Halloween Parade

Happy Halloween Parade Day!

This morning we celebrated Halloween in traditional Friends Academy fashion: with an all school Halloween parade! I LOVE the community feeling of this celebration! Our very own Ean McGonigle documented this morning's events.

This week our class jumped into our study of Mexico. Learning how to navigate expository non-fiction has been a big focus during reading workshop. This skill will help us as we choose and research a topic relating to Mexican culture in the weeks to come. We have been learning about the traditional Mexican holiday, Days of the Dead. In social studies groups this week, children began constructing altars for loved ones who have passed away.

In writing workshop we have been learning about how to write powerful and descriptive sentences. We are using this knowledge to inform the editing of our small moment stories. Next week, kids will use the computer program "Kid Pix" to illustrate their stories.

In math we have been learning how to regroup in addition. Using the Stern Structural Arithmetic blocks, kids are gaining a true understanding of the concept.

Last week, we enjoyed a wonderful field trip with the LLoyd Center to catch, tag, and release Monarch butterflies. We tagged 6 butterflies in total! It was a beautiful day and I think we all learned a lot about butterflies, scientific research, and the natural connections we have with other parts of the world.

Dates to Remember

Friday 11/5: Lower Division in the Limelight

Thursday 11/11: Veteran's Day-No School

Friday 11/12: Faculty Professional Day-No School for Students

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

A Good Week

This week children have been busy as readers and writers. As we continue to practice the strategy of visualization for comprehending text, students are beginning to understand why they must provide vivid details in their own writing. This realization is helping them to inject their "small moment" stories with subject describers and predicate expanders. This is very exciting!

Using the mentor text Aunt Flossie's Hats (and Crab Cakes Later), students listened to and read a scene without seeing the illustrations. Over two days, they created drawings of the scene, revising and adding details until they were satisfied that they had accurately represented their mental images based on details from the text. We shared these drawings with each other, noticing that each drawing was unique yet they all shared common elements. Finally, we reread Aunt Flossie's Hats with the illustrations showing. It was amazing to compare our drawings to those of the illustrator, James Ransome.

This week we also finished our Judy Blume author study and our first guided reading books, Freckle Juice and The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo. Please look for red folders in your child's backpack this afternoon which house some of the work that they have done in their group. Learning how to respond in writing to questions is a difficult task and one that we will be working on this year.

Dates to Remember

Tuesday 10/19: Third Grade Field Trip to The Lloyd Center

Friday 10/22: Parent/Teacher Conferences (There is NO SCHOOL for students. However, we do include the students in the last 15 minutes of the conference. They can go to the library and be with the ASP program during the first part of the conference).

Thursday 11/11: Veteran's Day-No School

Friday 11/12: Faculty Professional Day-No School for Students

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND!

What is Culture?

This year in third grade we will be using "throughlines" to guide our studies. Throughlines are guiding questions that help us to examine topics throughout the course of the year. Our third grade throughlines are:

1. What is culture?

2. What is geography?

3. How are cultures similar to and different from each other?

4. What does it mean to be a caring world citizen?

This week, we have been thinking a lot about culture and asking ourselves the question "What is culture?"

Our shared reading selection this week was The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco. In this story, Polacco traces her family's roots to Russia, the family's arrival in New York City, and follows several generations as they try to keep their Russian history and traditions alive through a "keeping quilt." This story prompted much discussion about family traditions and the components of culture. I also challenged the kids to design a quilt-making activity!

The Keeping Quilt also served as a vehicle for thinking about the elements of a story. We created puzzle maps. Just like a puzzle, every story has pieces. Once you put the pieces together, the meaning of a story becomes clear. This idea of a story puzzle map also helped us organize our "small moment" stories in writing this week.

Students have also been busy working in guided reading groups. As a class we are focusing on the author Judy Blume. One group is reading Freckle Juice and one group is reading The One in the Middle is the Green Kangaroo.

We completed our first unit in Math this week. You will notice that your child is bringing home their first unit assessment. As I explained to the kids, an assessment is simply a way for us to know what we know and what we still need to work on. At this point, curriculum assessments are not graded. They simply help to inform my instruction.

Dates to Remember:

Monday, October 11: Columbus Day (No School)

Friday, October 15: Field Trip to the Lloyd Center (We can have two chaperones-Let me know if you would like to join us.)

Friday, October 22: Parent-Teacher Conferences (No School)

HAVE A WONDERFUL, LONG WEEKEND!