Important Highlights for the Week!

• Field Trip:  Wednesday, October 19th, we will be traveling by bus to the Barre Opera House this for the play, "Jigsaw Jones".  We will board the bus promptly at 9am.  Please make sure you child arrives at school on time.
• Picture Retake Day:  Thursday, October 20th.  Please let us know if you plan on having your child have their picture redone.  Send in any paperwork needed for this process.  This is also a day to have your son or daughter's picture taken if they were absent/did not have their picture taken on picture day in September.
• Open House:  Thursday, October 20th. Come visit our classroom with your child from 6pm-7pm.  Students will be able to show you what 3rd grade is all about!
• Recorder Forms:  Friday, October 21st. Please return the music forms regarding recorders to Ms. Gelfon by this date.

This Week in CC-3!

We've had a great, busy four day week here in CC-3!  Students have been working on writing short opinion pieces about "assets" they think should exist in East Montpelier Village.  Please ask your child to tell you about his/her asset.  These ideas will be shared at next Thursday's Open House.  We also continue to work on narrative writing and reading skills.

In reading this week, we continued to focus on envisioning and predicting as well as reading fluency. When it comes to reading fluency, we're concentrating on reading accurately with expression that demonstrates an understanding of what is being read.  Fluency is a critical skill to be developed and practiced as students continue to grow as readers.  In class we concentrate on reading in a voice that sounds like a conversation, rather than reading like a robot! Here are a few of the big ideas we're working on:

• When I'm reading, I sound like a storyteller.
• I read with expression, like how it sounds when adults read to me.
• I read at a comfortable pace, one that matches the text I am reading.
• When I read it sounds smooth, like talking.
• I pay attention to punctuation and pause at commas, dashes, and end punctuation.
• I work on changing my voice a bit when a different character is speaking.
• I scoop up words in phrases, smoothing out parts when my reading gets bumpy.
• I go back and reread tricky parts to get it just right.
• I sweep my eyes ahead of the word that I am reading now. I try to scoop up as many words as I can, in a phrase or sentence, using just one breath.

When reading with your child at home, all of the above are great things to encourage and practice!

Sharing

We're seeing a few struggles when it comes to students being prepared for their share day.  Some students do not come ready to present on his/her assigned day.  This causes a backup on the subsequent days. When we have a long list of presenters, it effects our schedule, as well as the quality of sharing.  It is expected and important that your child come ready to share on his or her assigned day.  You can access the sharing calendar to see this information and the week's topic using this link: Sharing Calendar.

It is also important to remember that a component of our listening and speaking skills, is coming prepared (as a presenter) to speak with well thought out pieces of information.  Many children find it helpful to have their 2-3 pieces of information (about their share) written down on a sticky note(s), or on an index card.  In the case of this week, children found it helpful to have bookmarks or notes that marked the dialogue they were going to share with the class.  We hope helping your son or daughter prepare for his or her sharing is a fun activity for your family.  It should not take more than 10 minutes. Your child can even prepare early and bring his or her notes and/or items to school for safe keeping until his or her share day.

If you or your child are unclear about the sharing focus for the week, or need more support for this expectation, please do not hesitate to contact us.  We would be happy to clarify and help.

Next week

• Wednesday-Trip to the Barre Opera House!  Please make sure your child makes it to school on time as we need to start loading the bus at 9:00 a.m.!
• Thursday-EMES Open House 6:00 p.m. All students and families are welcome!  We hope to see you then!
• Reminder that the grass is often wet in the morning now, and the cool air is settling in.  Please remember to send in a second pair of shoes for outside PE and recess so students can have a nice, warm, dry pair of shoes ready for the rest of the day.  It is also that time of year to remember layers, like fall jackets.

Have a great weekend!

Reading Updates & Important Dates

WOW!  It's hard to believe that October is already here and moving along quickly!  We're so proud of how hard our 3rd graders are working.  They have become a great community of learners.

Reading Workshop
We continue to work on reading and writing narrative stories.  In reading workshop, we're currently reading the book Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner as our class read aloud.  Ask your child to tell you about it thus far.  This book is a key anchor text in regard to our work within the "Narrative Reading Learning Progression" for 3rd graders. (A copy of the complete progression is in the booklet we gave out and/or sent home at parent night).  We are currently focused on three parts of the progression-envisioning/predicting, checking comprehension and fluency. These goals are great to review with your child as you read together at home. Here are the goals for third graders in regard to their development in each area.
(Courtesy  © 2015 by Lucy Calkins and Colleagues from the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project from Units of Study for Teaching Reading (Heinemann: Portsmouth, NH)

Envisioning and Predicting
I make a mental movie as I read. I imagine the setting, the characters, the events, and characters’ reactions to them. I predict what the main character will do, say, and think (and how the character will react to things) based on earlier parts of the text. I can explain the reasons for my predictions.

Checking Comprehension~Monitoring for Sense
I expect the story to make sense, and when it does not, I use fix-up strategies such as rereading and asking questions, including the 5 Ws. To regain my grip on the storyline, I recall the sequence of events, often trying to sort through what the main character really wants, the problems he or she confronts, and ways the character rises to those challenges.
(The 5 Ws-Who? What? Where? When? Why?)

Fluency
I can read in my head and aloud in ways that help my listeners and me understand the story (e.g., changing my voice to show dialogue or a character’s feelings). The new work I’m doing now is that I can do this even when I’m reading longer sentences.

In regard to reading at home, we hope that you are encouraging your child to read daily for sustained periods of time.  Reading with and to your child is also terrific! Students have developed excellent reading habits at school and are ready to read many texts for extended periods of time.  This is truly how they will grow as readers!  We welcome students to borrow books to bring home from our extensive classroom library.  We have a simple system for signing the books out.  We are also always happy to help out with book selections. We've been doing some class "Book Buzzing" when we talk about great books that we think other students might enjoy reading.

Important Dates

• Friday, October 7 is a WCSU Teacher Inservice Day~No School for students.
• Monday, October 10 we are all off for the Columbus Day Holiday
• Monday, October 10-Scholastic Book Orders are due.  Online-search for Mrs. Christy's class, the code is DXCXK.
• Wednesday, October 19~Trip to the Barre Opera House-all permission slips are in!  We will be back in time for lunch.
• Thursday, October 20  EMES Open House for students and their families~6:00 p.m.

Friday Folder Items

We put a couple of important items into Friday Folders today, so please be on the lookout for them.  Also, please remember to empty out folders and return them with your child on Monday.  Thanks!

1. A permission slip for our trip to the Barre Opera House on Wednesday, October 19th.  The hot pink form has all the information about the trip.
2. Two Scholastic book orders.  Book orders will be due by Monday, October 10th.  You may order from either flyer or both.  Only one check is necessary, it needs to be made out to SCHOLASTIC. An even easier way to order is online.  Just go to Scholastic and follow the directions for online ordering. Our class online code is DXCXK.  At the site you'll have the opportunity to search for even more books than just the flyers we send home!  Remember, if you order books, our class will earn Bonus Points, and with points we are able to continue to add to our classroom library!  

Classroom Curriculum News

This week marks the completion of our fourth week of third grade.  We've been busy in all academic areas.  Please read on for an update of all curriculum areas.

Math

We have been quite busy these past few weeks.  Students have been reviewing basic addition and subtraction facts to strengthen their fluent recall of them.  We have also been working on reading, writing, and determining values of numbers up to the one hundred thousands place.  In addition to this work, students have been solving addition problems up to the hundred thousands place with and without regrouping (carrying).  Soon, we will be solving subtraction problems with and without regrouping (borrowing).  These math concepts are important foundational skills that students need in third grade prior to our work with multiplication.  

We have also been working on rounding numbers to the nearest decade.  Understanding rounding helps students make estimations before solving calculations.  Estimation is an important skill for students to practice as a way to check their work.  

Sharing

As you may have noticed, the sharing calendar is often made a month or two in advance. There will be times this year when events such as the All School Hike pop up after the calendar is created.  In instances such as this, if your child is supposed to share on the day of the event, he or she can choose to share the day before or the day after the event.  This Friday’s hike is postponed until next Friday, September 30th.  Students scheduled to share next  Friday, can share next Thursday or the following Monday.

Discovery

Each week, the students’ discovery block focuses on science and social studies lessons. We began the year by building our classroom community and learning about a few character traits.  We have focused on perseverance, kindness, and teamwork.  These are three great traits for third graders to have.  

As you know, our class has done a fantastic job demonstrating kindness to each other and to the larger community by raising money to purchase books for a school in Louisiana.

Students tested their perseverance and teamwork this week with a fun activity.  Teams were given an ice cube with a small bead frozen in the center.  The teams were given rules before they could begin to retrieve the bead, such as you cannot bang or chip at the ice, you cannot add hot or cold water to the ice cube, you may not put it in your mouth etc.  Students worked well as teammates, were creative in their approaches, and even when their ice cube did not seem to be shrinking in size, they did not give up.  They definitely exhibited perseverance and teamwork.

Next week, we will be beginning our geography unit with a study of globes, maps, continents, and oceans.  As the unit progresses, we will also investigate our country, concluding with the presidential election in November.

Reading and Writing Workshop

What is reading and writing workshop?  What does it look like in our 3rd grade classroom?

Reading and writing workshop are the the cornerstones of our reading and writing instructional program. This is the time of our day for students to grow as readers and writers.  As students and teachers, we know that readers and writers improve by doing two key things...READING and WRITING! Thankfully, a workshop model provides plenty of time for both! Each workshop session typically lasts between 40-60 minutes. There are 4 component pieces of a workshop session.

• The Mini-Lesson: The teacher provides whole group instruction that actively engages students. (Generally 5-10 minutes)
• Independent Reading or Writing Time-Students work independently or sometimes in small groups with the teacher. During this time students are practicing strategies that have been learned, receiving feedback about their work, working on reading and writing goals.  They read and write! (30-40 minutes)
• Mid-workshop Teaching:  The teacher asks students to pause and reflect on progress, reiterates the goals of the days work, adds a tidbit of information to student work. (1-3 minutes)
• Sharing:  Students share within partnerships, small groups or whole class meetings to share out key learning, accomplishments or new goals that were established during the workshop time.(5-10 minutes)

Word Study

This year we'll focus on three areas in regard to word study.  First, we'll be working on building vocabulary through read alouds, writing and reading workshop, and discovery.  Second, we'll be focusing on spelling strategies, learning specific things we can do and be aware of to become better spellers.  Third, we'll work in small groups on phonics and direct spelling instruction,  This work will be determined through individual spelling assessments and daily work.

As you can see, third grade is a busy place!  Each and every day is FULL!  We thank you for sending your children to us ready to work hard and make great gains.  We'll continue to give curriculum updates as the year unrolls.  In the meantime, please don't hesitate to let us know if you have any questions. Enjoy your weekend!

Sincerely,

Christine & Kathy

Our Kindness Project and a Few Tidbits!

We've completed another great full week of school here in CC~3.  We're incredibly proud of this wonderful group of students and the learning community we are all becoming. Our routines are now well established and we're making academic progress daily!  Third grade is such an exciting year of growth!

This week we've continued to develop our community by focusing on the ideas of perserverance and kindness.  One way we've done this is to read great books that have been wonderful for discussion.  In regard to kindness, two picture book highlights of this week included:  Each Kindness by Jacqueline Woodson and The Invisible Boy by Trudy Ludwig.(Mrs. Lyford came and read this one to us, and left it in our classroom library as a gift!) We have also just started a new chapter book about kindness, The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes.  

Please ask your child about these books, it's a great opportunity for them to retell the stories to you!

We've also been practicing small acts of kindness. These include actions such as giving a peer a genuine compliment, holding the door open for someone, or picking up something off the floor that’s not yours.  Throughout the week, we have also talked about big acts of kindness.  We determined, whether big or small, showing kindness to others makes a lasting impression.

Throughout the rest of September, we have an opportunity to complete a LARGE act of kindness, so as a class we decided to do it!   We are excited to participate in Bear Pond Books and Kellogg Hubbard Library’s book drive.  Our class will be purchasing new books for a school in Louisiana that lost all of their books during summer flooding.

To accomplish our goal, we will be popping popcorn during the afternoon, next Wednesday, September 21st.  Students will help bag the popcorn, and sell it to the EMES community Thursday morning for $0.50 a bag.  Our goal is to sell 100 bags of popcorn.  In anticipation of reaching our goal, students have already chosen the books we would like to purchase for the school in Louisiana.  

If you would like to be part of this great act of kindness, please let Mrs. Christiano and Mrs. Christy know by Tuesday, September 20th. We would appreciate parent volunteers to help pop and bag on Wednesday afternoon.

Tidbits

• Please remember to send in bus notes, as you know we have a shared classroom, so if we don't get notes, it's hard for us to be sure about and coordinate student dismissal plans. You are welcome to email them as well!
• Next Friday, September 23rd, is EMES HIKE DAY! The raindate is Friday, September 30th.
• Don't forget to check the sharing calendar for the "focus of the week", next week's focus is to bring in something about Autumn, as this new season begins on Thursday, September 22nd!

Parent Night and Chrome Books

Last night was our EMES Parent Information Night.  We send thanks to the families that were able to attend and learn about our CC~3 class.  We were able to launch the "BIG 3", a new mantra for our classroom!  We hope these three verbs will become a cornerstone for ourselves and our students throughout the year.

              CC~3 

• Communicate
• Collaborate
• Cooperate

If you were unable to make it, we will put the booklet of information we shared in your child's Friday Folder.  We also included a gold sheet for you to fill-in if there is anything in particular you'd like us to know to make third grade the best it can be for your child and family. Please send the sheet back to us as soon as you can.  As always, please don't hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or would like to set up a time for us to meet.

Chrome books are here!  Last Friday, Ms. Arlyn introduced our class to their new chrome books.  It was a very exciting event!  Each student was assigned a brand new chrome book that will remain with him/her throughout grades 3-6 at EMES.  Chrome books will always remain at school so they can be utilized for various classes and projects.  Last week, we  logged on, found Typing Club on the EMES website and had a bit of time to practice keyboarding skills.  Your child can access Typing Club from home as well, via this link EMES Typing Club or from the  EMES website.  Keyboarding is a great skill to practice at home, it will truly make a difference in each child's technology progress and is an incredible lifelong skill to foster.

Chrome books in action!