Mrs. Nove's News: September 17th-September 21st

Lemme



  Leopards

 

Hi Parents,

We made an excellent transition to our straight grade classroom of 23 amazing 3rd graders. We had a busy week beginning a new science unit on electricity, Math Unit 2, and completing our DRA testing.

Curriculum Updates:

Literacy: Students spent time taking their DRA assessment, reading independently, reading with a partner, and completing a variety of spelling activities. I am excited to start small groups for reading on Monday. We are all ready to get into a routine.

Spelling: The spelling words for this past week contained the different spellings for long i (including i, igh, and ie). Students receive a copy of their spelling words at school each Monday. They should be bringing this list home to study. Students complete activities throughout the week to help practice their spelling words. We try to have students focus on the patterns within their words. Students take a spelling test each Friday. They should bring home their scored tests on the following Monday. There are six challenge words at the bottom of each list, these are optional for students although I encourage all students to try them.

3rd Grade Everyday Mathematics:

Please sign and return the Unit 1 Progress Check. We keep these in a student file in order to help guide and differentiate our instruction. If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to contact me.  As 3rd grade teachers, we have decided to continue to switch for math. We feel we can best meet the instructional needs of all 3rd grade students this way.

We just began Unit 2: Adding and Subtracting Whole Numbers. Unit 2 has four main areas of focus:

• To review fact families and number families
• To review and solve "What's My Rule?" problems
• To use diagrams to help solve number stories
• To review algorithms for adding and subtracting

Science:

I hope the students have come home excited about science. As a new teacher to the Iowa City School District, I have been very impressed with the science units. For each science unit, I have the opportunity to attend a training so that I can become more familiar with the concepts being taught and get to experience the unit first hand. Students are welcome to bring in their flashlights from home, as many already have. We will have a chance to read using our flashlights at the end of the week.

This week, students explored how to light a light bulb using just a wire, one battery, and of course, a mini light bulb. It was so exciting to see their reaction when they got it to work on their own. We discovered that their are only four ways to light the bulb and we recorded these in our science journals. On Friday, we learned about the parts of a light bulb. We also wanted to find out how many D batteries it would take to light a 60 watt bulb. I surveyed each student for their prediction, the mode and median of our student data was three. We darkened the room and gathered around a small table with a lot of anticipation. A small cheer went up when the bulb began to glow after 8 batteries were placed together!! We continued to add batteries to see if we could make the glow stronger. The students made connections to the amount of energy needed to light a bulb and why we should conserve electricity. I will add pictures later so you can see what this process looked like.

Thanks for all of your support during our transition to straight grades, I truly appreciate it! I hope everyone had a great weekend.