Our class is GREAT!

The last few weeks have been filled with meetings, assemblies, a field trip, and oh so much learning! :

A few announcements before we go through our new learning for the last two weeks.

*Our field trip was a great success! Our class was AMAZING! Thank you to all of the volunteers who joined us. (see pictures below)

*If you have not yet joined our class Facebook page, please click https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100008815694667&fref=ts or search for MrsYuskas Class and friend request us! :) I post information and daily messages as my email often does not send everything out.

*We have had the first case of Influenza A in our classroom over the weekend. We're doing our best to keep our hands washed, but I also wanted to encourage you to talk with your child about appropriate hand washing and ways to avoid the spread of germs.  We want to keep everyone healthy and safe.  Also just a reminder that our school policy states that if your child has had a fever, thrown up, or has had diarrhea that they should be free of these symptoms for at least 24 hours before returning to school.  It's also helpful if you could let us know if your child has been diagnosed with any contagious bugs (like pink eye, strep, influenza, etc.) so we can confidentially let our families know so they can also be vigilant about watching their own children for symptoms.  Thanks for all your help with keeping our kiddos safe, comfortable, and in their best health to learn!

*I know this is a way off yet, but I just wanted to send out a note about our Valentine's Day exchange.  In past years I have had a few parents/ students ask if they are required to make their own "mailbox" at home to bring for the party.  As a community building activity we will be decorating white paper bags together in class prior to the party, so your child does not need to (and should not) bring their own mailbox for Valentine's. Hopefully that helps save some stress of having to do it on your own.  Thanks!

*This week we will begin our Science unit on the Physics of Sound.  As part of this unit the students participate in a culminating project that requires them to bring "trash"/ recyclables from home in order to create a new instrument.  Please collect, but do not yet send it in! :) The students will be bringing a letter home about this soon, but I just wanted to give you a heads up so you could start collecting those egg cartons, paper towel rolls, rubber bands, etc.  The students should NOT build their instrument at home but instead bring the raw materials to construct in class in about a month's time.  Thanks for your help with this!

*This week we had an assembly for "ThinkB4You Speak Week." He taught the kids to "look strong, speak strong, and report." 

 
*PTO sent home a questionnaire about our next fundraising event. Please share your thoughts and return to school. 

Math
We are about ready to wrap up our unit on two step word problems.  As expected, this has been a difficult unit as it requires students to not only show mastery of the basic facts for all operations but also apply them in a much harder context of problems with regrouping and two step word problems that involve several operations.  Please encourage your child to be practicing their basic math facts at home as well.  This practice does not need to take a long time each night, but just a few minutes each day can really build up and pay off. By this point in the year your child should be fluent with their addition timed facts and making strong progress with their subtraction facts as well if they are on target with the end of year goal of mastering addition, subtraction, and multiplication.  If you would like additional ideas for how to practice please reference the "50 Ways to Make Homework FUN" sheet.

Reading
We have read two stories out of our purple reading books one called The Living Desert, the other called The Wild Ride. Both were very short so we talked about using and reading multiple resources to formulate a main idea. We also created Main idea posters. 

Writing
We are continuing our expository writing. In the last few weeks we finished our third paragraph about the End of Slavery and we are now in the middle of our fourth paragraph about Segregation. We will continue learning about segregation and civil rights during our writing time as we will be starting our next science unit this week. 

Social Studies

Our class just can not get enough Social Studies. We have been talking about Segregation and talking a lot about the Jim Crow Laws as well as the Civil Rights Movement. This has also lead us into many different time lines starting with the beginning of slavery, through the election of President Obama.

FUN FROM THE AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSEUM: 

Checking our President Obama's signature on a podium made in Iowa. 

Looks like we have quite a few potential Presidential candidates among us! :) 

Have a great week!
Mrs. Jodie Yuska

Welcome to 2016!

I can't believe 1) that it is January and 2) our school year is half over already! Where does the time go?!?!?

Hopefully, everyone had a wonderful winter break and did not find various illnesses cycling through the family like my household did. The only healthy one of the bunch was my 8 month old. Which made some of break a little difficult.

This week the weather may have caused us to have less time at school, however there was a lot of things going on.

A few announcements before we go through our new learning for the week.

*Our field trip has been rescheduled for Friday, January 23rd 9:15-11:30, a letter will be going home today if you are still interested in volunteering.

*If you are interested in volunteering, you need to have registered as a volunteer through the Prairie website or through the link here: http://www.prairiepride.org/community/volunteer/index.php
or you can call Kathy Waychoff if trouble or questions. She is the District Volunteer Coordinator - 319-848-5224

*Next week we will have the police department coming in. Students will need to know their phone numbers and addresses for their visit. A page is coming home today. Please fill it out and have them work on memorizing it.

*I have started a class Facebook page for quick notes. I am finding there are a lot of connection issues and my emails are not always going through. Please feel free to friend the account MrsYuskas Class. I am hoping this will help with day to day communication.

Math
This week we have discussed using fact families with multiplication and division to help us with our facts. During these lessons we have many students still struggling with their fact fluency. Please help your child work on quickly recalling the facts of x2, x3, x4, x5, x6, x7, x8, and x9. This will be very beneficial for not only the rest of their third grade year but also in fourth grade as they will have the expectation of having them all fluent. We also continued working on multi-step math problems were students have to not only solve for an unknown but solve multiple problems to determine the answer.

Reading
This week we caught up on various reading assignments and completed some interactive read-alouds with books relating to our Social Studies.  We will continue with shared reading next week.

Writing
We are continuing our expository writing by finishing our second paragraph. So far we have created paragraphs about slavery and the Underground Railroad. Next week we will continue to work on writing about Ending Slavery which includes the Civil War. We will be publishing these paragraphs in an online presentation for them to share with you at conferences this spring.

Social Studies
We are continuing our Slavery and Segregation unit. We are currently discussing the end to slavery through the Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. The students could not get over the amount of casualties the Civil War caused.

Today we had the pleasure of watching the Iowa Skippers perform various jump roping stunts for us. They were pretty amazing!

Have a great weekend and enjoy the slightly warmer weather!
Mrs. Jodie Yuska


P.S. I am still in love with how the kids snow globes turned out! I hope you enjoyed them as well.

Pilgrim Videos

We had a few brave volunteers ready to share their pilgrim speeches.

So much to share from November

So many new and exciting things happened last month. This will be a lengthy blog post. Enjoy!

Math- We have worked a lot on our multiplication facts and have learned a lot of tricks. Please help your child start memorizing their facts as we are starting with division already tomorrow. 

 We have also used these newly learned facts to discuss the distribution property, multi-step story problems, and how to multiply with multiple factors.

Reading- This week we read  Night of the Pufflings by Bruce McMillan. 

On a tiny island off the coast of Iceland, Halla and her friends wait with anticipation. Every spring, millions of puffins, the clowns of the sea, return to nest, lay eggs, and raise their chicks to pufflings. That means Halla and her friends will be busy in August when the pufflings venture out at night to take their first flight. Then, all of the children stay out all night, too. During the nights of the pufflings they rescue thousands of stranded young birds, and in the daytime set them safely free at the beach. 

  

We also read  Across the Wide Dark Sea: The Mayflower Journey by Jean Van Leeuwen. 

A small boy and his father set sail from England in 1620, on the Mayflower which carried nearly 100 passengers across the ocean to a new life. Leeuwen tells how this small group of immigrants faced the unknown terrors of a strange new country. Based on actual records of one of the Mayflower's passengers.

Writing- This week we have completed a lot of work in our Language Arts notebooks with some of the standards in language fundamentals. Before that we spent a lot of time on our pilgrim journals and write before Thanksgiving, we took a quick break as our morning meeting to discuss things we were thankful for. We took some time to create turkeys and they were adorable! 

 

Science and Social Studies-  This week we started talking about what it means to have equality and equal rights. The past month we worked on several pilgrim simulations. Last week we had a chance for the kids to share their learning during our pilgrim museum. I love my job! Just in case you may have been unable to attend....

I am having some technical difficulties on the videos. Look for those soon! :)

Have a great day! 
Mrs. Jodie Yuska