Happy New Year!!

I hope everyone had a relaxing holiday vacation.  We have a few pictures to share of our classroom holiday celebrations.

             
Back to Business


Reading

This week we will have our Reading Street Unit 2  Review and Test.  The students will be coming home daily with reading passages accompanied with questions.  These reading passages are great practice for the comprehension questions.  Also, I have suggested the students read each passage three times. Repeated readings will help improve fluency.


***  Due to impending weather, I have told the students I will accept the Reading Writing Challenge next Monday.  In the event we have snow days this may give them some motivation to snuggle up with a book.

** Please don't feel pressured to complete the activity but some students appreciated a bit more time.  I encourage students to hand in their packets even if they have only completed some of the tasks.


Presentations

    The students in room 206 have begun short presentations.  I have been so impressed!! We have focussed on presenting our information NOT reading our paper. The students are speaking in loud, clear speaking voices. They are practicing making eye contact with their audience and keeping their nervous fingers still.  Others skill we have worked on are to introduce our topic and speak slowly. Some students have even been able to show enthusiasm during their presentation.  Our presentations were based  on brief research we did regarding birds' nests.  Our next presentations will be much longer and based on our informational writing that we are just beginning now.

Oops Don't know why they are upside down- too cute not to share;)

Informational Writing 

     We have been exploring informational books to discover the many components of informational books.

     The students have begun researching and taking notes about an animal of interest to them.  We are at the beginning stages of our informational writing piece.  With support the students will work towards writing a catchy introduction paragraph along with  three paragraphs ( each with its own main idea)  and a closing paragraph.

    Some additional features that we may include to our final writing piece are posted on the following bulletin board.

Science

Check out these kids observing the magnetic field.  They have observed the magnetic force as well as the force of gravity.  In addition, they used magnets, paper clips, string and chairs, to create balanced system and unbalanced system.

Technology Support

Conferences

     Parent teacher conferences were a huge success!  I was able to meet with a parent for every student.  I so appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to meet with me.  And I appreciate the feedback and your input.  Working together we can meet the needs of your children while providing an environment where your child feels comfortable to make mistakes while pushing through barriers to reach their goals.



     Based on your feedback I have heard that many of your children were reading nightly when we were doing daily " Book Talks".   I will be sure to make time for this valuable activity.  I hope daily " Book Talks" will help encourage nightly reading and foster great discussions along with a joy of reading.


***  There will not be a spelling test this week as we are completing the Unit 1 Reading Test.

Picture Day is Wednesday!!



Technology

    We have many wonderful computer based resources that your children have access to at home.  I-Ready reading and math lessons, Discovery Ed, and Mathletics are just a few.  Just below you will find a letter and a link to a tutorial on how to access these resources.  The password mentioned ( student Id with initials) is hand written on the front page of your child's agenda.

Dear Parents,

This documentation is to help your child access school based resources from a home computer.

Student email addresses and school issued Google accounts use the following format:

first.last@ewg.k12.ri.us (all lower case letters).

Student passwords use the following format:

StudentID  + First two letters of their first name + First two letters of their last name with no spaces, all lower case.

For Example:

Student: Johnny Appleseed

Student ID: 26999

Password: 26999joap

For students to access school based online resources,

• Be sure all home, work, or consumer Google accounts are signed out by going to google.com and clicking the account link in the top right corner.

• Go to  the Metcalf school website, metcalf.ewg.k12.ri.us .  
• Select Student Resources.  
• Select a resource such as Typing Pal, Reading Street, or Clever.  
• If Clever is selected,, students can sign in with their school issued  Google account.  

• Enjoy direct access to i-ready, Google Classroom, Mathletics, I-Ready, and more.

A video that demonstrates a way for your child to access school based resources from home is located here. (https://youtu.be/BRHZxcLf0o0)

I hope this enables your child to have complete at-home access to all of the wonderful sites that are available to make your child more at ease with technology in the 21 century.

I HOPE THIS HELPS

Sincerely, Cheryl Lavoie

Class update

Class News

Reading

     We have spent a good deal of time discussing how to pick a " just right" reading book.  Your child should always have a book at his/her reading level.  The children have learned that if there are more than five words on a page that he/she can't read than the book is a bit too challenging for him/her.


     The children have been conferencing with a parent volunteer each week.  They have been showing off their knowledge of their comprehension skills by sharing a skill as they discuss their book.  The students are working towards completing an entire comprehension sheet with our parent volunteer.  Each child will earn a reward upon completion of a sheet.  We are keeping track of the information here at school.  If you would like to support your child with this, be sure to discuss their nightly reading.  Hopefully, they are excited about their books.


** This is a short week of school so we plan to have our spelling test next Tuesday October 17.

** Tomorrow I'll send home a reminder for your parent teacher conference.  If this time doesn't work for you feel free to send me an email and I'm sure we can find a date and time that will work for you.

** Next week will be a short week too due to parent teacher conferences on Friday.

                                                      Math

     Thursday of this week we will have our Unit 1 math test.  We will have a review tomorrow.  The skills to be assessed are; telling time, elapsed time, bar graphs, rounding to nearest ten, rounding to nearest 100, finding the difference of two numbers using a hundreds chart, multiplication facts with 2 and 5 tables.

    

Skills and Strategies

Classroom Updates


Math

      The Unit 1 Everyday Math program introduces and assesses many skills.

We have been working on telling time to the nearest minute. I encourage you to have your child practice this skill at home, if you have access to an analog clock.

Tomorrow we will begin learning about elapsed time.  This is the amount of time that has passed from the beginning of an event to its end.  For example, piano class began at 4:30 and ended at 5:15.  How long was piano class?


We also have been rounding numbers to the nearest ten and the nearest 100.

   The standard states that your child should be able to complete thirty addition facts in one minute.  Be sure to check your child's mad minute paper to see how your child is performing in this area.   Some strategies to help build math fact fluency are math games such as addition top it, flash cards, and mathletics. 

Reading

  We have been reading many books and discussing many comprehension strategies. This poster list some of the comprehension strategies we have discussed in the short time we have been back at school.

   

     I have sent home a copy of many reading skills that will be addressed here at Metcalf.  I have asked the children to keep this paper in their homework folder.  They may color the box when they have recognized the skill during their nightly reading.

     This week your child's reading homework will be to use a post it to mark a spot in their book that they would like to discuss.   I suggest trying to find a section that represents a comprehension skill he/she would like to mention.  I can't wait to hear about their books!

WELCOME TO THIRD GRADE!

Welcome to third grade with Mrs. Lavoie!

We have had a great beginning of the year.  We have been busy reading books, getting to know each other, learning routines, and working on beginning of year baseline assessments.

The children have learned academic routines such as :

* How to partner read
* "Book Talk
*Writer's Workshop routines
* Recording Assignments in their agenda
* Math Minutes
*Graphing results of Math Minute
* How to Write a 7-up Sentence

Informational Writing

Informational Writing

We have been exploring informational books to discover the components of informational writing.  Today the kids had a great time sharing their informational  library books with their classroom community.

The students have helped create a chart of all the things they have noticed about informational text.

Next week the students will select an animal to research in preparation for our
informational writing piece.

The students in room 206 have begun short presentations.  I have been so impressed!! We have focussed on presenting our information NOT reading our paper. The students are speaking in loud, clear speaking voices. They are practicing making eye contact with their audience and keeping their nervous fingers still.  Others skill we have worked on are to introduce ourselves and speak slowly. Some students have even been able to show enthusiasm during their presentation.  Ask your child to present for you, you will be so impressed at his/her presentation skills.   Our presentations were based very short information text about birds' nests.  Our next presentations will be much longer and based on our informational writing that we are just beginning now.


Check out the pics of the students observing real birds' nests.

Have a great weekend!!

2017

The long awaited 2017 is finally here!!    Before we jump start into the new year I want to thank our classroom community for helping us to celebrate the holiday season together.  We appreciate all the food and drink donations that helped us celebrate our day together.  I also want to thank everybody for the thoughtful gifts and cards and the scrumptious cookies!  I'm truly blessed to be working with such kind caring children.



A special thanks to Sonja Lemoi, Sande Horan and Mrs Sargent for helping us create our holiday swags.  Fun was had by all!

Classroom Updates

Math

     The standard states that your child should be able to complete thirty addition facts in one minute.  Be sure to check your child's mad minute paper to see how your child is performing in this area.   Some strategies to help build math fact fluency are math games such as addition top it, flash cards, and mathletics.  We will be completing a mad minute each day this week to help build our fact fluency.  

     We have also been learning about elapsed time.  A fun extension for students to try at home would be to find out the elapsed time between the sunrise in the A.M.and the sunset in the P.M.  The amount of daylight has changed significantly in the two weeks since we have done this assignment in class.

    If you take on this challenge please send in your findings.

Writing Corner

     The students have begun typing their personal narratives into google classroom, but we still have some revisions and editing to do before we have a final draft.  Our lessons have focussed on writing about a small experience from our  life.  We looked at many samples of catchy leads and we wrote a few of our own.   Our writing should have a clear beginning, middle and an end.   Personal narratives should include the feelings of the character.  The students have been working on showing their feelings rather than telling their feelings.  Ex. I was so nervous. vs. My heart was racing and my hands were sweaty.

Classroom Updates

Academic Highlights

Math

We have been working on double digit addition and subtraction problems where regrouping is necessary.  Please encourage your child to show their work!

This past few weeks we have also been practicing telling time, rounding to the nearest tens and hundreds, and creating a graph to show our data.

Science

This week we have experimented with volume and mass. Watch this interactive tutorial about mass to help support this week's lesson.




Watch this interactive tutorial, about volume to support in class investigations.

Reading 

Sequencing has been the comprehension skill for two weeks!   The students can tell you all about the sequence of events in the reading story What About Me or they can tell you their sequence/ procedure for finding out how much water a dry sponge will absorb.

Welcome to Third Grade!

     Welcome to third grade with Mrs. Lavoie!

We have had a great beginning to the school year.  We have read many wonderful books to help us learn routines, establish classroom rules, and get to know each other.

    I'm working to promote positive behavior along with a kind and respectful classroom environment.

Check out some of the options the students may choose for their reward.

 

I'm looking forward to having a successful, productive, and enjoyable, year with you and your child.

Classroom Updates

News From the Writing Corner

Most students have finished their informational writing.  The students also had to give constructive feedback to a fellow author using the peer review sheet shown below.  My hope was, that then the original author would use their partner's suggestions to make improvements to their writing.

****

One important footnote- The students always have the opportunity to make corrections to their writing pieces and resubmit to improve their grade.  I'm proud that many students did take advantage of this learning opportunity this past week.  

Mr. Searle joined our class to teach a lesson on how to make a google slide show.  We plan to take some information from our informational writing piece to build a google slide show.  Then Mr. Searle will be back to provide tips on how to deliver an engaging presentation!  Check out the time lapse video of his visit with my PM class as we listened to a lesson and then practiced making our on slides.

Spotlight Musician!!

All the way from South Korea, lets give a SHOUT OUT to Heejun!!

Trimester 2 Highlights

     I apologize for the lapse in blogs, I have experienced some technical difficulty.  Before I send out an update on our writing status  I wanted to share a few highlights.

Spotlight Musician

All the way from South Korea we present our very own very talented Heejun!

Another great big shout out to our two fourth grade classmates that represented our classes in the school wide Spelling Bee. We are so proud of both of you!

Creative Minds at Work

The students came out with this wonderful design to represent our class at the Jump Rope for Heart Fundraiser.  Way to support a good cause!