3rd Grade Week 2

Before getting to the blog n vlog I would like to do a shout out to all the parents who have donated money, tissues, clorox wipes, writing utensil bags and hand sanitizer.  As this early cold season rolls around we are seeing a lot of sniffles and these items have helped me get started.  Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Another fantastic week is gone.  Days are too short.  Probably not for the kids, but for me.  First, here is the vlog of some of the fun we had.

Insects, insect, insect.  I have created an atmosphere of bug hunting that is nearly insane.  I have kids and now even some parents and teachers adding to our bug wall.  The video shows some of our favorite insects that have been collected.  I have now added spiders to the list of critters I don't want.  A near scary story.  I had some kids find a black widow and they loved playing with it.  Gave me a scare.  Also, trying to pin up a spider is difficult unless it has some size to it, like the tarantula that was brought in.  Today a student brought in a family of moths.  When opening up the container a horrible stench came out, so I will probably end up tossing that.  I did get a compliment from a parent stating that before my class, his daughter was afraid of insect and now loves to catch them.  Sweet.

This week we hit hard subtraction.  There are some students who are still struggling with borrowing numbers.  Working with your student on these could be a good benefit.

We also hit prefixes and had students sort prefixes with their root words.

Hopefully all of your students came home excited about sound and you got to listen to them play their homemade kazoo.  You are welcome.  

This coming week students will have a 5 question quiz on both prefixes and suffixes.  Suffixes are going to be worked on this week.

Favorite story of the week:  We are reading the book Shiloh as a class.  There was a reference made to chewing tobacco so I stopped to see if they know what tobacco was.  One of may students said that her dad loves tobacco and uses it to cook with often.  This was great because when I talked to her dad, he made sure that tabasco was what they actually cook with.  Love teaching these kids.  They all have pretty good sense of humors.

This coming weeks reading log and homework will now be due on Fridays.  This was a suggestion made by a parent, and I thought it was a very valid one, so I will pass out homework on Fridays now and will collect if Fridays.  

On FamilyLink I added a column for your child's AR goal completion and DMS scores.  Neither one of these are actual grades, but put out there so that you know how they are doing.  AR is one of the reading programs used to build fluency and DMS stands for daily math skills, which are designed to build fluency and accuracy in their basic math facts area. If they are below a B- on either of these they are struggling passing their AR and DMS timed tests and could use more reading time at home or a little help with their basic math facts like addition and subtraction.

It has been a great week.  Thanks for all of your support.