Happenings

 Special thanks to Mr. M for coming to our rescue and bringing the shop vac to our class. The water was swept up by 10 am and the rug dried in the sun by 3pm. A bunch of the strong kids helped me carry it back into the classroom and all was well!

CHINESE CULTURE
Wu Laoshi  (woo Lao shh) will be teaching our class all about China's Autumn Festival and the students will begin learning about Chinese culture and traditions during specials time on Mondays and Tuesdays! In addition, Wu Laoshi will teach Chinese numbers, days of the week and months of the year as well as some basic phrasing during calendar math every day! The students will be keeping Chinese Culture Interactive notebooks to record what they learn. I will send them home to show you what is happening once we get started!

MYSTERY READER
  We had our 3rd mystery reader on Friday! If you are coming to be a mystery reader, please bring  a few of your child's favorite books and send me a few "clues" about you. I usually tell the children the clues during morning meeting so they can guess who you are. We go to lunch and then recess immediately after you read so you are welcome to stay if you like!

MATH HOMEWORK
  Just in case you are wondering, the math homework contains problems from each domain we are required to learn in third grade. If your child is having trouble with some of the concepts, that is expected. These problems are an exercise in exposure and inquiry. Help your child with the 'harder' problems but do not worry if they don't exactly get it. The idea is that by the time we get to those standards, your child will feel confident having seen similar problems all year. I will teach them all of this and more! BTW, most of the kids don't seem to be phased in the least by many of the 'unknown' concepts! I will be speaking with our MATH expert in order to bring some more challenging work. We will also begin Math centers this week.

COMPUTERS
  If anyone is savvy with PC's , I'd love some help with parental controls. Last week, a few boy were looking up info on their historical figure and a bikini clad girl popped up on screen! Nothing terrible but I am not comfortable allowing students to conduct research w/o Wu Laoshi or my guidance since that happened. I'd appreciate any help as I am a more familiar with MAC.

GLOBE and The Little Shop of Stories
 Check out THIS link to see what LSOS is doing with Where the Mountain Meets the Moon. We had a parent present the idea at our last staff meeting that we read this book school-wide and create some activities of our own in addition to inviting the author to our school and possibly booking the performance for our school. The staff LOVED the idea so be on the look-out....we will need help!

Social Studies Presentation

  We had our first presentation on Friday! The group wrote  a play about Eleanor Roosevelt and it was AWESOME!! I look forward to the rest of our groups presenting.

See you at Curriculum Night on Thursday from 6:30-7:30. The focus will be on Reader's and Writer's Workshop. You'll get to see a video of our class learning about Seed Stories...... :) Hope to see you there!