Hello Spring!

Hello Friends!
   It's been a great week in room 212. We have been working on fractions, persuasive speeches, biography projects and map skills.
  * Ask your child to show you the Hudson, Rio Grande, Colorado, Mississippi and Ohio Rivers on a map. Tell them to introduce you to MIMAL! They can even tell you and show you where our 9 historical figures were born! If that doesn't impress you then ask them to explain how GPS uses lines of latitude and longitude coordinates to give us directions!

Here's what's happening in the next few weeks:

March 25th: Visit to FAVE
March 26th: James and the Giant Peach at the Alliance Theater
March 27th: Dekalb History Center Walking Field Trip
* We will need volunteers to chaperone and walk with us to the square. If you are interested, please email me and let me know so I can provide you with the info.

Here's a look at the week:

Our Writing Celebration

Map Skills: Learning about MIMAL

Our visit from Lincoln Pierce:

Working diligently on our Biography Projects!

Comparing Fractions Check!

Thanks for a great week! 

Important Dates & Information!

Hello Friends,
 
 I am very excited to see you tomorrow and so are the children. They have worked their little fingers to the bone on their Non-Fiction writing projects.

****  I have sent home the MATH REVIEW Booklet this week and will continue to do so until the end of the year. The pages due each week will be assigned on Mondays and due the following Monday. Your child needs to bring the math review booklet back to school each day.

***** You have received 3 (yes 3!) field trip permission forms in your child's blue folder. There was an error on the date for the trip to the Alliance Theater. Here are the correct dates and descriptions of the field trips.

Wednesday, March 25th : A trip to FAVE (Fifth Avenue School) 

          * The students will tour the school, meet the teachers and Principal Roaden, and they will have a Q & A with a group of 5th Grade Ambassadors.

Thursday, March 26th: Alliance Theater Presents James & The Giant Peach

     * The whole school is going on this trip thanks to Ms. Maxson and her grant writing! 

Friday, March 27th: Dekalb History Center Presents Third Grade History Day

     * This is a walking field trip to the Decatur Square. The students will get to experience a living history presentation and then eat lunch in the sunshine (fingers crossed). For more details you CLICK HERE

  

A BIG, HUGE, ENORMOUS, THANK YOU TO THE DECATUR EDUCATION FOUNDATION FOR FUNDING THIS TRIP WITH GRANT MONEY! I FEEL SO LUCKY TO HAVE SUCH A WONDERFUL ORGANIZATION SUPPORTING DECATUR'S TEACHERS. 

 

 * To learn more about DEF and how you can help support CLICK HERE!

And lastly, here's what we've been up to (besides publishing our writing!)

Reading: We are working on Biography projects starting next week. 

ELA: We've learned about similes, metaphors, alliteration, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, personification and idioms. 

Math: We are working with fractions and practicing constructed response and word problems as well as reviewing everything!

Science: We will begin learning about HEAT next week.

SS: Map Skills   We located the Hudson River, Ohio River, Mississippi River,Colorado River, and Rio Grande as well as the Appalachian and Rocky Mountains.  We also learned a bit about longitude and latitude, The Equator and The Prime Meridian. 

    

We visited NASA and found the longitude and latitude of our homes! 

It's Been A While!

It was a short and bizarre week with our snow (without snow) days. Your children have been working diligently to complete their non-fiction books. You may have seen some of the work come home with your child. I am very proud of the children for the work they have put into their booklets so we are going to celebrate and you're invited. Look for an invitation in your email this week! 

  Here are the details:  Friday, March 6th at 9 a.m. after community circle

                                                       Our Class Room 212 

                                  

Here's a look at what's been going on...

VALENTINES! Thank you for all the LOVE!

WINTER BREAK IN NEW ORLEANS.....I held a three week old most of the time! Cole climbed trees and it was a lovely visit with close friends. 

MATH REVIEW and HOMEWORK BOOKLET! You will be receiving a letter about this little book this week. 

BLUEGRASS BAND! We had an awesome assembly on Friday. The children enjoyed listening to  live music and learning about the instruments. 

                                                 

February Fun

Hello Friends!
   As always, it's been a busy week! I want to say THANK YOU to the parents who donated their time to log our new classroom books. I know that it was not an easy task! The books have been delivered to our classrooms and the children are super excited to get their hands into the boxes. We will spend some time tomorrow exploring what we got. (I'll try not spend time sniffing the books...I know it's weird..but new books smell so good!)
   We will need some volunteers on February 12th at 10 a.m. in the media center. Our 2nd round of GMAS bandwidth testing is scheduled that morning and we asked if it actual 3rd graders needed to test the system or if we could ask parents to sit in. The answer is: Yes, parents can sit in! If you are available, please email me and I will sign you up!
 
  Tomorrow morning at Community Circle the students will be singing a song that they learned in music class. I absolutely LOVE this song.

     In math we used the ipads to create shapes on a geo board app and then we wrote shape riddle comics using THIS SITE. The children are learning about polygons and their attributes. 

We've been learning how to CLOSE read text in order to gain better comprehension. We've read various biographies on our remaining Historical Figures and we have a new subscription to Scholastic News that has been a wonderful resource as well. CLOSE reading includes reading a particular text 3 times, focusing on a specific task each time. The children really like to text code!

See the chart for an example of this. 

    We also had some diversity training yesterday. We discussed the terms Disability, Difference, and Differently Able. Your children decided that we all have differences but we are all human and we each deserve to be happy and feel safe and loved. 

  

    

Valentines Day!

Good Evening,
    I thought I'd knock out the info regarding Valentines Day since I am not interested in watching the Super Bowl :)
   We will exchange Valentines at the end of the day on Friday, February 13th. We usually have Mystery Reader or Game Time on Fridays so this will work out well. Below is a list of students' first names. I will talk to the children about what they'd like to do to celebrate during our morning meeting tomorrow.

Class Names:
1. Audrey
2. Max
3. Luke
4. Nate
5. Mira
6. Everest
7. Shohei
8. Theo
9. Aiden
10. Mia
11. Nora
12. Sophie
13. Vincent
14. Maddy
15. May
16. Andrew
17. Noemi
18. Iris