It was a fun Beach Day in the classroom today! The morning was pretty exciting, but we settled down and got a smooth groove going for our academic time this afternoon.  The sun is shining, it's Friday, and it feels good to have another week  under our belts.

We finished up our math unit this week. I am impressed by the students and their ability to use the US algorithm to add and subtract really large numbers! Making the 10,000 chart, while tedious, really  helps us understand how the number system works. We are ready to move on! Next week we will start our fraction unit. Since the students really didn't get much time to learn about fractions in third grade, we will start slowly with a lot of review so that we build a solid foundation. I will send home a digital copy of the family letter so you have more information about what our goals will be for the unit.

In reading, we have started our "Social Issues Book Clubs" unit. I am so proud of these students for having such a good grasp of the most important issues of our time! They are so filled with compassion and a desire for fairness and equity. So far, we have discussed what a book club looks like, we have read a number of picture books with social issues, and we have discovered that we need to pay attention to the parts of books that make us uncomfortable in order to find the most important issues. The students seem really stoked about their new books, and they are begging for reading time! That makes me smile from ear to ear.

Our new writing unit has also started. We are doing opinion writing. I started with a pre-assessment. Then I gave the students the checklist and a mentor text so they could set some goals for themselves. Then we began a class essay about why Vermont is a great place to live. Our opinion pieces will have a claim (or thesis) and 3 reasons, followed by 3 paragraphs (one for each reason.) Our Vermont essay starts with the claim "Vermont is a great place to live because it is beautiful, it has lots of yummy foods, and it has a variety of weather." We then wrote one paragraph about the beauty, one about the foods, and one about the weather. Ask your kids to tell you more about this process!

Today in Social Studies, we learned about Vermont's government and who runs it. Next week we will learn about how a bill becomes a law. We will look at one or two actual bills and have a healthy debate, just like our General Assembly does! I'm amazed, once again, at how much these kids have soaked up, and how much they care about what could be a dry topic!

Quick reminders about Valentine's Day: Bringing Valentines is totally optional, but they need to be brought for everyone if they are brought for anyone. No food or candy is allowed. We won't be having any sort of party, but the class will have a chance to pass out Valentines next Friday. It will be an otherwise normal day.

New words this week: cogitate, replenish, exasperate. Enjoy!

Have a restful, replenishing weekend!

 Happy chilly Friday! We were indoors all day today, but the sunshine certainly helped!

We've had another busy week this week. We made a 10,000's chart, which meant we had to make 100 one hundreds charts! The students discovered that 100 X 100 is 10,000, and that working with those large numbers is hard. A few of them jokingly accused me of child labor, but they got the chart more or less finished in only 3 days -- a record in all of my years of teaching! Today we started adding and subtracting using large numbers, with story contexts about stadiums and seating. This is a whole new level of conceptual understanding, and I plan to take my time and make sure we all understand before we move on to our next unit -- fractions. Gulp.

Since we are between reading and writing units, I gave the students the opportunity to free-read this week. They had been doing some independent research on a topic of their choice, and many of them opted to continue that reading during their research time. I love seeing them choose to read nonfiction!  During writing, we started learning about figurative language. We learned to recognize and to write similes and metaphors, and I am hopeful that these will start showing up in their own writing soon!

We continued learning about the government this week. We learned all about the 3 branches and what each one does, and how they all work together to create a balance of power. Today we made 3 Branches Cootie Catchers, and I asked the class to bring them home to test their grown-ups. Please ask your child to show you this fun activity! Next week we will learn about the difference between Republicans and Democrats, how a bill becomes a law, and what our Vermont government looks like. We will wrap up our civics unit before February break and move back into science.

Valentine's Day is coming up, and here are a few things you need to know:

• Nobody has to participate at all, but if your children want to be involved, they need to give a Valentine to everyone in the class.I will place a class list on the Bitmoji classroom so that your  kids can access it.
• Unfortunately, due to COVID restrictions, we cannot have any candy or food items, even if sealed and store-bought, handed out for Valentine's Day.
• I plan to have another crafting hour -- next Friday-- and the students can use that hour to make Valentine cards for their classmates. I have plenty of materials that they can use, and I plan to keep it simple. If your child prefers to buy Valentine's cards or make them at home, that is also fine. They can also start their cards here and then take them home to embellish or finish them. I am flexible, but I wanted to give everyone materials and opportunity to participate, and to take one more thing off your plate at home.

Please let me know if you have questions or concerns about this. 

Finally, we got back to our class dictionary this week, Our new words are extract, elusive, anguish, and wrath. Enjoy using those around your kitchen table or on the slopes!

Have a wonderful weekend, and stay warm!

 It has been such a fast week! I have really enjoyed meeting with all of you, and I feel like I know your children better now!  This week has flown by. With Monday's holiday and me being out on Wednesday, it feels like it has been a pretend week!  

We HAVE managed to get a lot of work done, however. Our math work is coming along, and this week we learned how to use the US algorithm for subtraction to subtract across a middle zero. We are also using much bigger numbers now, and working with thousands can be confusing. I am really pleased to see the students using a variety of strategies as they solve increasingly difficult subtraction problems! Next week we will begin making a "10,000" chart and discussing how to manage adding and subtracting huge numbers!

We had our writing celebration today. I am including this link to a padlet where you can see everyone's books (I hope this works -- sometimes technology is still a mystery to me!) I love these books! They all worked really hard and it shows. Of course, this is just a snapshot in time -- some of them are unfinished, but like all writers, we had a deadline. We will take next week to learn about figurative language and try our hand at a few other fun writing activities. Then we will move on to opinion writing, another one of my favorites.

Along with opinion writing, our reading focus will return to fiction as we begin to tackle "social issues book clubs." This is always a difficult unit to feel happy about because the list of social issues the children come up with makes me sad. On the other hand, reading about them and seeing the resilience of the characters makes us all feel hopeful, and gives us many strong opinions to write about! I am currently trying to find multi-copy books at all of our reading levels so we can create some sort of book groups. I still haven't figured out how they will share their ideas with each other safely, but I will keep you posted. Be sure to ask your children to tell you about our read-aloud, Front Desk. It is intense, but oh-so-good!

We have taken the week off from our class economy so that our subtraction skills could have a chance to catch up. I think we are ready for more next week! I am going to start the week of by giving everyone their paycheck, along with a stimulus check.... (it's not real money, so why now?) This will give us another entry point to talk about our government and what it does for us, which is the topic of next week's lessons anyway. I love it when the academics from different areas all intersect!

I have been neglecting our class vocabulary for a few weeks, but the students have been asking me, so they miss it! We will be back to learning 4 new words a week starting on Monday. Stay tuned!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

 Happy sunny Friday! I have so enjoyed meeting with some of you this week during our parent conferences, and I look forward to seeing the rest of you next week. It is always nice to connect and spend some time talking about your children.  For those of you who haven't had your meeting yet, it seems like it might be best to join the google meeting from your child's chromebook (or another chromebook) since the link is through my google classroom. If this won't work for you for some reason, let me know and I will set up a separate google meet for our meeting.

The big news this week is our classroom economy. Everyone has been paid, paid rent and taxes, and received penalties and/or bonuses.  Subtracting our checks from our check registers has proven to be far more difficult that I anticipated, so we are taking a week off (having our own version of a "shut down"-- and maybe I'll give them all a stimulus check the week after!) so that our subtraction skills can catch up.  The class is disappointed, but we WILL get back to it the week after next, and we will extend the final date by a week.

Speaking of subtraction, we are learning a variety of subtraction skills, leading up to using the US algorithm (which is what we used to call "borrowing.") Before I teach the class how to do that, I need to make sure they have a solid grasp of place value. Here is a look at the strategies we are currently using:

I hope this makes sense! In the third example, we have learned that we can go over to the "tens house" when we are short ones, but in that house, the people are all stuck together in groups of 10. We can't borrow only what we need -- we MUST borrow an entire 10 and bring them all with us over to the "ones house." It's not the way WE all learned to do subtraction, but with the solid understanding of what goes in each "house" or place, the students will be better prepared for doing this with larger numbers.  Let me know if you have any questions about this!

We are just about done with our nonfiction reading and writing units. I am really impressed by the writing the students have done. I see a lot of great organizational skills and a lot of pride in their work! I will not be printing these since some of them are 15-18 pages and they have a lot of color. But be sure to ask your child to share them with you digitally. They are really lovely! We will be moving on to opinion writing soon. This class certainly has some opinions!

Speaking of opinions, we had our first "current events" conversation today. We discussed the importance of respectful conversations, and we learned how to have a "hands-free" conversation so that it felt more like a discussion. We also talked about how all of us have different reactions to the news, and we have to consider how it affects each of us based on our identities. We also discussed how important it is to know what each of us can control and can't control, and what we can do to take care of ourselves. We discussed the events that took place in Washington DC last week, and I was surprised and please to see how well-informed and wise they all are! Some spoke a lot, some just listened, and some had some excellent questions. This class rocks!  I hope to discuss current events every Friday from now on. They are hungry for this kind of mature conversation! 

Discussing current events goes along well with our unit on democracy and citizenship. So far we have discussed what "democracy" means, what the constitution is, and what rights and responsibilities citizens have. Next week we will get into the Bill of Rights and the balance of power. Great stuff!

I hope you all enjoy a restful weekend. Remember that there is no school for students on Monday. I look forward to seeing them all on Tuesday!

 This is a rather long blog post, so please stick with me.... Happy New Year! I am so happy to be back with all of the students again. Yesterday was the first day we had a full class, but we are all here and healthy, and that is wonderful!  Getting back into the routine has been easier for the students than I anticipated, but we did spend a little bit of time reviewing expectations and safety protocols. We are all back in the saddle now!

Before going into the details of our academics this week, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge the recent sad and disturbing events in our news. I know that some of the students must be aware of these events and are probably confused or frightened by them. I have tried to balance the need to give them space to ask questions and express their worries with the need to keep with our routines. Since no one said a word about it to me, I stuck with our routines while keeping an ear out for any conversations that needed to be addressed. Ironically, we started our unit on Democracy and Citizenship today, and nobody brought up the news from the White House at all even though there was ample opportunity. I am sure the issues will come up over the next few weeks, and I plan to do my best to answer any questions with facts. Please let me know if your child is feeling confused or frightened and you need any support from me.

Our Democracy and Citizenship unit will be a repeat for the students who were in my class last year. Unfortunately, whenever you go from a multi-age to a straight grade classroom, half the kids are going to miss something and the other half will have to repeat something (in science and social studies, at least.) I think this unit is critical, and particularly in an election year. The main questions we will be answering are: What is democracy? What are the rights and responsibilities of a citizen in a democracy? How are laws made in Vermont? How can citizens be involved in their democracy?  I see students getting excited about these topics every year, and I hope this year won't be an exception!

We have started our new math unit -- Addition and Subtraction with Large Numbers. In this unit, students learn to use increasingly efficient strategies to add and subtract BIG numbers, ending with the standard US algorithm. This is trickier than it sounds. Up until now, they have been taught to add the hundreds, then the tens, and finally the ones. That is pretty ingrained! When they add numbers using the US algorithm (with "carrying and borrowing" the way we used to do it) they have to start with the ones place! So far, we have worked on addition, and in just 5 days, we are using the algorithm successfully! The students are begging me to write more problems for them on the board! It is an amazing "AHA" moment for them. Subtraction is coming along soon, and that is a totally different thing.... Stay tuned!

Reading and writing are moving along. We are learning some strategies to make our nonfiction writing more interesting, such as mixing facts with ideas, adding humor, and adding introductions and conclusions. We are also learning how to tackle difficult vocabulary and how to summarize what we have read. Both of these units will be completed in a week or 2.

Finally, I want to remind you all that report cards are coming home on Monday, and conferences will start on Wednesday. I think the easiest way to manage the conferences is for you to all use the google meet link that is on my google classroom. Here it is again, just in case Conference Link.  I will do my best to finish each conference on time, but please be sensitive to the fact that the conference before yours may not be quite done when you try to join. If that is the case, please just wait a few minutes and then join. You are more than welcome to have your child join the conference -- but I will leave that up to you.  Here is the Conference Schedule. Please let me know if you have any questions about your conference time or about conferences in general. I'm happy to help!

I hope you all enjoy a lovely weekend. The sun is shining -- which is a nice way to end the week!

 I can't believe this will be my last blog post for 2020. I'm happy to be saying goodbye to this year, but surprised at how fast time has flown by!

Despite the fact that the students are all ready for a vacation, we managed to get some good work done this week. We finished up our multiplication and division unit! Of course, we will never completely stop multiplying and dividing -- that work will continue through math menu until later in the spring, when we will have a similar unit with larger numbers. After vacation, we will begin a unit about addition and subtraction with large numbers (into the 10 and 100 thousands!) We will learn to regroup and use the standard US algorithm ("carrying and borrowing.") This unit is my favorite -- everyone is always successful, and learning about place value really helps with every other kind of math!

Our literacy units will both continue into January. This week, the students practiced finding the main idea and supporting details in parts of the books they are reading. They took notes and tried to figure out what was really important to write down. They also learned a few different strategies for elaborating in their own writing. They are begging for writing time, which is lovely!

Today we had our first "Maker's Space" day. The students really enjoyed being creative with a huge variety of craft items! Many surprise snowflake gifts are finished and wrapped! We will have another hour of crafting time on Monday so that we can make sure everyone has a chance to finish. I love this kind of activity -- everyone can find a way to participate!

I am still waiting on a few parent conference sign up sheets. If you can't find yours, feel free to email me and we can find a time for your conference. I have a schedule ready to share with you, but I am hoping to hear from everyone before it is finalized.

This week's vocabulary words were scrutinize, immense, and serene. We didn't get to put all of them into our visual dictionary, but we did try to use the words. See if you can use them too!

I probably won't write a blog post on Tuesday (although I might...) If you don't hear from me, I hope you all have a wonderful vacation!

Happy Friday!

I have so much enjoyed being back with the students this week. There's lots to tell you about, so here goes!

Math: I am incredibly impressed with the progress we are making in our understanding of and strategies for double digit multiplication!  The students are using place value and also their multiples of 10 to efficiently multiply. Here are 3 beautiful examples for 16 X 16:

These 3 strategies are so much more efficient than skip counting, and pave the way for multiplying with larger numbers. I am taking my time to make sure everyone is comfortable with this before moving on -- although my guest teacher did a wonderful job moving the kids forward! 

Reading: We have been reading nonfiction books since after Thanksgiving and will continue with that until mid-January. So far, we have learned how to choose a book and make a connection to it, how to commit to learning from it, and how to preview it so you get a good understanding of how it is laid out before you dive in. We have also thought about what messages our brains give us when we are learning new information (such as "Wow!" or "Really?" or even "Eww, gross!") When we notice the messages, we are able to decide which information to write down in our notebooks. Students are reading, learning and taking notes. Many of them prefer fiction, but such is life!

Writing:  The students have all planned their expert books and they have started drafting. We used a table of contents to do our planning (similar to the "outlines" we used when we were in school) and a mini table of contents to plan what goes in each chapter. We are getting the basics written now, and then we will begin learning how to elaborate next week. I love this unit as I think the structured method really helps kids learn to organize their thoughts as they write.

Word Study: Before vacation we learned about all the various long vowel patterns for each vowel. The week I was gone, the kids played games with those same vowel patterns on Spelling City. This week we learned about using Y as a vowel. Next week we move into learning about r-controlled vowels and how to use them to help us decode. Good stuff!

That's it for academics!

Here are a few other bits of information:

Thank you to those who have already sent in conference forms or been in touch with me about them. Please remember to get those from your children and get them back to me by 12/22.

Thank you also for your generosity with crafting materials. We are excited to have our Maker Space next Friday and the following Monday. I miss the days when I could ask you to come in and help! We chose names today, and we'll see how good the class can be at keeping secrets! We also made a list of what each student likes, so their peers can think about what to make them. The list is on the Bitmoji classroom in case the students want to access it over the weekend as they think about what to make. All the making will happen here in the classroom, but they can certainly plan at home!

We had visits from both Mrs. Graf and Nurse Lindsay this week. Mrs. Graf came in to talk to us about the appropriate ways to use the CHAT feature on our chromebooks. She explained to the class that they should not chat anything to anyone that they wouldn't say to them in person, and she asked all the students to tell an adult if they witness anything unkind on chat. I also encouraged them to ask YOU before they get on chat with a friend. It is a good tool, but we want to keep our eye on it to make sure they are using it appropriately.  Nurse Lindsay came in to remind us all about the importance of keeping our distance and wearing our masks. As the pandemic drags on, this gets harder and harder for the kids. I feel like I spend so much of my day policing them, and that is hard for all of us. We are all doing our best, and that includes them!

This week we only added 2 new words to our class dictionary. The words are embellish and oblivious. Try using those around your kitchen table!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.