Weekly Update

All-Star of the Week
This week Quin took the stage as our All-Star of the Week.  He brought many items to share in his Share Sack including several family pictures.  He read his favorite book The Day the Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt.  The class loved it!  He brought in a very touching letter from his mom and a picture slideshow set to music for the class to watch on the Smart Board.  On Thursday his parents joined him for a fun lunch at school.  We enjoyed having Quin as our star this week!

Reading Workshop
Students continue to work within the Mystery genre.  Each detective received their Detective Case File and mystery chapter book.  Students worked together in their Detective Clubs to make predictions before reading.  They read the title, looked at the picture on the cover, read the Table of Contents, and read the back cover of the book to help them make predictions.  Students have been meeting in their detective clubs to discuss the chapters they are reading. We modeled for students how to keep track of important clues and possible suspects. Supporting their claims with evidence is extremely important when recording ideas in their detective case file and when sharing their ideas during the detective club discussions.

 

 

Writing
Students have started to learn about writing opinion pieces.  After reading and discussing multiple mentor texts of opinion styles of writing, students created a class list of topics from thing around the school they would like to change.  They then practiced creating opinion statements and supporting those statements with reasons and examples.  We finished the week by drafting a letter to Mrs. Brzezinski about adding a vending machine to our school cafeteria.

 

 

Social Studies

We have recently embarked on our sailboat trip around the Southeast coast!  Students visited Everglades National Park, JFK Space Station in Cape Canaveral, and Jamestown, Virginia.  We even took a brief stop in Orlando, Florida to visit Disney World.  Many students brought Disney World souvenirs to share and/or wore Disney themed clothing. 



 

Math

Students are working hard in our new math unit of study.  This week we took a closer look at place values within large numbers.  Students focused on writing numbers in both standard form and expanded form, and showing larger numbers using place value blocks. 



Skate World 
Many students enjoyed the annual Hill School skating party this week.  Here are some pictures of kids from Room 13 and a couple of cuties from the Wood Family.

 

Weekly Update

All-Star of the Week

This week we joined Braeden as he shared some of his favorites with us.  He brought several wonderful pictures of his family to show us and many items in his share sack.  Some of those items include a first place medal from his jui jitsu tournament, a "Scorpion frozen in glass" souvenir from his vacation and a pocket watch with his dad's initials passed down to him.  He enjoyed sharing a lunch with both his mom and dad, and read his favorite Dr. Seuss book to the class. 

 

Reading

 



Last week students partnered up to learn more about biographies.  Each student read a book about a famous person from our history.  Together, partnerships compared and contrasted the famous people they had read about. 

This week students began our new unit of study on mysteries.  Each student has a case file with a book and information inside that will help them investigate the mystery genre.  Students studied the 'ingredients' found in mystery stories and enjoyed an episode of Scooby-Doo to practice locating those ingredients.  Soon students will join book clubs as they read and discuss mystery books in small groups.

 

 

 

 

Writing

 

Students recently wrapped up our information unit of study, where each student published a book on a topic they consider themselves an expert on.  Along with sharing the books with each other, students will partner up with a 2nd grade class next week to share their knowledge and all of their hard work. 



 

Math

 

Students just took the Unit 3 math test on Friday.  Throughout the week much review was taking place to help students perfect their understanding of measurements, clocks and graphs prior to the test on Friday.  Students measured each others jumps and graphed the class's results. 

 

Social Studies





To finish our region tour of the northeast, students made scrapbook pages in their social studies binders with the many souvenirs from stops along our train trip.  Look for these binders to come home this week!

Weekly Update

Thank you for sharing your wonderful children with us each day!  We truly have a great group of students this year!!  Thanks again so much for the Target gift cards!  We appreciate your thoughtfulness and generosity!  Enjoy the holidays!  See you in the New Year!

Holiday Party
Click on the link below to check out pictures from our super fun class holiday party!  Thanks again to Mrs. Hegdal for planning the party and to ALL parents who donated items and/or their time to help out!  Thanks to Mrs. Diebol for all of the great pictures!
https://goo.gl/photos/R6T6e7bvuaLuJavK8

Science
We have started our Light and Heat Unit.  Students have identified sources of light and learned that light travels in a straight path.  We also talked about shadows and practiced making our own shadow puppets.

Weekly Update

All-Star of the Week

Aastha had a great week as our All-Star!  She brought in many fun items to share with the class including an origami mouse she made, trophy from Indian dance, hand carved wood puzzle from India and several cute pictures from her childhood.  She also read several entertaining poems from Jack Prelutsky's, "I'm Glad I'm Me" book of poetry. 

Social Studies

Students recently finished up our tour of the Northeast Region.  We had many educational stops where we learned about America's history and how the United States got started, and some other stops that taught fun things such as mass producing chocolate candy.  Students are filling out a travel journal during our adventures and will create a scrapbook from all of our stops throughout the year. 

 



Math

Students continue to explore clocks and measurement in Unit 3.  This week students focused on telling time to the quarter hour, half hour, five minute and one minute marks.  Students worked to use language such as 'quarter past', 'quarter to' and 'half past'.  Students are working to write the time as minutes after the hour and minutes until the next hour.  Realizing that there are 60 minutes in an hour helped students subtract to find how many minutes there were until the next hour.  Students also solve for elapsed time using subtraction, number lines and clocks to help.

Reading

Students continue to learn more about non-fiction text by exploring different structures of writing in the books they are reading.  Similar to our current writing unit, students are studying an authors work to understand if it is written in sequential order or as descriptive text.  They are also working to understand the cause and effect relationship while working with partners.

More Gingerbread Houses

Now that we are professionals in the gingerbread house building and decorating, we were asked to assist the kindergarten students as they create their masterpieces.  Third graders partnered with kindergarten buddies in Mrs. Hartley's class.