Friday, November 8, 2019

Happy Snowy Friday!
Last week's storm threw us all for a loop! I hope you all managed to stay dry.

We've had another busy few weeks.  We have been finishing up units and starting new ones. We finished our Vermont Geography unit -- and celebrated  by making candy maps. Most of the kids have done a really wonderful job learning where many of Vermont's geographic features are located. They also learned about how Vermont's geography has made it possible for various industries/businesses to flourish here.  They learned about the difference between human, natural and capital resources, paying attention mostly to the natural resources we have here in our beautiful state. This week, we moved on to learning about how humans use natural resources for energy. We will be learning about coal, wind, solar, hydro, and others. The main concepts in this unit are that some natural resources are renewable and others are not, and that no matter which we use, there are consequences for our plant.  Not a cheery topic, but one kids can learn about and then use to make good choices.

Our new math units focus on addition and subtraction. Third graders are learning to conceptualize what 1,000 looks like and they are understanding magnitude of large numbers and place value. They are learning new strategies to put tens together to make hundreds, and ones together to make tens. This work sets them up well for 4th grade units next year, when they will need to learn regrouping so they can add and subtract more efficiently.  Fourth graders are learning similar skills, but they are conceptualizing 10,000! They are learning how to use regrouping ("carrying and borrowing") when they add and subtract using the algorithm that we all used when we were in school (MANY years ago for me....)  They love the efficiency of the algorithm now that they can understand what it means when they put those little marks in each place value column!

We also finished up our narrative reading and narrative writing units! The students should have brought home their writing pieces -- and yesterday they completed an "on-demand" assessment piece to show me all they have learned.  I will be scoring these soon, and the scores will appear on report cards.  Next we launch our informational writing unit. The kids will be writing "expert" books, and learning to organize their information in a variety of ways. This is the unit I love the most -- huge growth happens as they begin to use paragraphs and think of other ways to separate the parts of their books.  We will also read informational books at the same time, giving us lots of mentor texts to use as examples in our own writing. 

Today I learned about a wonderful website that I want to share with you.  Here is the link: https://www.ryanandcraig.com/read-alouds  This is a website where Randy and Craig, two funny and engaging men, read books out loud. Like teachers, they stop and think out loud during the read aloud, engaging listeners and making them think.  This is a wonderful way to get your reluctant readers to be involved with stories!  I highly recommend checking it out. There are MANY books on the website, all read aloud by these 2 funny guys. Who wouldn't love that?

Okay, that is all for this week. I hope you all have a wonderful and restful weekend -- the crazy holiday season is almost upon us!


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