Team 22 Highlights 5/18/18

Dear Team 22 Families,

We are finally done with MCAS for the year!

Math
On Monday and Tuesday this week, the students completed their MCAS Mathematics exam (both session 1 and 2). We are so proud of all of their hard work!

In Math class, the students are continuing to explore with both area and perimeter.

Reading
The students have now finished up their Mystery unit and will soon begin Social Issue book clubs!! The students impress me every day with their reading skills. It has been an absolute pleasure to watch their progress over the past several months.

Writing
The students have finished their first fairy tale adaptations and have recently begun sharing their tales with the class! Each time a student shares their work, all classmates write a compliment to the presenter. The kids love receiving positive feedback from friends. Listening to each others' stories provides students with more ideas to draw on when starting a new piece. Team 22 is filled with wonderful story tellers. I can't wait for you to read these fairy tales. :)

Social Studies
The students have been learning so much about the Revolutionary War over the past month. This week, we focused on the Battle of Bunker Hill. The students were also introduced to Peter Salem, an African American slave who earned his freedom after enlisting in the Revolutionary War. Peter Salem was a great soldier, helped the colonists fight many battles against the British, and was from Framingham!

Science
We have recently returned back to our Mystery Science curriculum where students focused on the mystery, "Why Do Your Biceps Bulge?" Mystery Science is a class favorite. The students were very engaged in this lesson and will soon be participating in an activity where they will be able to create a robot finger (to show how similar it is to how our own fingers work)! Students will be using paper, tape, string, and paperclips to do this. Stay tuned!

Best,

Miss Weinstein

Team 22 Highlights 5/14/18

Dear Team 22 Families,

We had a wonderful week in school and to wrap it all up, we ended the week with our annual third grade field trip to the Framingham Historical Center. Participating in hands-on activities, studying artifacts from the museum, and learning from all of the guides at the center really tied-in nicely with our third grade social studies curriculum. The students loved hearing about important figures from the Salem Witch Trials and the Revolutionary War whom we had previously studied. The students were very interested to hear that so many of these famous figures were from Framingham, their own hometown! Who knew there was so much history in our own backyard?! 

At the museum, the students did a little time traveling. They went back in time to colonial days. Each student had a chance to help collect water from the "well", use washboards, irons, and sock stretchers, and hang garments up on the clothes line.

The kids even got a feel for what it was like to be a student in the colonial days!

Thank you to all of the parent volunteers who helped chaperone our field trip!

After we returned to school, we ended the day with a class picnic lunch! :)

Best,

Miss Weinstein

Team 22 Highlights 5/4/18

Reading

In Reading, the students have continued working in their Mystery unit. Each day, students are encouraged to add to their suspect/clue charts, entering any new information they have learned about important characters in their books.

In class, we have been reading a book from the Whodunnit Detective Agency series (The Diamond Mystery). We are using this book as our new mentor text. Each day, several pages are read aloud to the class. After the reading, students are able to discuss any ideas or predictions they have with their classmates. The children are constantly on the look-out for important clues, new information on suspects, and red herrings. 

Math

In Math, we have begun working in module 7, our last unit. The students have spent much time getting familiar with a number of key vocabulary words important to geometry concepts (polygon, quadrilateral, rectangle, pentagon, square, rhombus, parallelogram, perimeter, right angle, etc.). Recently, the students have been focusing on problem solving with perimeter and recording perimeter and area on line plots. They are doing a fantastic job!

Writing

In Writing, the students have continued working on the fairy tale adaptations. These third graders are quite the story tellers! Their pieces have been so much fun to read and they love sharing their work with classmates.

The students are putting so much effort into their classwork! Each time a student earns a check for positive behavior, these checks are documented. After receiving 6 checks, students have the opportunity to cash them in for a reward from our class prize bin! The most popular prizes chosen has been the special privilege of eating lunch in the classroom with the teacher and 3 friends as well as the opportunity to join the teacher outside for a picnic in the courtyard. 

Have a great week! 

Best,

Miss Weinstein

Team 22 Highlights 4/13/18

Dear Team 22 Families,

I hope you are all enjoying your April vacation! The year is flying by. We had a busy week at school before break.

Morning Work
The students have continued to develop their critical thinking skills, explaining their own interpretations of quotes left for them on the board. I have been so impressed with the students' insights. It's so much fun to hear them share their thoughts with the class.

Reading
In Reading, the students have continued working in their Mysteries unit. Students are reading books from the A-Z Mysteries series, the Encyclopedia Brown series, the Capital Mysteries series, the Chet Gecko series, and the Boxcar Children series. The students have been working hard to track any suspects and clues. We have been discussing, as a class, the idea that mystery readers always try to solve the mystery at hand before the crime solver (usually the main character in the book) has a chance to do so! This requires the students to always be on high alert for suspects and clues and means that careful attention is being paid to all details mentioned. The students are aware that, as third graders, any predictions they make or thoughts they share must be grounded in evidence. Students are working on supporting their claims with clues presented earlier in the text to back up their reasoning. Each day, students are encouraged to add to their suspect/clue charts, entering any new information they have learned about important characters.

In class, we have been reading the first book from the A-Z Mysteries series, called The Absent Author.  We are using this book as our mentor text. Each day, several chapters are read aloud to the class. After this, students have a chance to do a "Turn-And-Talk" to discuss any ideas or predictions they have with their classmates. It is so exciting to see how the students are using new information they've learned about new characters in order to revise or add on to their previous predictions.

Math
In Math, we wrapped up Module 6, which focused on collecting and displaying data. The students will begin working through Module 7 next week, which will cover geometry concepts.

Writing
Early in the week, the students worked in cooperative groups to finish reading several different adaptations of The Billy Goats Gruff and Little Red Riding Hood. The students very much enjoyed being able to see the similarities and differences between each of the versions they studied. These changes offered inspiration for students when thinking about creating their own fairy tale adaptations!

Later in the week, the students worked together, as a class, to brainstorm different ideas we could use in our class adaptation of Cinderella. Students had a chance to offer their suggestions and then small groups were given the opportunity to act out different scenes. The students had so much fun with this!

We decided to adapt the original story-line of Cinderella, while keeping the same characters in our story. In our class version, Cinderella is still treated much like a servant by her stepmother and stepsisters. Instead of being invited to a royal ball; however, Cinderella receives an invitation to attend a fundraiser for the local library which is in danger of being shut down. Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters loathe the library and, as a result, rip up the invitation and throw it away. Cinderella's wish to attend the fundraiser is later granted by a fairy and Cinderella goes on to save the library.

After students had a chance to act out several scenes from our class version of Cinderella, they had a chance to act out, with a partner, some ideas for their own fairy tale adaptations. It is clear that being able to engage in this type of theatrical play is beneficial for students. Once students can orally narrate a story, it is much easier for them to put pen to paper. This dramatic play also allows students to get a better understanding of how characters might react to certain events, words, or actions thrown their way. After this short activity, students were able to think a bit more deeply about their general stories as well as dialogue they might include.

After the class had time to start writing, a number of enthusiastic students volunteered to share their work with the class. It was really interesting to see how different and creative each of the students' stories was. The students can't wait to get back to their fairy tales!

Social Emotional Learning
This past week during our Circle time, the class focused on learning about a new strategy called, "A Bug and a Wish". The students first watched a video in which the strategy was explained and examples were provided in regard to appropriate times to use the strategy.

The students were instructed to resort to the following sentence frame when someone in school (or even at home) is bothering them. 

In order to further practice this strategy using real-life examples, student volunteers came up, picked a scenario out of a hat, and then had to act out the given situation and solve the problem using "A Bug and a Wish". The students did an amazing job with this. I even caught a number of them referring to the "Bug and a Wish" poster hanging in our classroom to use the appropriate language to solve small problems during the remainder of the day! 

Have a fantastic April break.

Best,

Miss Weinstein