Hi families,
This week in Social Studies we watched a movie, Families of Japan, which followed the lives of two Japanese during a typical day. This allowed students a peek into typical Japanese life for a child their age. We've also been building background knowledge for this unit on Japan and the reading of our class chapter book, Sadako, through watching video shorts on Brainpop, such as the events leading to WWII and Pearl Harbor, and reading articles on ReadWorks about Japan, Mt. Fuji, and Sadako Sasaki's life. After a lengthy lead-in, our students were excited and eager to begin reading Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes. In writing we have been working on identifying action, linking, and helping verbs within the predicate and then writing their own sentences employing each of these. In math we finished up our unit on time. We have covered the parts of the clock, telling time to 5 and one minute, clock vocabulary, elapsed time, and other ways of measuring time: days, weeks, months, seasons, and years. This upcoming week we will introduce multiplication. We will explore several different ways to think about what multiplying actually means, and will do some fun hands on activities such as finding patterns when skip counting and making arrays/equal groups with manipulatives to help our students start to relax about "times" and "multiplication" and realize that what they are really doing is repeated addition. I require that they say the phrase "groups of" instead of "times" when using the X symbol, and have found that it helps students activate their visualization skills so that they are trying to picture the groups they are making. Memorization of "times tables" can be an effective way to make the facts immediately accessible, so we will spend some time working on our facts before moving on to multi-digit multiplication. They will be getting nightly fact practice in addition to the other elements of their homework. It would be greatly appreciated if you could check in with them nightly about completing all elements of their homework as we adjust into this new routine. Thanks in advance! Upcoming Dates: Wednesday, February 6th: Band of Friends performance at All School Meeting. Friday, February 8th: Friends hosting a Parent Diversity Group gathering in Colin Martin's classroom from 8:15 - 9:00 am. Friday, February 22nd: Friends Fest Here is the link to the registration page: http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07efyce2iif820a4d9&llr=df8gwxlab Friends Academy is excited to invite local educators, administrators, health professionals, parents and their children (ages 11 and up) to join us in an important conversation about anxiety. On Wednesday, February 27 at 6:00 in the Friends Academy Common, we will be showing the movie "Angst." (angstmovie.com) All the best! Mrs. Tavares
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March 2019
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Mrs. Tavares' 3rd Grade | Newsletters |