September 3-7

02 Sep 2018 - Blog, Grade 3

Dear Families,

We look forward to a week of school uninterrupted by traffic and important meetings. We can confirm that the school and its administration truly had all our interests at heart.

All our beginning-of-the-year assessments are completed! Whew! Your amazing children are loaded with such potential and have already demonstrated the many things they know and are able to do. Everyone has areas for growth (including us). We will synthesize the data and begin meeting with students next week to share their information so we can help them set specific and personal goals. This data and goal setting will be part of our October 5th parent-teacher conference.

Things are coming together in literacy. After focusing on the WHO and the WHAT of the story, as well as taking notes while reading, our goals for the next couple of weeks are:

  • describing traits, motivations, and feelings of the characters in a story;
  • referring to parts of stories when writing about a text;
  • reading, taking notes and coming to discussions prepared; and,
  • developing stronger storytelling–creating mental movies for the readers of our writing–by highlighting the work of published authors.

We have officially dipped our toe in the water of multiplication and division. Some class members know some or all of their basic multiplication facts. We will give opportunity for those who do not to work on that. However, we are building concepts of various ways to represent and solve problems involving multiplication and division. This is building your child’s operational and algebraic thinking. Important stuff!! Students will be introduced to zearn.org on Thursday. (This website received high marks in its alignment to the Common Core Standards.) Everyone will complete Mission 1: Multiple and Divide Friendly Numbers over the next couple of weeks. After that, we will begin differentiating for support and enrichment.

On Wednesday, we will introduce a new optional opportunity–student-led book discussions. Small groups will read the same book, take notes regarding the teacher suggested questions, as well as write discussion questions of their own. Each Wednesday, the groups will come together for a student-led discussion about the text. This provides the perfect opportunity for us to listen in and see areas of strength, as well as goals for work in targeted groups. For this first round, the book choices are Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner, The Knight at Dawn by Mary Pope Osborne, and Secret Letters From 0 to 10 by Susie Morgenstern. We hope everyone will join one of the discussion groups.

Finally, Ms. Rachel put out a call to her US teacher friends on Facebook to see if there are elementary classrooms where students would like to learn more about the culture of Nepal. (This is part of our study of cultural diversity.) There was a definite response! She gathered the questions, the students sorted them into topics, and they will start collaboratively writing an electronic book about Nepal. This book will be shared with specific classrooms in the US, as well as the Lincoln School audience. We look forward to sharing this with you.

We anticipate an exciting week ahead with your children. Thank you for allowing us the privilege of being part of their education and childhood.

Respectfully,

Ms. Rachel and Ms. Meenakshi

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