Swim Forms Due Tomorrow

Swim forms are due in tomorrow - they have to be taken to the pool for organization.  Please help out Mr. Sadowsky by having your forms in on time.

Adjectives

Schoolhouse Rock.  For those of you who remember they made great little commercials that taught little concepts for children.  We used 'Unpack Your Adjectives' to help understand how to add detail to our writing.  We found out that adjectives can describe a color, feelings, sounds, behavior, how something looks and feels.  The challenge is to get it into our story.  We know that good writers create a picture for their audience with their words.  We then continued to write our personal story.

We started an experiment with a tuning fork in science that we will continue tomorrow.  We looked at a couple of really neat video clips that were capturing sound as it travels.

Mission Impossible has proved, once again, to be a challenge.  Ask your student how they did today in the course.

Super Blood Moon will occur for the first time in 35 years and the first one in North America for 150 years.  Have a look in the sky around 6 am tomorrow for your best view of the red orb in the western sky.

I can add details to make my setting, characters and events interesting.

I can add details to make my setting, characters and events interesting is the student outcome we began working on today.  With this in mind we began writing a story in the style of David Shannon.  David Shannon writes some of our favorite books, 'No, David', 'David Gets in Trouble'.  After reading 'Duck on a Bike' we began making a plan for our own story, the characters (animals) setting and their transportation.  Since we are working on detail we will be adding adjectives and adverbs to our work along with dialogue.  Can't wait to read the end result.

Math test tomorrow on the different methods to add and subtract larger numbers.  So, breaking apart addends, number lines, algorithms, adding tens to tens and ones to ones, building numbers with blocks.  Showing me flexability with numbers.  Then we will turn our attention to multiplication and division.

Student Led Conferences

See y'all tonight!!

But not tomorrow -

Swimming Lessons

Swimming lessons start Feb. 6

Paperwork for swimming lessons was sent home today. 

We believe swimming to be a life skill and an important part of the physical education system.

Please fill out the forms and return them to school by Thursday Feb. 1 so we can get all the information to the pool that they will need to make classes.

Determining Importance

What matters most?
One thing I should notice...

These were our take aways about determining importance.  We listened to Three Dog Night sing 'Black and White' (yes from 1972!)  and talked about what was important.  We listened for the important ideas - the lines that were repeated - and then talked about our thinking.  Your students have great ideas.  Application to our social studies textbook and the services in other countries was  little bit more difficult and requires more work!

Sticker math proved to be frustrating for some this morning - the question 'How do you know?' created a stir because students were using numbers that they could not prove or explain where they came from.  Something that we will continue to work on.  Numbers can't just appear as if from thin air.

Metacognition

Metacognition - the biggest and most important grade 3 word.  Ever.
Your student may be checking with you at supper tonight to see what you know about metacognition. They know that it means to think about your thinking.  While I read 'Ruby Bridges' today we kept track of how many times I was thinking about the story and how many times I was reading the words of the story.  We found that I did way more thinking then reading.  Which is the way it should be!!
Everyone wrote about what they had been thinking about Miss Ruby using sentence starters such as:

• I noticed...
• I'm thinking...
• This reminds me of...
• I'm wondering...
• I'm feeling...

Services are important to a community and today we brainstormed and wrote about what we felt to be our most important services.  Tomorrow, we will look at the 4 countries we are learning about and the services they receive in their community.

Student Led Conferences Thursday January 25

System Wide PD day Friday January 26