Why does October always go so fast?

October always seems like a really busy month for my family, this year has seemed busier than normal. Thank you for all your patience with my blog lately. I usually try to update on Fridays, but there has been so many technology and email issues through the school server. Besides that, the blog wouldn't load because I had TOO MANY pictures. I love technology, but there are times it does not like me! :) As a side note, if you have tried to email someone at school and they have not responded, please resend your email. I know we are still having ongoing issues as I have 30 email messages still sitting in my outbox from different times throughout the last week. :(

Please bear with me as I have a lot to update you on and will try to get you up to date through today! 

This week we welcomed a new member to our class. Welcome Kayla! We are so excited to have you in our room!  

Here are some of the things we have done lately in class: 
 
Math- The last few weeks we worked on adding and subtracting 3-digit numbers. We also worked on solving multi-step problems and solving for an unknown. Last week we took our district math test over our math topics 1-3. This covered rounding to the nearest ten and hundred, writing the number sentence and solving multi-step problems, solving for an unknown, estimating equations, and reasonableness. 

This week we are dabbling into multiplication. So far we have discussed how multiplication is repeated addition, as well as how to use and draw an array to show and solve a multiplication problem. 

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Reading- Last week we read Cliff Hanger by Jean Craighead George. 

 Axel's dog, Grits, is stranded on a mountain ledge as a thunderstorm approaches. Under the supervision of his father, the leader of the climbing school, Axel braves the elements to rescue his pet. Dag, Axel's father, calls a halt to the climb, but Axel goes ahead anyway. Axel reaches the dog just in time, but he faces even graver danger on his descent. 

Last week we read Raising Dragons by Jerdine Nolen.  

A little girl lived on a farm with her parents. Her father raised food and animals. Her mother took care of the house. The little girl raised dragons. She found the first dragon egg in a cave. When the dragon hatched, the little girl named him Hank and took him home. She took good care of Hank, and so her parents said she could keep him. When he grew big, the little girl rode on his back as he flew. Hank also helped on the farm. He plowed. He kept bugs away. He took care of the tomato plants during a heat wave. Hank ate lots of treats and got very big. One year Hank and the girl planted too much corn. Hank decided to use his fire-breath to make popcorn. They sold all of it and made a lot of money. Then the neighbors complained about having a dragon on the farm. Hank would have to leave. The girl read about a dragon island in the middle of the ocean. She took Hank there. She felt very sad, but Hank gave her a present of dragon eggs. The girl took them home. When they began to hatch, the girl had plenty of work to do! She knew that raising dragons was her job.

This week we are reading The Garden of Abdul Gasazi by Chris Van Allsburg. 

One day Alan is walking Fritz, Miss Hester’s dog. Fritz disappears into a garden owned by Abdul Gasazi. Gasazi tells Alan that Fritz is now a duck. Alan believes him, only to find that Fritz has already returned home-as a dog. Gasazi’s story was a trick-or was it?

Writing- We finished up our personal narratives, added a few morn pages to our language arts notebooks (including adverbs, adjectives, pronouns, verbs, etc.), and use this time this week to practice for our CogAt (Cognitive Abilities Tests, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_Abilities_Test).  Tomorrow we will begin to plan a story about Frankenstein.

Social Studies- We finished up our mapping unit and took our assessment over how to read a map and parts of a map. You should have seen our wonderful Bearfoot Islands go home. 

Science- Last week we started our new science unit. 

Other 3rd grade classes had some crayfish brought in, so we borrowed them for some of our discussions. I would have loved to do a little more discovery with them, but they were quite upset and I didn't feel like risking it.

We found a few of them roaming around in the hallways when we would arrive to school in the morning. I swear they were coming after me! HA!

This week we started discussing how things adapt in order to survive. We reviewed our crayfish and how they can adapt by changing their color or regrow legs and pinchers when they molt.  

We also turned this discussion into our new adventure with seeds. We started our look into seeds with reading the book A Fruit is a Suitcase for Seeds by Jean Richards.

 The idea behind this book is that a fruit helps transplant seeds and take them to places all over the world. We investigated some suitcases by slicing them open and discussing how seeds are different because their suitcases are different. If everything tasted and looked the same their would be less kinds of suitcases (fruit) to choose from. We also took a look at fruit which are commonly thought of as vegetables, but are classified as fruit for how their seeds are formed. This includes things like tomatoes, squash, eggplant, cucumbers, and corn. Here are some suitcases we looked at and discussed: 

peach

The kids were amazed at how the pomegranate is like a heart with different chambers, and how many seeds we pulled out of one side. The picture above is after each student ate about four seeds!

orange

kiwi

tomato

mango

apple

raspberry and (dried) banana

 

We also cut open a pumpkin to look at. We are now working our way through the Scientific Method. We asked "What would happen if we left the 'guts' and seeds in a pumpkin and filled it with dirt? Would it grow?" We discussed how plants need seeds, light, soil, and water to grow. After that, the students created their hypothesis (educated guess) that most of the students in our class believe since we had seeds, soil, water, and light our pumpkin seeds should grow inside the pumpkin. I will keep you updated with our findings and results.

   

Morning Meetings- The last couple weeks we have been working on positive self talk and how to build up our self-esteems by all the wonderful things we can do and accomplish. This lead us into this week and our discussion about bullying. This week we reviewed how bullying is a repeated offense where the same individual is targeted. We will be continuing to talk about this topic all week as we work on how to stand up against bullying, be a peacemaker, use our self-esteem to not let others get us down or dip from our buckets. 

Black is what character traits we discussed when she had no one to play with on the playground.  Green is the character traits we discussed after just one person accepted Jean for who she was and asked her to play.

Additional notes: 
The students had a blast with the firefighter visits and smoke house. We now have an amazing group of responsible Junior Firefighters. Congratulations Nathan for having the winning poster from our classroom. 

A HUGE thank you to all of our readers last week for America Read's Day. We had a terrific time and loved that many of you came in your pajamas! :) Here are just a few pictures from our day.

Books we enjoyed last week were:
On Tuesday: Melissa (Landon's mom) read us Biggest, Strongest, Fastest and Actual Size both by Steve Jenkins.

On Friday: Karen (Abbie's mom) read Spookley the Square Pumpkin, Night Before Halloween, and a couple of fun "Would you Rather?"

Amy (Kam's mom) read Angelina Ballerina's Halloween, and Howard and the Crazed Chicken Pirates

Shamirra's Aunt gave us a surprise and read Marsupial Sue

Shane and Cathy (Malik and Riese's parents) took turns reading chapters from Rotten School

Jenna (Emmy's mom) read Roses are Pink, Your Feet Really Stink

and last but not least......

Crystal (Michael's mom) read The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and Too Many Frogs


Lastly- your child should of come home with a half sheet about using the app or website Raz-Kids. To log on go to http://www.raz-kids.com/main/Login

Teacher name: jyuska1
Click on your child's name and enter their magic number. If your child's magic number is only one-digit, please add a zero to the front. For example, if my magic number is 2. I would click on Jodie Yuska and enter 02 when prompted for my password. Students had an opportunity to check the site out on the iPads the day the letter went home.

Thanks again for staying up to date with your child's education and being patient with me.

Have a wonderful rest of your week! Mrs. Jodie Yuska

Welcome October!

On Thursday, we had a surprise school-wide celebration for showing respect, responsibility, and safety. We all became "royalty" and had a chance to decorate our own crowns enjoy some fun music over the intercom. The students worked so hard and were very concentrated on their crowns. We even had a surprise fire drill where we could show off our crowns to the rest of the school! :)

Silly girls! :)

Some students were more excited than others to get their picture taken.

 Today we had our first visit from Police Pal Shannon. She talked to the children about bullying and what to do if you are in a bullying situation. She had some great advice and everyone was very respectful of her and her time! 

Here are some of the things we did this week (and last): 
 
Math- Last week we worked really hard to finish up our rounding lessons and used our new knowledge to estimate sums and differences. 

This week we continued to work on estimating, but also moved into adding 3-digit numbers with regrouping. Next week we will pull out the place value schema from our brains and work on subtracting 3-digit numbers with regrouping. 

 
   

Reading- Last week we read The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polaco. 

When Great Gramma Anna left Russia to come to New York City, she had only the clothes on her back. Soon she had outgrown her dress and babushka (scarf) and her mother used these and other family member's old clothes to make a colorful quilt. "It will be like having the family in back home Russia dance around us at night." As author Patricia Polacco explains, this quilt tells the story of her family from generation to generation, and has been present at all their life events, births, deaths, weddings and other special family celebrations. It is the glue that binds her family together. 

 

We learned more about the book from the author: 

 

This week we read Pepita Talks Twice by Ofelia Dumas Lachtman.  

Pepita speaks Spanish and English, and this becomes a burden to her. She learns how important her languages are, soon after her dog runs into the street.

 

Writing- This week we started brainstorming, discussing, and planning our writing of personal narratives. The students were asked to pick one event from their life. We had a long discussion of choosing a "seed" topic for our narrative instead of a "watermelon" topic. We will use our planning from this week to start writing our narratives next week. 

 
Social Studies- Last week and this week we started learning about maps and mapping skills. Students took a "pre-assessment" and mapped the classroom. Since then we have learned about scale, map keys, a compass rose, having a map title, and map coordinates. We practiced map coordinates by discussing the game Battleship and finding places on a treasure map. On Friday, we practiced creating map keys by creating our own islands. We will continue to cover these and take an assessment over them next week. After that, we should be hopefully ready to start our first science kit. (Pictures to come)


Additional notes: 
Last Friday, we had our first session of Reading Buddies with friends from Ms. Kunde's 1st grade class. We will meet with our Reading Buddies about once a month as a fun way to share our love of reading. 

Some mornings it is hard to get the day started. On Monday, Calypso joined our room during some early morning "Read to Self" time. If you can't tell by the pictures, she was an instant kid magnet.

Have a great weekend! Mrs. Jodie Yuska