Curriculum update

It has been a busy time in Room 16.  We had our first science quiz on the order of the planets.  As you all saw this week, I will send home all quizzes for a parent signature as a means to keep you informed of progress.  Please send them back in a timely manner, and we will place them in their portfolio. We have moved on to study the moon, and will be keeping a moon calendar for the month of October.  Please have your child take a look at the moon each day/night, and do a quick sketch of what it looks like.  It is interesting to document the changes that the moon goes through over the course of a month, and makes this somewhat intangible topic a bit more real. 

We are taking our first math assessment this week.  The topic is place value. We have been rounding, comparing, and naming large numbers, as well as completing numerous activities to develop number sense.  These skills are fundamental for all of the math we will do, and are something that we will continue to reinforce and review throughout the year.

Reader’s Workshop is in full swing.  The children are working hard selecting just right books, and building stamina.   We are also looking at the genre of the books we read, as well as basic story elements such as setting, characters and plot.

In Writer’s Workshop, we spent a lot of time this week working on leads for our personal narratives that will encourage our readers to want to read our stories.  The children created a setting lead, a dialogue lead, and an action lead, and are now working on combining them into one very strong lead that includes all three elements.  These tasks have required a lot of persistence, and it has been inspiring to watch them put their best effort into them.

We have been reviewing previously learned skills in Fundations, as well as learning new concepts.  Ask your child to tell you about why vowels are so important, and what new tri-graph they learned about this week.  Also, we have started cursive practice beginning with the loop letters, l, e, and h.  Please ask your child to describe how each letter is formed, and make sure they are using the directions as they practice at home.

In social studies, we have begun looking at the Wampanoag tribe.  We will be researching them closely before studying the Pilgrims, so that we can compare and contrast the different cultures.

Our first poll of the year ended this week. Only one person responded, and they hoped to see pictures of their children on the blog.  I will work on that this week, and hopefully have something to post next weekend.  Have a great week!

Homework help

          It was so nice to meet many of you at Curriculum Night Thursday.  One of the questions that came up was how to help your child with homework.  So many people asked that I thought I would create a post dedicated to that subject.

          Franklin Public Schools has a guideline that teachers should take the grade that the students are in and multiply that by 10, and then add 10 minutes.  So third graders would be expected to spend an average of 40 minutes on homework nightly.  That being said, our team has developed a structure whereby children will respond to a reading passage on Monday night, respond to poetry on Wednesday night, have math each night Monday through Thursday, and occasionally have additional work to cover the 40 minutes.  I believe that thus far, I have not assigned sufficient work to reach 40 minutes.  This is in part to break the children in slowly, as well as to encourage them to use the additional time to create a habit of reading for pleasure.

          So, how can you help your child?  They should have a quiet place in your home where they routinely head to get their homework done.  This area should be free from distractions, and have the tools necessary to complete their assignments (usually pencils, erasers, etc.)

          I was pleased to hear how many parents look over their child’s work before it gets put back into their backpacks.  This sends a wonderful message to the children that you feel their work is important. Many parents wondered if they should correct any mistakes at this point.  My suggestion is that if you think they understand the concepts and may have made mistakes from rushing, let them know how many things they should look to correct when they go back and try again.  If they have enough mistakes that you question their understanding of a topic, feel free to help them learn the material.  Spend a little time going over it, and have them try again independently.  I urge you to be careful that if you do go over it with your child, make sure that when the paper is redone, they are doing it independently.  The reason for this is that if you do it together, and the answers are all correct, I am going to assume when I see a perfect paper that your child understands the material.  If there are several mistakes when a paper gets handed in, Mrs. Green or myself will pull your child into a small group to review the material.  They will never be “graded” on homework.  It is really an opportunity to let them give it a try independently, and it guides our instruction daily.

          Lastly, we spoke briefly about the consequences of not doing homework.  I have given this quite a bit of thought since our discussions.  I have decided that one of the things that I will do if homework does not come in is that the children will fill out a slip stating what is missing, and why they did not complete it. This note will get sent home for a parent signature, just so that you are aware of it.  If several notes go home to you, we can open a discussion of further consequences at that time.  I think this may send the message to your child that homework is important, as well as serve as a means to keep you informed.

         I am looking forward to working with you to ensure that your child has a successful year in third grade.

 

Helping your child choose just right books

We have been spending a lot of time in class talking about choosing just right books.  One of the questions I hear most often is, "How do I know if my child is in a just right book?"   Click here for a link to a bookmark that breaks this task down into a few simple steps.

The theory is that if the child doesn't make any mistakes the book is like one you might take on vacation.  It is very easy, and fun to read occasionally.  If the child makes two or three mistakes, there is room for growth and new learning.  If a child struggles with more than three words, this could lead to frustration, and therefore it would be best to save the book for a later date, or have it read aloud.

 A word of caution regarding this topic. At times, students are able to read a text with apparent fluency.  Attention must also be paid to the comprehension strategies used while reading.  When learning new strategies, it is important for the text level to be lowered so that more attention can be paid to practicing the new comprehension strategy without having to struggle with the decoding piece.

At times, it can be disappointing to find that a book we are interested in is beyond our reach at the current time.  We have developed a list in our reading journals to note what books we look forward to reading in the future.  This serves as a reminder that although we may not be reading something yet, it is still within reach in the near future.