10/15

It has been great to connect with all of you at Open House and during conferences these past few weeks!

Book Orders
I sent out book orders a couple of weeks ago, and forgot to put a due date, and our class code.

Book orders are due by next Friday, 10/25. Our class code is W4BC2.

Homework
No spelling this week (10/14) due to no school on Friday. In addition, starting next week I'd like to try sending a Reading Log that is only for 1 week. For those students who read before bed, they can fill out the Reading Log in the morning, and put their best approximation for time spent reading.

Reader's Workshop
In Reader's Workshop students are consistently reading for 30 minutes each day. Students have also begun writing a journal response daily after independent reading time. Our recent mini lessons have been focusing on deepening these journal responses, not only reporting back what happened in their story, but connecting their own thinking to what is happening in their book.

I have also just begun administering the Fall Benchmark Reading assessment. I will be in touch with families individually as I finish each students testing.

Writer's Workshop
In Writer's Workshop everyone has chosen a seed idea and begun writing their first draft of a personal narrative. We've worked on the difference between writing like a news reporter and writing like a storyteller; this difference is hard to nail down in practice for 3rd and 4th graders! In the next couple of weeks, students will work to revise their writing, working with different leads, finding ways to make their story more interesting when it lags, and finding ways to elaborate and stretch out the best parts.

Math
Last week 3rd graders learned about division by connecting it to multiplication with a missing factor, something they've already been exposed to. Division contexts with equal groups can look two different ways; we might need to find out how many items are in each group (this looks like sharing out equally to a known number of groups), or how many groups we can make (this looks like making multiple copies of something until we hit a known total. While both contexts would be represented by the same division expression, the model and strategies kids use will look different.

Theme
We have begun our Geology unit in science. Students have been learning about tectonic plates, and how the earth has changed (and continues to change!) due to the movement of tectonic plates. We have also been learning about the rock cycle, and how different kinds of rock are formed. We will be going on a field trip to Rock of Ages and Hope Cemetery in Barre next Wednesday to learn more about granite.