Weekly Updates 11/14-11/18

NEWS/EVENTS

THANKSGIVING PLAY:

• On Wednesday November 23rd  the third grade is performing the Thanksgiving Play! Families are invited to view the play at 9:30 am that morning! PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS THE ONLY FAMILY PERFORMANCE. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO SIGN YOUR CHILD OUT AFTER THE SHOW (due to travel for Thanksgiving), PLEASE FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS MR. BENDER RECOMMENDED FROM AN EMAIL I FORWARDED ON MONDAY.  Thank you!
• On Monday November 21st we are going on a walking field trip to The Hudson Guild to perform the play for local senior citizens. We will eat at PS 11 and then leave at 12:30. Any parents interested in chaperoning are welcome to join us! The walking trip slip is due back by Friday.
• Our class costume is a yellow shirt and jeans. We are asking students to bring this to school for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Thanks for your support!

A Special Note About Reviewing Student work:

One topic that frequently came up during conferences was finding strategies to frequently stay updated with student work. Here are some ideas we are putting into place:

1) One day each week reading notebooks will be collected by Ms. B. On those designated days I will provide student feedback. My hope is that this will encourage students to make notebooking part of student life at home and in school. Here is my schedule:

Red Herrings: Monday

Gumshoes: Tuesday

Crime Solvers: Wednesday

Sleuths: Thursday

2) Each week I am going to post charts and tools I've used to help teach students concepts during minilessons.

3) I've encouraged students to lead a weekly family conference. During this time, ask students to bring home their reading, writing, and math notebooks, and discuss the work and goals they've been focusing on throughout the week. I might enlist some student to help me create a video to model this! I'll keep you posted!

CURRICULUM

Reading: This week we started our second bend of mystery book clubs. Students are recognizing patterns and trends in mystery books that will help them set expectations for next books. We are encouraging partners to jot clues, predictions, suspects lists, and ideas while reading in order to bring rich conversation topics to partner meetings.

Writing: This week we reflecting on a range of strategies to elaborate within chapters of our informational texts. We are adding facts, examples, statistics, anecdotes, and trying to balance facts vs. opinions. Towards the end of the week we will start to develop book introduction and conclusions. I've attached a link to a PS 11 Showme tutorial I made to help students with elaboration.

Math: This week we are continuing to exploring the inverse relationship between multiplication and division, and using properties (property of zero, commutative property, associative property) to help tackle problems.

Social Studies: We are working on note-taking and are rotating through a variety of US centers.

Weekly Updates 11/7-11

NEWS/EVENTS

• It has been so lovely meeting with families over the past week for Parent Teacher Conferences. I look forward to chatting with many of you in the week to come!
• Today I sent out an email with some information regarding the Thanksgiving play from Ms. Sarah, Ms. Golub, and Ms. Wurman. Please check this out, as it contains information about the class costume colors and rehearsals.
• On Monday November 21st we are going on a walking trip to the Hudson Guild Senior Center to perform (and practice) the Thanksgiving play. A trip slip will go home for this tomorrow.
• The Third Grade Thanksgiving Play is right around the corner! The show is open to parents on Wednesday November 23rd at 9:00. The Thanksgiving play is our Family Friday celebration for the month of November.
• Today the kids came into school sharing a range of emotions from the election. We started off the day with an opportunity for them to privately free write about their thoughts, and then we had a brief class meeting and an opportunity for students to reflect on feelings (without getting into politics and specifics). We linked this conversation to the importance of listening to PS 11 Student Council candidates as they work to make changes on a local level.
• Each week I am going to start to attach strategy charts referenced in the classroom to give families a clearer picture of the work we are doing in the classroom!

CURRICULUM

Reading- Last week we launched our next reading unit- Mystery Reading! Students are working in partners to read several books across a series, paying attention to the mystery, the crime solver, and other important aspects of mystery texts.

Writing- Last week we started our newest writing unit as well- Informational Writing! Students have selected an informational topic they are deeply committed to and will create a book about this topic over the next 4 weeks. After creating a table of contents students crafted mini tables of contents within chapters to help structure the contents of each section. Next week we are going to work on integrating expert terminology into our informational books.

Math- We have also launched our next math unit this year- Multiplication and Division. This week mathematicians are exploring the different ways products are interpreted in a multiplication problem. We are creating a running list of strategies to use when calculating such as using an array.