Thank you and updates!

Thank you so much for your attendance at Student Led Conferences on Friday.  Our attendance was 100%!  All of our students were so proud to share their growth as learners.  We were very impressed and proud of them as well!  Below are a few scenes of the day!

In other news...
SBAC Tests:  With a bit of luck, all students should be finished with testing on Friday afternoon.  Any students who have been absent, or have required more time, may need to finish testing next week.  We are proud of the determination, attitude and perseverance students have demonstrated in this process.

April Kindness Project:  We'd like to do our own CC-3 version of the "Rock Kindness Project".  We introduced the project to students on Wednesday to get them thinking about ideas.  Here is a short video Kindness Rock Video link that we showed students you may wish to have a look at.  We're excited to create our own rocks, next Friday, April 14th. So, we're calling all rocks!  If you can be on the lookout for some smoother style rocks about the size depicted in the video and send them in, we'd really appreciate it!

New reading and writing units of study have begun.  This week, we launched two new units!

In reading, we're working on Character Studies.  This unit focuses on getting to know characters in chapter books really, really well.  So well, that we can make predictions about behavior and inferences based upon what we know about characters that are more complex than we've studied in the past.  Students will be encouraged to read as many chapter books as they possibly can in this unit, and often series of books. Book series help students see characters grow and change over time, or be faced with a variety of obstacles and problems through a collection of books. We'll also be concentrating on learning the "story arc" or "story mountain" of how books go.  Students will learn that stories begin with an ascent up the mountain, climax with a conflict, and then descend for a resolution.

In writing, we've begun a unit entitled, Changing the World!  This unit focuses on writing strong opinions in the form of speeches.  Students will be concentrating on building persuasive introductions by stating strong opinions or claims.  Opinions will be backed up with reasons and elaborated with details that support their reasons.  Students will be encouraged to create conclusions that support their opinions and continue to convince readers that action is needed.  This is always a fun unit, as third graders are very, very passionate people!

This writing unit is also tied into this month's sharing.  The week after vacation, students will share an opinion piece about a favorite book. This week, we shared a sample of a piece, and passed out writing paper for this assignment.  This sample can be seen by clicking on our sharing calendar and the direct link to the sample piece on The Little House. It's a great idea for students to be thinking about this now, as vacation should be homework free, if the assignment is done.  Students were given copies of two different organizers they may wish to use while completing this assignment on Wednesday, April 5th.