Weekly Update

All-Star of the Week
Mariana was Room 13's Amazing All-Star last week!  At the beginning of the week she shared items special to her, including: a Cabbage Patch doll named Phoebe from her grandma, her blankey, a blah blah doll, and many fun pictures of her and her family.  She had the class laughing out loud on Tuesday when she read aloud her favorite picture book, The Book With No Pictures.  Mariana also enjoyed a special lunch with her lunch buddy.  We liked learning more about Mariana from her parent letter, and Room 13 enjoyed writing compliments to her on Friday.

Math Workshop
We have come to the end of our fraction unit.  Students have learned many different concepts about fractions.  They are able to place fractions less than one and greater than one on a number line.  They are also able to compare fractions, deciding if fractions are greater than, less than, or equal to one another.  Students have also learned about equivalent fractions.  Your child should be able to write an equivalence chain, such as 1/2=2/4=3/6=4/8=5/10.  The Unit 7 Math Review is due Tuesday.  We will take the Unit 7 Assessment Tuesday morning as well.

Research Workshop
Students continued taking notes last week based on subtopics that they chose for each of their 4 main research topics.  Lessons focused on helping students choose important vs. interesting facts as well as using text features such as captions, maps, graphs, and charts to collect more information for each subtopic.  Students had also previously learned to take notes as fact fragments rather than copying sentences from their country books.  This can be challenging as it is our third graders' first experience researching a topic from books.

Science
Our plant and crayfish investigations continued last week.  We had enough germinated seeds from our sprouters to set up two hydroponic growing basins.  We will watch these seeds closely to see if they continue to grow without soil.  We also set up "homes" in the crayfish habitats.  We know crayfish like to hide so now they are able to hide inside the "homes."

Mystery Readers
Students continue to LOVE having you in the classroom to read aloud a special book to us.  Below are pictures of the most recent mystery readers...