Academic Updates: Our final full week has come to a close and we’ve had a busy and exciting time. We had a fantastic field trip to the Montshire Museum on Tuesday, where we were able to participate in many different interactive exhibits, including bubbles, air works, and puzzle workshops! We had such a great time exploring and learning about different types of science through new perspectives We were also able to dip our feet in the water exhibits, and walk through some of the museum’s nature trails. The pictures will be up soon! Thank you so much to the parents who chaperoned this fun-filled trip! Other activities the third graders participated in this week were Memory book signing, homeroom kickball, and 3rd-5th grade Field Day on Thursday. The students enjoyed their time outside, moving to different stations including “Infection” Tag Game, Hopscotch/ Jump Rope Obstacle Courses, Sponge Races, and a Rest Stop Station where the students could enjoy snacks and refreshments while playing a “cool down” game like supersize Chess and Jenga! We all had a great time! Finally, we participated in Step Up Day on Friday, where the students had the opportunity to meet their next year’s teachers, and ask any questions they might have about the upcoming school year. This week has been bittersweet, having great conversations around our favorite things to do together, and our favorite memories from the year! ** I hope you all have a fantastic summer! Thank you for a wonderful year! Reminders & Updates: - Monday, June 18th- Last Day of School- Noon Dismissal! 3rd grade door decorating competitions! we had wolverine as our superman theme!montshire museum field trip!field day pictures!
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Academic Updates: We did it! We finished all of the testing for the year! I know the third graders are very relieved about this! J They should be very proud of themselves! They received a few extra privileges because of this, including some “choice time” and extra outside play time. During ELA/ Social Studies time, the students have focused on learning about the presidents, and we have also moved into poetry. The third graders practiced writing a “Cinquain poem” about something we are all looking forward too, summer vacation! The next step, later in the week was to research a U.S. President, and write a poem about him. Next week we will move into learning briefly about space and writing some poetry about the outdoors. Spirit week has been a great success, with some fantastically creative outfits, especially on our “future self” and “fashion disaster” days! We also earned the privilege as a school to have a picnic lunch in the cafeteria together, which was a nice way to end the week. ** Please make sure to send your child in with either $7.50 in cash or a check made out to Hartland Elementary School by Monday, June 11th for our field trip to the Montshire Museum on Tuesday, June 12th. Upcoming Events & Reminders:
The third graders did a fantastic job on their spanish skits!Academic Updates: Wow! What a fun- filled and busy week we’ve had! The students are definitely excited for our end of year celebrations and the summer vacation ahead. We’ve had some great learning activities this week among our end of year assessments and reading benchmarks. The students have completed their Immigration and Ellis Island learning with their end of unit projects. (I’m in the process of uploading videos). On Friday the third graders had the privilege to watch the movie ‘An American Tail’ about a mouse coming from Russia to America for the first time, passing through Ellis Island, and all the challenges he faces when arriving in his new country. Other learning experiences we’ve had incorporate a variety of Social Studies and Science content areas including fossils, presidents, and government. Next week we will move into learning about space and poetry. We have many exciting end-of-year activities to look forward to! ** Please let me know if you’d like to be a chaperone for our field trip to the Montshire! ** If your child has an overdue library book, please make sure it is brought in as soon as possible! Feel free to email me if you’d like to check about any books. Reminders & Upcoming Events:
H.E.S. SPIRIT WEEK: June 4th- 8th:
Monday- Hat Day! Tuesday- Fashion Disaster! Wednesday- Multiplicity Day! Thursday- Dress as your future self day! Friday- Pajama Day! Academic Update: During Social Studies, the students have been busy learning about Ellis Island and the challenges people went through coming from another country to America, where they didn’t understand the language and there were many inspections and obstacles they had to get through in order to make it officially into America. The third graders made fantastic presentations to teach the rest of the class about the information they read in their Ellis Island booklets. They worked very hard coming up with unique and creative ways to present this information, either through visuals and props, skits, or posters. The videos will be on our classroom website later this week. During ELA, we have been learning about prefixes and suffixes to help us decode more difficult multi-syllable words. We’ve also practiced spelling skills, continued our reading strategies, and most recently started to pick our favorite writing pieces from all three categories (Narrative, Opinion, and Information writing), to pass on to next year’s teacher! *We have many events and celebrations to look forward to, as you can see below: Upcoming Events and Reminders:
Academic Updates:
Whew! We made it through our first week of SBAC!! The students did a fantastic job staying focused during this time. They earned extra outside time multiple times this week, and luckily the weather cooperated and we had beautiful sunny days! In between testing, we were able to get some of our learning time in. On Monday the students proved to be excellent “Root Word Detectives!” They were able to decipher meanings to many common root words like “photos, graph, tele, metron, and tropos!” We spoke about how helpful it will be in our lives to know the most common Greek and Latin root words because it can help us understand more difficult words much easier. We realized that so many words come from these “roots.” We also had time to “ketchup” on a few writing pieces that we hadn’t completed the week before and get more read aloud time for our You Can’t Eat Your Chicken Pox Amber Brown book. The third graders have had more opportunities for free writing time and many have chosen to create chapter books. I’ve noticed well-developed characters and plots. The students are using their writing skills to develop entertaining books for the grade! During Social Studies, the students worked on a “jigsaw” reading activity to present information from the book Ellis Island by Elaine Landa in groups. They practiced their highlighting and presentation skills to the rest of the class. This was a great challenge! 3M made it to the top of their token jar and received the privilege for more outside time! We did this on Friday, to end a busy week on positive note! Upcoming events & Reminders:
Academic Updates:
What strange weather we’ve had lately! It finally feels like Spring! We’ve had many opportunities this week to take advantage of the beautiful weather, with “out and backs” for our brain breaks, to give the students the opportunity to run and get some of their extra energy out. The students have also participated in numerous Green Up Day activities during Science, and read alouds about the environment during ELA. On Wednesday, Mrs. White came in to read Just A Dream by Chris Van Allsburg, about a boy who isn’t aware of how to help his environment, but then falls asleep and many strange things begin to happen to him. His time- traveling bed takes Walter into the future to show him the negative environmental impact humans can have on our Earth if we’re not careful. There was a fantastic discussion based on this story afterward, with many great ideas on how we can help. On Friday, we continued this discussion, and came up with a list of what we’d like to focus on during our Friday afternoons to help the environment. Mrs. White also gave the students stickers and fun activity packets to work on. This was also our final week of SBAC practice activities. The students seem to feel more comfortable using the program and the many literacy skills we’ve practiced throughout the past few weeks. The actual assessment starts next Tuesday morning. Remember to get a good night sleep and eat a healthy breakfast to get your minds ready to take the SBAC each day. Try not to stress about it and remember to try your best! Upcoming Events and Reminders:
Academic Updates: I hope you all had a great April break and were able to spend some time with family and friends. This week we’ve been working our way back into our usual academic routines. We’ve also added a bit more SBAC practice throughout the week so that the students feel ready for our full SBAC assessment in two weeks. Mrs. White has been very helpful, coming into the third grade classrooms during ELA time to have discussions around test taking tips, and comprehension tricks. The students worked well together and were able to create their first Performance Task writing piece about astronauts. They were then able to watch a NASA video about the life of an astronaut. We also had some time to create our Opinion Writing letters to Ms. Meberg about if they could have any pet in the world for the classroom, what would it be and why. We had some very persuasive writers working to convince me that we should have a pet llama or manatee. So creative! 3M earned two privileges from before break, and were able to participate in some Arts and Crafts work, including some origami animal creations. Next week we will move into talking more about immigration in general, the role Ellis Island played in our country’s history, and how it affects us today. Keep up the hard work everyone! Upcoming events & Reminders:
Academic Updates: This week was a busy Health Week, with many visitors, activities, privileges, and tasty treats, ending with the movie ‘Wonder!’ The students started the week off by creating a yogurt and granola breakfast for themselves. We also had another author visitor this week, Sarah Stewart Taylor, of the book series Expeditioners. She even gave us a sneak-peak of her next book, that hasn’t even been published yet! This week we also had Chelsea from the Upper Valley W.I.S.E. program visit to talk to the class about our feelings and strategies to help regulate strong emotions. We did this through a fun fortune teller exercise, which you can see pictures of on the classroom web page. During ELA, we read the first part of Molly’s Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen, about a third grader from Russia trying to fit in with her school in America. We had some great discussions about immigration and continued our discussion on European Settlers as well. During this time we went over vocabulary. We also used our “inferring” skills during our SBAC practice with Mrs. White. The students did an excellent job with this! We will keep practicing our reading comprehension skills to get ready for early May. Finally, during Social Studies/ Forest Friday, we learned about why the same type of plant can be found on different continents. We even made makeshift “falling seeds” to test out our various theories, trying not to land on the ‘zone of darkness!’ Upcoming events & Reminders:
Academic Updates: We had a fun-filled week, with privileges and new learning! We completed our first Amber Brown book, and have started our second one in the series, You Can’t Eat Your Chicken Pox Amber Brown. The students seem to really enjoy these books, and in some ways can relate to the problems the third grader faces. We’ve had some fantastic discussions around character development, and the students were able to create “Postcards” for Amber’s best friend Justin who moved away in the story. They did an excellent job thinking from Amber’s perspective, adding details from the text and asking believable questions related to her personality. Mid- week, 3M celebrated their full token jar privilege with a fort and pajama day. There are some great pictures on our classroom webpage of students creating their forts and reading in them. The students have been working hard in both classes, and receiving many golden Wild Cards for all of the empathetic things they do, and the extra kind choices they make with peers. During Reading we have been using the program ‘Readworks’ to practice our reading comprehension skills. We are practicing more and more skills to get us ready for SBAC, and will begin to delve into the specific program activities with Mrs. White, Hartland’s reading specialist. We also have Health week starting on Monday! ** Please send your child in with the permission slip for ‘Wonder’ for Disability Awareness Day on Friday, (otherwise, they will watch the other movie, a Dolphin Tale) Upcoming events & Reminders:
** If you would send your child in with extra headphones, it would be greatly appreciated, as we are missing many from our classroom set. Disability Awareness Week/ Health Week:
** feel free to join in and wear these colors next week! Monday - Green Tuesday - Orange Wednesday - Red Thursday - Purple Friday - (Wildcat) Blue Academic Updates:
This week we started our European Settlers Unit, with a focus on what it must have been like for not only the settlers to arrive on new land, but also for the Native Americans to encounter these people without knowing who they were or what they wanted. The students watched a video clip about their arrival and the reactions of both sides. They then wrote a diary entry as if they were either a Native American or European Settler, keeping in mind the terminology they might use, how they may feel, and what they may be confused about. The students were so creative and many got really into this activity! During Reading, we continued our Amber Brown is not a Crayon and are about to start the next book in the series, Don’t eat your Chicken Pox Amber Brown. We discussed the importance of noticing character patterns, like how they interact with others. The third graders are encouraged to start reading a series of their own, and to take note of how the main characters change throughout each book. Some students have decided to create their own book series, based on other books they’ve read like Goosebumps! I can’t wait to see what they come up with! We also had many events this week, from The Ned Show and the author visit, to the Wizard of Oz at the end of the week. It’s been a busy few days! The students in 3M were able to make it to the top of their token jar this week as well, so they will have a privilege on Wednesday, April 4th! Keep up the great work everyone! Upcoming events & Reminders:
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June 2018
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