March 4, 2022
We were so excited for you to come to our Poetry Cafe` and hear our wonderful poems. Thank you for all your support! Miss Robyn even came for a visit!
Next week we have a homeschool day on Thursday, March 10. If I didn't already contact you and you would like to set up a parent conference with me, please email me.
This week we wrote our author study notes about "Parallels Between Books" in a paragraph. Also, we learned about quotes. As Remez Sasson said, "People love to read quotes because quotes are inspiring and motivating thoughts condensed into a few words." The scholars discussed "multiple perspectives" when reading a quote. Today, we are doing Step 8 Quotes about our author. Please check to see if your scholar is up to date with the author's study assignments. Our 3rd-grade Authors' Fair will be Monday, March 21, 2022, at 8:45 am. Parents are invited to attend and check out our author booths.
We explored equivalent fractions using pattern blocks in math and developed strategies for writing whole numbers as fractions with a denominator of 1. In Spanish, we continued learning about La Ropa (Clothing) and completed crossword puzzles, word searches, and an activity to help us identify and translate each article of clothing. In the coming lessons, we will learn to tell each other what we are wearing and what color each article of clothing is in Spanish. We discovered why dogs’ expressions, like tail wagging, are so useful when living in a pack during science. In the activity, Field Journal, we watched videos of different animals that live in groups to simulate observing them in their natural habitats. We discussed and recorded our observations and constructed an explanation of how living in groups helps these animals survive.
February 18, 2022
In language arts, we finished our novel about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and had great in-depth small group discussions. The scholars are enjoying writing poems and practicing reciting them. We are excited about sharing them with you at the Poetry Cafe on Thursday, February 24 from 8:45-9:30 am. We hope you can come. Siblings will be assigned a class together. I put the class assignments in their green homework folder in the plastic pocket.
Also, we learned how an author's life is reflected in their writing. Together, we filled out a graphic organizer about John Reynolds Gardiner's life and how his experiences are inspirations for his writing. We compared and contrasted the information in Venn diagrams Using these tools, we practiced writing an opinion paper about comparing the author's life to his work. Homeschool homework is to do the same for their author and his/her work. Today, in Zoom we discussed this assignment further. If you have any questions, please ask them tomorrow in our Zoom session. Google classroom has samples of the work we did together in class.
In math we have been learning to interpret scaled graphs (graphs from data where larger numbers are involved) and bar graphs. We continue to solve 2- step word problems with four operations.
January 18, 2022
Last week we shared our amazing projects with each other and with the seventh graders in Mrs. Campbell’s class. The 7th graders were impressed with how knowledgeable we were about your subjects and loved sharing the Project Week exhibition with us.
We learned about one part of the structure of a book called the prologue by watching the one in the movie, Lion King. Then we read the prologue in Bonnie Bader’s novel, Who Was Martin Luther King, Jr.?
Excitement filled out the classroom when we worked in groups with the Muffles Truffles unit in math. We watched the following introduction video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtXd_88M4cM
The focus of this unit was the development of the open array as a model for multiplication and division. We had a series of investigations based on the context of Muffles’ Truffles shop. The questions posed in the first investigation (how many boxes of ten can be made with a given quantity of truffles; how many leftovers will there be from a given quantity) gave us an opportunity to explore place value—the multiplicative structure of our base-ten system and quotative division. We will continue with more investigations.
As Kumeyaay Indians, we sat in a circle and learned how to weave baskets. It was quite challenging but soon we got into the weaving rhythm and helped each other start our beautiful baskets. We sure appreciated the time and effort in basket weaving.
Your scholar brought home the Author Study Project. Each week I will be giving lessons for the project and then for Friday’s homeschool homework, they will work on the project.
December 17, 2021
This week after reading Paul Galdone's Gingerbread Boy, Sandi Takeyama's Musubi Man, and Eric Kimmel's The Runaway Tortilla, we compared and contrasted the setting, characters, problems, and solutions of this fairy tale from different cultures. The big idea was "the proof was in the patterns of the fairy tales." Today we had a delightful Gingerbread day with Mrs. Hatch's class. Decorating large fresh Gingerbread cookies (don't forget to take it out of the bags sent home today), making Gingerbread houses where we had to find the area and perimeter, and creating traps to catch the Gingerbread man or woman with our problem-solving skills was a blast! Thank you to all the Santa's helpers who made the fun day happen!
Here is the website for Project Week is January 3-11, 2022:
https://sites.google.com/a/juliancharterschool.org/project-week-2014/?pli=1
December 10, 2021
In Language Arts, we compared and contrasted different versions of folktales from The Mitten and analyzed them with depth and complexity while wearing the beanies that my mother-in-law knitted. Attached is a sample. We examined the patterns in folktales and gave evidence to prove them. Today, we read different Gingerbread stories and, in math, made a gingerbread house to figure out the surface area of the various walls. Since we didn't have time to make our gingerbread man traps in class, please make them at home. Choose one gingerbread man to cut out. Your gingerbread man must fit inside the trap. In science, we learned about how fossil dinosaur tracks reveal how quickly a dinosaur was running and compared the length of our running steps with the dinosaur’s steps. In Social Studies we continued our study about the Kumeyaay Indians.
Tomorrow, Dec. 16, and Friday, Dec. 17, we will have Zoom meetings at 8:30 am.
Also, during project week, January 3-7, 2022, we will have Zoom meetings daily at 8:30 am. Please email me during the homeschool days if you have any questions. I will be at professional development meetings but will get back to you as soon as possible.
September 17. 2021
Language Arts/ Social Studies
We studied about the Universal concept: Structure. The Big Idea is "Structure has parts that are interrelated and it is the arrangement of parts in a certain way to provide order and has a purpose (function). There is a structure in writing a letter or a postcard (the greeting, body, closing, address, description of the image on the front, and stamp). In our Reading Workshop Journal, we wrote letters to our teacher, included our depth and complexity ideas about the independent book we are silently reading, and she wrote back to us!. We practiced writing postcards on our own computers. Our homeschool homework today will allow us to practice writing a postcard about the local place we researched in California last week for homeschool.
Learning how to listen to each other and share effectively as partners or in small groups was a skill we learned this week. We do our best talking about reading when we "buzz" well with each other.
Science
This week in science we explored the mystery, “Where do clouds come from?” We observed important clues, such as the fact that water changes from a liquid to a gas (even without boiling).
Here is the Mystery Science link to the lesson. It will expire 10 days from today.
https://mysteryscience.com/weather/mystery-1/water-cycle-phases-of-matter/46?r=876674&t=student
Math
We continued our exploration of Patterns in our pocket multiples booklet using skip counting, We discovered that arrays (a group of objects arranged in rows and columns) are everywhere, searched for arrays in our own classroom, and began making our array multiplication cards. This was an example of "Structure" again! Please help us cut out the array cards for homeschool.There are a lot of them!
September 10, 2021
Thank you for coming to Back to School Night! It was wonderful to see so many of you. I appreciate all the support you have given to our amazing class.
Language Arts: We read The Memory String by Eve Bunting which explored the theme of change in a very personal way, Laura realized that it was okay to make new memories even while holding on to the old ones. In our "Reading Response Journals," we made connections across disciplines, discussed the change over time of the character's feelings, gave our perspectives, discussed the big idea, and discovered the patterns of this type of genre (Realistic Fiction).
Math
We watched a YouCubed video from Stanford:
https://bhi61nm2cr3mkdgk1dtaov18-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Day-2-Brain-Crossing.mp4
about brain connections, explored number visuals, investigated patterns in them, and asked our own questions about the interesting representations. Did you know that creativity is possible in mathematics? We discovered that we can see or approach any mathematical idea in different ways at the same time respecting the different thinking in all of us.
Check out the cool Number Visual:
https://www.youcubed.org/downloadable/wim-week-1-day-2-grades-3-4-powerpoint/
Excitement filled our room when we made our pocket multiplication booklets. Skip-counting in multiples we explored the different patterns on the miniature 100's charts.
We learned how to communicate our strategies while solving the math problems using mathematical vocabulary. Below are our anchor charts in our "Math Journals."
Social Studies
All the creative community banners adorn our classroom. Each of us presented our reasons why we chose the special word.
September 3, 2021
Social Studies
This week we were prompted by a puzzlement (photos) and simply asked: What do you observe? What do you wonder? We were so curious and excited to write our observations and wonderment that we didn’t want to stop even for PE! Next, we looked at all of their observations and wrote down how the pictures were somehow connected.
These are some of the words we came up with: Togetherness, Love, Kindness, Helping, Connecting, Teamwork, Beauty, Friends, Happiness, etc.
This lead up to what we are going to be exploring in Social Studies... Community. We quickly looked up the definitions of community in the dictionary and realized that the photos were various examples of it.
Math
We read The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns about a bored and dissatisfied triangle that visited a local shape shifter to add another angle to his shape. Poof! He became a quadrilateral. But then he got greedy and kept adding angles until he's completely transformed. We played with pattern block cutouts and discovered that six equilateral triangles can be made into a hexagon. Also, three rhombuses are equal to a hexagon.
We solved word problems using different multiplication strategies. Be sure to read the handouts that were sent home about it!
Language Arts
Using the book,The Library by Sarah Stewart, we learned about how our own class library was organized and distinguished between fiction and non-fiction. Depth and complexity icons encouraged us to dig deeper into the story by analyzing change over time, contribution, and impact. Working together we organized our own class library!
We presented our Detailed Flowers, Perspective, and PowerPoint Presentation Projects to our class. Everyone did a great job and the audience shared their “likes and wonders.”
August 27, 2021
https://www.youcubed.org/
We were so excited for you to come to our Poetry Cafe` and hear our wonderful poems. Thank you for all your support! Miss Robyn even came for a visit!
Next week we have a homeschool day on Thursday, March 10. If I didn't already contact you and you would like to set up a parent conference with me, please email me.
This week we wrote our author study notes about "Parallels Between Books" in a paragraph. Also, we learned about quotes. As Remez Sasson said, "People love to read quotes because quotes are inspiring and motivating thoughts condensed into a few words." The scholars discussed "multiple perspectives" when reading a quote. Today, we are doing Step 8 Quotes about our author. Please check to see if your scholar is up to date with the author's study assignments. Our 3rd-grade Authors' Fair will be Monday, March 21, 2022, at 8:45 am. Parents are invited to attend and check out our author booths.
We explored equivalent fractions using pattern blocks in math and developed strategies for writing whole numbers as fractions with a denominator of 1. In Spanish, we continued learning about La Ropa (Clothing) and completed crossword puzzles, word searches, and an activity to help us identify and translate each article of clothing. In the coming lessons, we will learn to tell each other what we are wearing and what color each article of clothing is in Spanish. We discovered why dogs’ expressions, like tail wagging, are so useful when living in a pack during science. In the activity, Field Journal, we watched videos of different animals that live in groups to simulate observing them in their natural habitats. We discussed and recorded our observations and constructed an explanation of how living in groups helps these animals survive.
February 18, 2022
In language arts, we finished our novel about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and had great in-depth small group discussions. The scholars are enjoying writing poems and practicing reciting them. We are excited about sharing them with you at the Poetry Cafe on Thursday, February 24 from 8:45-9:30 am. We hope you can come. Siblings will be assigned a class together. I put the class assignments in their green homework folder in the plastic pocket.
Also, we learned how an author's life is reflected in their writing. Together, we filled out a graphic organizer about John Reynolds Gardiner's life and how his experiences are inspirations for his writing. We compared and contrasted the information in Venn diagrams Using these tools, we practiced writing an opinion paper about comparing the author's life to his work. Homeschool homework is to do the same for their author and his/her work. Today, in Zoom we discussed this assignment further. If you have any questions, please ask them tomorrow in our Zoom session. Google classroom has samples of the work we did together in class.
In math we have been learning to interpret scaled graphs (graphs from data where larger numbers are involved) and bar graphs. We continue to solve 2- step word problems with four operations.
January 18, 2022
Last week we shared our amazing projects with each other and with the seventh graders in Mrs. Campbell’s class. The 7th graders were impressed with how knowledgeable we were about your subjects and loved sharing the Project Week exhibition with us.
We learned about one part of the structure of a book called the prologue by watching the one in the movie, Lion King. Then we read the prologue in Bonnie Bader’s novel, Who Was Martin Luther King, Jr.?
Excitement filled out the classroom when we worked in groups with the Muffles Truffles unit in math. We watched the following introduction video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtXd_88M4cM
The focus of this unit was the development of the open array as a model for multiplication and division. We had a series of investigations based on the context of Muffles’ Truffles shop. The questions posed in the first investigation (how many boxes of ten can be made with a given quantity of truffles; how many leftovers will there be from a given quantity) gave us an opportunity to explore place value—the multiplicative structure of our base-ten system and quotative division. We will continue with more investigations.
As Kumeyaay Indians, we sat in a circle and learned how to weave baskets. It was quite challenging but soon we got into the weaving rhythm and helped each other start our beautiful baskets. We sure appreciated the time and effort in basket weaving.
Your scholar brought home the Author Study Project. Each week I will be giving lessons for the project and then for Friday’s homeschool homework, they will work on the project.
December 17, 2021
This week after reading Paul Galdone's Gingerbread Boy, Sandi Takeyama's Musubi Man, and Eric Kimmel's The Runaway Tortilla, we compared and contrasted the setting, characters, problems, and solutions of this fairy tale from different cultures. The big idea was "the proof was in the patterns of the fairy tales." Today we had a delightful Gingerbread day with Mrs. Hatch's class. Decorating large fresh Gingerbread cookies (don't forget to take it out of the bags sent home today), making Gingerbread houses where we had to find the area and perimeter, and creating traps to catch the Gingerbread man or woman with our problem-solving skills was a blast! Thank you to all the Santa's helpers who made the fun day happen!
Here is the website for Project Week is January 3-11, 2022:
https://sites.google.com/a/juliancharterschool.org/project-week-2014/?pli=1
December 10, 2021
In Language Arts, we compared and contrasted different versions of folktales from The Mitten and analyzed them with depth and complexity while wearing the beanies that my mother-in-law knitted. Attached is a sample. We examined the patterns in folktales and gave evidence to prove them. Today, we read different Gingerbread stories and, in math, made a gingerbread house to figure out the surface area of the various walls. Since we didn't have time to make our gingerbread man traps in class, please make them at home. Choose one gingerbread man to cut out. Your gingerbread man must fit inside the trap. In science, we learned about how fossil dinosaur tracks reveal how quickly a dinosaur was running and compared the length of our running steps with the dinosaur’s steps. In Social Studies we continued our study about the Kumeyaay Indians.
Tomorrow, Dec. 16, and Friday, Dec. 17, we will have Zoom meetings at 8:30 am.
Also, during project week, January 3-7, 2022, we will have Zoom meetings daily at 8:30 am. Please email me during the homeschool days if you have any questions. I will be at professional development meetings but will get back to you as soon as possible.
September 17. 2021
Language Arts/ Social Studies
We studied about the Universal concept: Structure. The Big Idea is "Structure has parts that are interrelated and it is the arrangement of parts in a certain way to provide order and has a purpose (function). There is a structure in writing a letter or a postcard (the greeting, body, closing, address, description of the image on the front, and stamp). In our Reading Workshop Journal, we wrote letters to our teacher, included our depth and complexity ideas about the independent book we are silently reading, and she wrote back to us!. We practiced writing postcards on our own computers. Our homeschool homework today will allow us to practice writing a postcard about the local place we researched in California last week for homeschool.
Learning how to listen to each other and share effectively as partners or in small groups was a skill we learned this week. We do our best talking about reading when we "buzz" well with each other.
Science
This week in science we explored the mystery, “Where do clouds come from?” We observed important clues, such as the fact that water changes from a liquid to a gas (even without boiling).
Here is the Mystery Science link to the lesson. It will expire 10 days from today.
https://mysteryscience.com/weather/mystery-1/water-cycle-phases-of-matter/46?r=876674&t=student
Math
We continued our exploration of Patterns in our pocket multiples booklet using skip counting, We discovered that arrays (a group of objects arranged in rows and columns) are everywhere, searched for arrays in our own classroom, and began making our array multiplication cards. This was an example of "Structure" again! Please help us cut out the array cards for homeschool.There are a lot of them!
September 10, 2021
Thank you for coming to Back to School Night! It was wonderful to see so many of you. I appreciate all the support you have given to our amazing class.
Language Arts: We read The Memory String by Eve Bunting which explored the theme of change in a very personal way, Laura realized that it was okay to make new memories even while holding on to the old ones. In our "Reading Response Journals," we made connections across disciplines, discussed the change over time of the character's feelings, gave our perspectives, discussed the big idea, and discovered the patterns of this type of genre (Realistic Fiction).
Math
We watched a YouCubed video from Stanford:
https://bhi61nm2cr3mkdgk1dtaov18-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Day-2-Brain-Crossing.mp4
about brain connections, explored number visuals, investigated patterns in them, and asked our own questions about the interesting representations. Did you know that creativity is possible in mathematics? We discovered that we can see or approach any mathematical idea in different ways at the same time respecting the different thinking in all of us.
Check out the cool Number Visual:
https://www.youcubed.org/downloadable/wim-week-1-day-2-grades-3-4-powerpoint/
Excitement filled our room when we made our pocket multiplication booklets. Skip-counting in multiples we explored the different patterns on the miniature 100's charts.
We learned how to communicate our strategies while solving the math problems using mathematical vocabulary. Below are our anchor charts in our "Math Journals."
Social Studies
All the creative community banners adorn our classroom. Each of us presented our reasons why we chose the special word.
September 3, 2021
Social Studies
This week we were prompted by a puzzlement (photos) and simply asked: What do you observe? What do you wonder? We were so curious and excited to write our observations and wonderment that we didn’t want to stop even for PE! Next, we looked at all of their observations and wrote down how the pictures were somehow connected.
These are some of the words we came up with: Togetherness, Love, Kindness, Helping, Connecting, Teamwork, Beauty, Friends, Happiness, etc.
This lead up to what we are going to be exploring in Social Studies... Community. We quickly looked up the definitions of community in the dictionary and realized that the photos were various examples of it.
Math
We read The Greedy Triangle by Marilyn Burns about a bored and dissatisfied triangle that visited a local shape shifter to add another angle to his shape. Poof! He became a quadrilateral. But then he got greedy and kept adding angles until he's completely transformed. We played with pattern block cutouts and discovered that six equilateral triangles can be made into a hexagon. Also, three rhombuses are equal to a hexagon.
We solved word problems using different multiplication strategies. Be sure to read the handouts that were sent home about it!
Language Arts
Using the book,The Library by Sarah Stewart, we learned about how our own class library was organized and distinguished between fiction and non-fiction. Depth and complexity icons encouraged us to dig deeper into the story by analyzing change over time, contribution, and impact. Working together we organized our own class library!
We presented our Detailed Flowers, Perspective, and PowerPoint Presentation Projects to our class. Everyone did a great job and the audience shared their “likes and wonders.”
August 27, 2021
- What an exciting week we had! Thank you so much for all the generous supplies, including the WISH list, that have been donated to our classroom. The third grade scholars were well prepared with their "tools" even on the first day of school! Wow! I appreciated that our scholars arrived on time and were well organized. Thanks for your support!
Universal Concept
We started this week defining and discussing the universal concept, CHANGE. Universal concepts give students the opportunity to think beyond fact-based learning. The concept transfers across disciplines to develop essential understandings. We came up with all the changes that were going on in their lives. (For example: Starting a new school, having a new teacher, being in the 3rd grade, and meeting new friends). We grouped them together and they realized that CHANGES can be positive and negative or both and CHANGES are necessary for growth.
We read First Day Jitters by Judy Danneburg and used Depth and Complexity icons as our tools for diving deeper and understanding concepts with more complexity (details, multiple perspective, big ideas, and unanswered questions).
We compared and contrasted, using a Venn diagram, the books, Goldie Socks and the Three Libearians by Jackie Hopkins to the classic fairytale, Goldilocks and The Three Bears, which helped us understand what “just right book” reading (an important skill for all scholars) was all about. This book was a great way to launch picking just right books for independent reading during our "Reading Workshop" in third grade.
Through an inductive lesson we created our classroom motto. It was a novel way to explore expectations by building on our own knowledge.
Math
We started this week's lessons using the research developed by Jo Boaler, from Stanford University, about Growth Mindset. The scholars were fascinated by how our brain grows when we make mathematical mistakes. We watched and discussed the following inspirational math video.- Mistakes are beautiful things
https://www.youcubed.org/