Our First Full Week: Full of Learning

We made it through our first full week in 3rd grade!  The students worked hard as we dove into 3rd grade academics.  Reading was a big focus this week.  We learned how to find 'Just Right' books by using the 5 finger test.  We also discussed the difference between real and fake reading and we practiced our real reading a lot!

Our strategy focus this week was on making predictions.  We now know the two most important aspects of being good predictors: 1. We need to make our predictions based on details in the story.  2. After making our predictions, we must read on to see if our predictions are correct.  We practiced making predictions with the book Those Shoes, which quickly became a favorite of many students.  We also used this story with our work on character traits this week.  Ask your child what trait they chose to describe Jeremy--and why they chose that trait.  As you can see, we fit a lot of reading into one week!

Here are some highlights from our other subjects:

In math we worked a lot on number sense.  We also worked on telling time.

• Name a number.  See if your child can tell you 10 less, 10 more, 100 less, and 100 more.  Want to really challenge your child?  Choose tricky numbers like 994.
• Your child should be able to tell you the time to the exact minute.  If you want to challenge your child, see if they can tell you what time it will be in 10 minutes, 30 minutes, and 1 hour.

In social studies we started our unit on geography.  We went on a simulated space trip and had to use geography to make it home.  

• Ask your child where we are right now--hemispheres, continent, country, state, and city.

We worked on nouns in grammar.  Students should be able to find the nouns in sentences and tell if they are common or proper.  

• Test your student with this sentence: My friends go to Carmel Elementary School, and they have fun.

Check out the 'Pictures' tab to see some photos from last week's team building challenge.  

Overall, it was a pretty good first full week.  I am excited to see what the coming year holds!  

First Week Fun

We had a great first week in 3rd grade!  In addition to learning about procedures and expectations of 3rd grade, we also learned about our classmates.  After reading the book The Matchbox Diary, we presented our own 'Paper Sack Diaries' so that we could get to know our new classmates better.  We also worked on our teamwork building skills so that we will be prepared for all of the collaborative work in the coming year.  If you are following our class on Twitter (@Grade3atCE) you saw some fun pictures from these team building activities--I'll be posting more to the blog later.  All in all, it was a successful first week, and I am excited about the upcoming year!    Take a moment to check out the 'Pictures' tab on our class blog for some more photos from our first week.

I look forward to seeing all of the parents at our "Meet the Teacher" night
on Wednesday at 7:00 pm.