Dear families,
We started off the week stepping into a beautiful snow-covered campus! Students enjoyed building snowmen, forts, and playing on the snowy playground. You may view pictures of our recess adventures on the photos page of the newsletter.
Another highlight from the week was a special presentation by Kalliopi Monoyious. Kalliopi is a scientific illustrator who helped students to further explore adaptations in animal movement. She shared some of her work which included her illustrations of the ancient creature, tiktaalic. Kalliopi showed students fossils of this exquisitely preserved creature and explained how she created her scientific illustrations. She also explained how scientists were able to determine how tiktaalic moved based on its skeletal structure and by looking at how similar animals that live on Earth today move. This program coincided with New Bedford Symphony's presentations about adaptations of movement in music. In a past visit, Terry Wolkowicz of the New Bedford Symphony, led students in developing their own musical compositions based on animal movement. You may hear third graders' Bunny Jumping composition at http://www.nbsymphony.org/friends-academy.html.
Also this week, we began a new social curriculum called Let's Be Friends aimed at teaching young children positive social skills and fostering kindness, compassion, and responsibility. We will be having third grade meetings throughout the year where students have the opportunity to learn about qualities of friends, understanding conflicts, and building empathy. This week we focused on positive attributes as well as internal and external strengths.
Looking ahead, during the week of February 16th, we will be doing E.R.B. testing in third grade. This is a test given to grades 3, 5, and 7. The E.R.B.'s test reading, language, and math skills. I will be discussing the test with the class next week. We will do a practice test to help them feel familiar and relaxed with the process. It is multiple choice and un-timed. It will be very important that your child gets plenty of sleep, eats a hearty breakfast, and arrives at school on time. For many students, this is the first time taking a standardized test. We try to ease any concerns and make this a positive experience. If you have any questions please let me know.
A few curriculum highlights from the week:
Math
- Students continued to practice their basic multiplication facts.
- They solved simple division problems.
- They also looked at multiplication and division word problems.
Social Studies
- Students completed their maps of Japan.
Language Arts
- Students learned about prefixes and practiced using these prefixes to change the meanings of words.
- Students spent time researching their individual Japan topics, collecting and organizing information into outlines.
- I read aloud the book How My Parents Learned to Eat by Ina R. Friedman. It is about a couple who met each other in Japan. The man is a sailor from the United States and the woman is college student from Japan. The story is about how they learned each other's customs and table manners and the funny problems that happened along the way.
- Students continued reading their independent reading books and working on reading response letters in their Reader's Notebooks.
Have a wonderful weekend!