom information from 8:00-8:30.  This is a great opportunity to learn more about your child's school day and get involved at Pine Ridge.  I hope you can make it!
• We will be decorating our writers notebooks on Friday morning.  Please send in any photos, stickers, paper, etc. that your child may want to make their notebook special for them. 
• Any donations to our classroom of Kleenex or hand sanitizer is always greatly appreciated.  We go through these items very quickly!  

Thank you for your prayers this year.  I can't wait for tomorrow!

Lynae Stielstra