As for the students in room 313, life as they know it was familiar, but there was a new sheriff in town!
Mrs. Pittorino reviewed and built on place value number sense in math as we continue in Chapter 3 of our Investigations unit. During our Every Day Counts Calendar math program the students are working with Time, Isosceles and Equilateral triangles, measurement of centimeters, meters and decimeters, and with money and making change.
After a mini lesson on writing friendly letters and using commas in a series, the class wrote letters to Marc Brown, Mrs. Swain, the Memorial PTO, and Megan McDonald, the author of Judy Moody . The letters are going to be finalized and sent out this week. Students also finished their summer stories, personal narratives, and started to describe their tree house drawings.
Men, woman, and children of the Wampanoag tribe was the topic of discussion in social studies as the class looked at how they lived. This week Mrs. Pittorino will wrap up this unit before heading onto Pilgrims.
Rocks and Minerals, a geologist's dream! Special THANKS to the PTO for providing our third grade with an amazing Rocks and Minerals program. The class participated in a hands-on workshop exploring and testing rocks and minerals in a number of ways. Mrs. Henderson continues to provide our class with rich lessons on Rocks and Minerals.
Mrs. Pittorino introduced William Steig, our author of the month. Students are reading Sylvester and the Magic Pebble and trying to earn their own magic pebble by completing a Text Connection activity. Did you know that William Steig wrote the original book Shrek?
By the end of the week, Mrs. Pittorino was happy to have had the experience...but even happier to know I would be back in the classroom next week. Being alone in a classroom with 25 students is not an easy task. I told her that sometimes I feel like I am on a treadmill and someone turned the speed up to 9.0! I am impressed with her ability to keep everything running smoothly while still keeping up with the fast pace of our curriculum and daily schedule. In a very short time she has experienced a lot!
Next week we will continue to write descriptive narratives about our tree houses, we will take a closer look at Non Fiction Text features as we begin to look at our Presidential Candidates running for office, we will wrap up Wampanoags and begin to look at Pilgrims as we prepare for our Field Trip to Plimoth Plantation, and we will continue to work with numbers and number sense as we reivew rounding, adding, and subtracting larger numbers.
CH-CHING UPDATE!!!!
The students are going to be cashing in their September Cha-Ching this week. If anyone has any unwanted odds and ends, "chachkies" that might be good for our prizes... please feel free to send them into school. You'd be amazed at what the kids get excited to buy. No item is too small or too quirky...last year someone donated little glass animal figures that were a huge hit! Please remember, NO FOOD donations are allowed. Think outside the box, extra birthday goodie bag items, any type of smaller yard sale item, slightly used or like new items are welcome too. I usually try to hit up the dollar section of Target or JoANNe fabrics to find items for our "store".
THANK you for taking the time to read this!
As always...Comments are encouraged and welcome!