El Rancho Grande!

On Tuesday we had a fabulous field trip to El Rancho Grande in Providence. It is a family owned Mexican restaurant that prepares authentic Mexican dishes. We were warmly welcomed by owner Maria and her son. After they told us about the history of the restaurant, the food, and their hometown in Mexico, they answered kids' questions. THEN, they started bringing out platters and platters of delicious food! I think everybody had a wonderful and educational time.

On Thursday, we had a SBS holiday party where we combined efforts to wrap all the Holiday Hope presents you have generously donated. THANK YOU. I am sure that your efforts are helping to make somebody's holiday season a bit brighter.

Students have been busy preparing their culminating research projects in anticipation of the Mexican Fiesta next week. Each student is doing an amazing job making a physical representation of what they have learned, as well as writing accompanying information to display. In addition, we have learned how to make Ojo de Dios or "God's Eyes" using sticks and yarn. They are beautiful! Finally, we continue to read Santiago's Silver Mine and learn about answering comprehension questions in writing.

Upcoming Dates and Events

Tuesday, 12/7: Sub Day

Wednesday, 12/8: Mexican Fiesta (11-12:45)

Friday, 12/17: Winter Break Begins at Dismissal

Tuesday, 1/4: Classes Resume

Have a great weekend!

Inspiration

What a wonderful week of arts and culture! Not only was it Authorfest week, but we had a special visit from a group of Mexican visiting artists. On Thursday, the library became a workshop and gallery for Ventura Fabian, his partner, Norberto, and their translator, Nina. For over an hour, we learned about the ancient Oaxacaan art of wood carving. Our visitors shared the process, the tradition, and the ways that they get inspiration for their work. In addition, we learned about their home village in Oaxaca, Mexico, their families, traditions, and way of life. It was an amazing experience!

On Friday, we had the opportunity to listen to author and illustrator, Erik Kraft, share about his crafts. He told us about his life-long interest in writing, how he gets inspired, and the process of his writing. It was reaffirming to hear that he goes through much the same process that we do, including the generation of ideas, brainstorming, editing, and publishing.

Students are continuing to research their Mexican topics. Next week we will begin to plan our research projects, which will demonstrate what we have learned.

Thank you for the thoughtful planning you are doing with your children around our Haiti service learning project. I want to share with you all that Friends Academy is being recognized this weekend by the UMASS Haitian-American Student Association for our ongoing support of Ecole Soleil. I shared this news with the students and they were surprised and excited. I am so proud of their compassion, empathy, and integrity.

Coming Up . . .

Next week will be a short one as Thanksgiving Break begins on Wednesday, November 24th. We'll look forward to being back together in school on Monday, November 29th.

We will be taking a Field Trip to a traditional Mexican restaurant, El Rancho Grande, in Providence on Tuesday, November 30th. We can have one parent chaperone for this trip. Please let me know if you are interested as soon as possible.

Our Mexican Fiesta will take place on Wednesday, December 8th from 11-12:30. Children will demonstrate their learning and then we will enjoy a buffet-style Mexican meal together. Please save the date!

Enjoy the photos, and have a joyful weekend.

Warmly,

Lee

A Short Week

This was a short but productive week. We:

*Chose our topics for our Mexico research projects and started formulating our research questions.

*Watched a video about Mexican life and made a Venn diagram comparing our days with those of the children featured in the video.

*Finished chapter one in Santiago's Silver Mine.

*Completed our writing about our Day of the Dead altars.

*Learned about renaming in subtraction.

*Began thinking about our Haiti service learning projects.

Dates to Remember:

Monday 11/15-Friday 11/19:

Book Fair

Thursday 11/18, 6:30-7:30:

An Evening with Sports Journalist and Author Steve Krasner

Friday 11/19:

Authorfest and Luncheon

11/24-11/28:

Thanksgiving Break

Have a wonderful, LONG weekend!

:)Lee

Small Moment Stories

Happy Friday everyone! We have had a wonderful week here in SBS 3. Children have been busily reading, writing, and computing.

In writing workshop, students have published their first personal narratives. This is the culmination of lots of work and creative inspiration. Each of these stories is based upon a "small moment" in the children's lives. Each student identified the setting, main characters, the wish, the problem, the turning point, and the message in these small moments before beginning to write. Using the computer program Kidspiration, they webbed their ideas and then sequenced the story from beginning, to middle, to end. After editing and expanding their sentences, children illustrated the story using another computer program called Kid Pix. Finally, each student recorded their narration of their small moment story on their laptop. Soon we will post this work to our blog. In addition, take a moment to look in your child's writing folders in the classroom to see the various stages of writing and editing.

In reading workshop, we are in the middle of the first chapter of Santiago's Silver Mine. This novel is set in Mexico in an old mining village. The main characters of the story are two boys, Santiago and Andreas, who are trying to help their families make ends meet due to a poor harvest year. In their attempts, they encounter much adventure and become embroiled in a mystery that needs solving. As we read the story, we are answering comprehension questions in writing. This process can be tricky and I am doing a lot of modeling. For each question, we highlight words in the question that we need to include in our answer to make it "complete." I have been very impressed with the kids work!

In math, we have continued to work on addition with renaming into the hundreds place. Next week we will begin subtraction with renaming.

This week we also began our Read Naturally program. While the main focus of this program is to build oral reading fluency, we will also use the stories to build reading comprehension by answering questions about the passage read, as well as to build vocabulary. This week and next, we will be practicing the steps involved in our Read Naturally program. Eventually, students will be bringing their ipods home to work on this each night as part of homework.

Dates to Remember

Tuesday 11/9: Pizza Day!

Thursday 11/11: Veteran's Day (No School)

Friday 11/12: Faculty Professional Day (No School)

11/15-11/19: AuthorFest and Book Fair

11/24: Thanksgiving Break Begins

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND!

:)Lee

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!