Week of January 30 - February 2

Greetings 3rd Grade Families!  

I am excited to announce that we will be welcoming a new student to our class this week!  If everything goes as planned, Emile will be joining us tomorrow.  He has just arrived from Senegal, Africa, and will be joining the Llewellyn Elementary School community.  We are honored to welcome him and wish to make his first days at school as wonderful as possible.  

In preparation for Emile's arrival, we spent some time on Thursday preparing a welcome sign and photos of our class and our names.  Emile speaks French, so this sign says "Welcome to our class Emile" in French.

Oops, I forgot to hang up the "e" at the end of "class".

I plan to have each student introduce themselves, showing Emile their picture and name.  These will then stay on display in the classroom so Emile has time to learn everyone's name.  Next week I will post a brief bio on Emile once we get to know a little bit more about him.

LITERACY

Last week in literacy, we finished up our 3^rd Unit: People and Nature as we read Volcanoes: Nature’s Incredible Fireworks. 

This week's reading comprehension skill was main idea and supporting details.  In order to practice this skill, each student received a photocopy of the story so they could underline all of the details that relate to the main idea, "how does a volcano erupt?" Once they were finished reading and underlining, they cut out the evidence and created an illustration based on evidence from the text.

     

The students did a fantastic job!

READER'S WORKSHOP

CHARACTER PORTRAITS

on book pages

 By now, all students have selected a page from their novel that shows good evidence for their character's personality.  Once they have illustrated a related portrait of their character, incorporating the words from the page (evidence) into the image, they then glue the page onto a background clearly displaying the character's name and trait for all to see.  Once they are all on display, this will help reinforce the concept of a "character trait" and expand their understanding of the variety of traits that can exist.
                   

WRITING

Our second informational articles are underway. 

 Many students have finished conducting their online research and have begun their rough drafts.  Others are still gathering information in their writing planners.  

MATH

On Monday, we continued our exploration of multiplication as we looked at still more ways it could be represented.  Students will be expected to show their thinking for multiplication in several ways, as well as be able to interpret all of the representations shown below.  

Connecting arrays to multiplication was the focus of a couple days this week.

Students worked in pairs to display a group of multiplication facts as an "array".

After they had created and extended their multiplication pattern up to 10, they assembled their pattern on a strip of paper.

x 2 array growing pattern

x 6 array growing pattern

 x 9 array growing pattern

This week we will display them together depicting a visual representation of our multiplication facts.

An array is a very common visual to show multiplication because it inherently contains "equal-sized groups" organized in rows or columns.  

We also continued our timed multiplication tests this week.  Please be sure your child is practicing their flashcards at home. The timed tests are frequent and on-going. (results not shown on this pic)

So far, the students have taken 3 timed tests - the x 0/x 1, the x 2, and the x 5. Again, please remind them to practice daily!

On Thursday we began color-coding a multiplication table to draw attention to our different groups of facts. 

We discussed why the x 0 facts are referred to as the "zero property", and the  x 1 facts are referred to as the "identity property".  Then we colored in our      x 2 facts (doubles) and our x 5 facts (clock facts).  These are considered the easiest groups of facts to master, before continuing on to the x 3, x 4 and x 6 facts.  Students will be able to progress through their facts at their own pace, taking time to study and practice their flashcards at home.

ART

This week students had a chance to create their second mosaic background for our Winter Bird on a Wire art project.  

Thank you Miller Paint for donating the paint samples for this art project.

The smaller version will be used as our Auction Art Project, with the finished pieces being mounted together to make a single unified art piece for the Llewellyn Auction.

The larger version will be put on display outside our classroom and will eventually come home with your child.  Stay tuned for the next step in this project, adding telephone wires and bird silhouettes.

               Planning Ahead...

Even though we are working hard on our second informational articles, it's time to begin thinking ahead to our exciting 3rd Grade Important Person Project.  

IMPORTANT PERSON PROJECT

The third grade Important Person Project will be starting in late February.  The "Important Person Project" is essentially a Biography Speech.  The students will be expected to choose a person to research, read an at-level biography book about that person, and write and present their biography speech to the class.  Please begin discussing this project with your child.  I will be introducing the project to students this week.   They can begin thinking about the person they want to research and perhaps check out a book from the Multnomah County Library.  

It is very important that your child chooses a book they can read by themselves. We will be reading the books during Reader's Workshop, as I continue to model close reading skills combined with note-taking skills.    There are many 3rd grade level biographies available.  You just have to look!  Some suggested series are the “Who Was?” series or the “I Am” series.  You can find these on Amazon.com for $5, or visit the library.  Please let me know if you have any concerns about finding a book.  I can help!  Here are some great examples:

      

The expectation is that the students bring their book to school on Tuesday, February 21. They will then read their book at school, and write their speech in class during our writing time.  Once their speech has been written, they will need to spend time at home, preparing for their speech.  I will send home a detailed description and timeline for this project soon.  In the meantime, please begin to discuss this project with your child in order to help them select an important person and locate an appropriate book.  

IMPORTANT DATES

February 7-  PTA Meeting 7:00 pm

February 10- Small-Tall-Ball 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm

February 14- Valentine's Day Party 1:00-2:00

February 15- Medical Exclusion Day

February 20- NO SCHOOL- President's Day