Friday, January 28, 2011

What a fun day!

We had such a great day today at school. We began the day with a lesson on geometric shapes and the numbers of faces, edges, and vertices of each shape. Then we went to our AR celebration where everyone in our class received an award. I want to give special recognition to Thomas and Taniah for being our highest point and percent earners. We also celebrated in our classrooms by playing games and dancing.

We will have a math test on Tuesday of this week on our geometry concepts that we have studied. Please make sure that your child continues to study their multiplication facts.

Want something to talk about tonight at the dinner table? Why not discuss the 25th anniversary of the Challenger explosion? They have read the book "Ron's Big Mission" and can already give you a little bit of information about this time. Talk with them about the "Space Race" between us and Russia. What implications did this have for the United States at that time?

Have a great weekend and see you on Monday.

Thursday, January 20, 2011

No school tomorrow!!!

Parents there is no school tomorrow. It is a teacher work day. CMS has extended the nine weeks through January 25th. This is to make up for the snow days that we missed. This will give students the opportunity to turn in some assignments that they may have missed. Some points are always better than no points at all. We have started our geometry unit and are getting to use the SMART board software with this unit. It allows all of our lessons to be very interactive and helps to keep the students actively engaged.

It has been great seeing all of the constellation projects. The students did a good job putting these projects together and presenting them to the class.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

Today in class we celebrated the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. We used the SMART Board Technology to complete a lesson on our LCD projector about his life and then we watched a video on Discovery Education about Dr. King's accomplishments. The students really enjoyed this lesson and many of them showed their enthusiasm by checking out books from the library about Dr. King's life.

We also reviewed for our test tomorrow on graphs and coordinate grids. Check out the website to see descriptions about these curriculum items.

We still have students that have not turned in their multiplication logs. If your child has lost their log, just write up a list of all the dates they studied their flash cards and which facts they studied on those days.

I am currently having PEP conferences for all of those students that are on a PEP. Please make sure that you sign up for a time to come in and speak with me about your child's progress.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Snow, Ice, and Freezing Rain!!!

I hope all of you enjoyed playing in the snow yesterday with your families. My son Kale got to go sledding for the first time yesterday and he had a blast. We went "Southern Sledding" as I like to call it, meaning we used a pool float to sled on. We had a small snow ball fight and then went inside for some "snow cream". It was a really nice day shared with my family. The make-up day for this snow day will be January 17th. We will be celebrating the life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on this day.

Today I woke up to an icy wonderland outside. It was very difficult to even get down my stairs and walk the dogs. I hope all of you are staying safe and warm inside your homes. Take this day to get some work done on your constellation projects and extra credit planet projects. Remember that these projects are due on January 14th. We will have a multiplication timed test tomorrow, so make sure that you are studying your flash cards.

Take care and have another wonderful day off.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

The Phases of the Moon

One of my sons got a model of the moon that shows all of the phases of the moon for Christmas. I think I was more excited than he was about this gift, because I knew that I was going to bring it into school to show my students the phases of the moon. I brought it in yesterday and we watched as the moon lit up and the different phases were described on the CD as was the history of the moon. The students gave a lot of "cools" and "neat". It was good for them to get to see the phases and how they transitioned from one to the other. We have also started our moon observations in our observation log in the lap books. We began on January 4 with a New Moon cycle. They were able to see yesterday how it moved into a Waxing Crescent phase. We will continue to look at all of the cycles of the moon, so they can see the complete one month cycle.

The movie afternoon was a lot of fun. We did not get to finish the movie, however we will get those students together that paid for the movie next week and we will allow them finish. Thank you for your continued support.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Pictographs and More

Today in class we discussed pictographs and how to transfer the information from a tally mark graph to a pictograph. I also stressed that the most important thing of looking at a pictograph is paying attention to the key. The pictures in the pictograph typically represent more than one thing. A * might equal 5 on one graph and 10 on another. Students commonly make the mistake by only counting the stars as one and then they will get the answer wrong.

I was extremely proud of both groups today when we were completing our SOLVE problem. Both groups realized that they needed to both round and add, when they saw the key words "about" and "in all". I cheered for both groups because it is really setting in. We will continue to do one SOLVE problem everyday. This will help the students to review all concepts taught this school year and help them understand how to solve a word problem and look for the key words so that they will know whether to add, subtract, multiply, or divide. There is a SOLVE key word section in the FROG binder. Please let me know if you need another one.

Please remember that the multiplication logs are due on January 10th. The constellation projects are due on January 14th. If your child needs any materials to complete the constellation project, please let me know and I will help provide them.

We will be having PEP conferences soon. I will be sending home the conference sign-up sheets soon. I look forward to meeting with you.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Graphing and Project

Today I introduced tally mark and bar graphs. This is usually a pretty easy concept for most students. The biggest thing they have to remember is that the bottom line is always the x-axis and the left side line is always the y-axis. We discussed making sure that the graph has a title and that we label both the x and y-axis. We looked at how tally marks can be used to poll people to find out information. Today we discovered what our favorite snow day activities are; throwing snow balls won by a long shot. I personally chose reading a book by the fire.

I also assigned the constellation project to the students that will be due on January 14th. Please let me know if you need any help getting information for this project. I will help them find the information at school and send it home with them to complete their poster.

The students seemed really tired and sluggish today, hopefully they will perk up tomorrow!!

Saturday, January 1, 2011

Welcome back on January 3rd.

I hope that all of you had a wonderful and restful break. It is now time to get back to work. We will begin 2011 with a running start. We will continue our multiplication timed test through January 31st for our ice cream party, we will also take our addition and subtraction timed test throughout the school year. It is very important that all students master their addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts before they leave third grade. Please continue to work on these flash cards with your students. The multiplication logs are due on January 10th. Many students have already turned these in. If you have completed the log with your child, go ahead and turn it in.

We will have a constellation project coming home on January 3rd, that will be due on January 14th. There will also be an extra credit planet project coming home on January 3rd and it will also be due on January 14th.

WE WILL GRADUATE IN 2020!! We have discussed this every day this school year. It is so important that our children understand the importance of graduating from high school and going on to study in higher education. We have researched the colleges we would like to attend and the careers we would like to have when we get older. We will be completing an extensive research project on our careers and colleges in the coming months.

Thank you for all of your support in 2010. I know that 2011 will bring many successes our way!!