Whew! February has been a whirlwind of cold, snow-filled days! We are doing our best here in Room 12 to stay warm, energetic and motivated to learn.
A BIG thank you is well deserved to parents and students who kindly donated new and used board games to our classroom! They have been getting much use during our indoor recess times and we really appreciate your generosity.
Speaking of board games, did you know that all three the third grade classes convinced Mrs. DeFrancisco to buy games for every teacher at the Hardy school? It’s true! As a start to our persuasive essay-writing unit, each class composed a letter explaining a change they felt needed to happen in our school. Mrs. DeFrancisco was invited into Room 12 and each class read aloud their essays. She was impressed by their persuasion and agreed to purchase two games for each class! Now students are continuing to write persuasive opinion essays on a wide variety of topics, ranging from winter being the best season, to why there should be more time to independently read in school.
In reading, we started literature circle groups. Students chose from a table filled with chapter books. They are reading them in small groups with their classmates while holding mini book clubs. This is a fun and exciting time for students because they are able to discuss the elements of literature with their peers while identifying areas within the book they most enjoyed, or didn’t enjoy for that matter. Additionally, we will be moving into learning about folktales and fables. We will also be packing our bags and traveling to MCAS-Landia! I’ll have a separate blog update on this soon!
After wrapping up multiplication and division, we spent several weeks on the concept of area in math. Students made area models using the letters of their names as a culminating project. We will circle back to multiplication, division and area once more before the year ends. Now we are onto fractions. Today was our first day discovering fractions and I was impressed with their curiosity and background knowledge. Stay tuned for more!
A BIG thank you is well deserved to parents and students who kindly donated new and used board games to our classroom! They have been getting much use during our indoor recess times and we really appreciate your generosity.
Speaking of board games, did you know that all three the third grade classes convinced Mrs. DeFrancisco to buy games for every teacher at the Hardy school? It’s true! As a start to our persuasive essay-writing unit, each class composed a letter explaining a change they felt needed to happen in our school. Mrs. DeFrancisco was invited into Room 12 and each class read aloud their essays. She was impressed by their persuasion and agreed to purchase two games for each class! Now students are continuing to write persuasive opinion essays on a wide variety of topics, ranging from winter being the best season, to why there should be more time to independently read in school.
In reading, we started literature circle groups. Students chose from a table filled with chapter books. They are reading them in small groups with their classmates while holding mini book clubs. This is a fun and exciting time for students because they are able to discuss the elements of literature with their peers while identifying areas within the book they most enjoyed, or didn’t enjoy for that matter. Additionally, we will be moving into learning about folktales and fables. We will also be packing our bags and traveling to MCAS-Landia! I’ll have a separate blog update on this soon!
After wrapping up multiplication and division, we spent several weeks on the concept of area in math. Students made area models using the letters of their names as a culminating project. We will circle back to multiplication, division and area once more before the year ends. Now we are onto fractions. Today was our first day discovering fractions and I was impressed with their curiosity and background knowledge. Stay tuned for more!