Ms. Davis' 3rd Grade

Our week began with a visit from Cecelia Bledoeg, Emmanuel’s mom.  Cecelia shared a few Indonesian shadow puppets with the class and discussed Indonesia’s rich history of shadow puppetry.  We felt fortunate to have a member of our community add a layer of depth to our study.  On Tuesday, we happily sloshed through the city on our Downtown Walking Tour.  Our tour guide, Peter Chausse, kept us thoroughly engaged by sharing tidbits of history about every nook and cranny of Portland.  Ask your child about Portland’s smallest park, what bridge we walked over, and where we ate lunch.  Thanks to all the parents who joined us!  Your extra eyes were greatly appreciated!  Our final field trip of the year will be to Reed College Cooley Gallery next Wednesday, May 30th to view the photography exhibit of Lorna Bieber.  This is a walking field trip, so permission slip will not be sent home.   However, if you’d like to join us, please let us know- we’d love your company.  To prepare for our trip to the Cooley Gallery, Jen Downer, Zoe’s mom, is sharing her passion for photography with the class by teaching children how to take portraits.  Children will be working with Jen in small groups taking portraits of each other in the outdoor center.  In addition, Gregory MacNaughton, the educational outreach coordinator for the Cooley Gallery, will visit our class on Thursday afternoon to discuss the exhibit.  Good News!!  Lewis' IXL account has been extended!  This means that kids can still access their IXL accounts at home and that our Tuesday after-school IXL club will be continuing to the end of the year.  Our last unit in math is all about bridges.  On our walking tour of downtown, we saw lots of different types of bridges and we even got to see the Hawthorne Bridge get raised to let a cruise ship pass!  We are going to be exploring 3 types of bridges: beam, suspension, and arch.  We will be building models of each type of these bridges, which will require some donated materials.  We will need cardboard, toothpicks, paper towel/toilet paper tubes, straws, foil, string, wire, yarn, and any other interesting materials you might have lying around that would be good for bridge-building.  Anything you can bring in will be much appreciated!  Please bring materials in this week and early next week, as we will begin building in the latter part of next week.  Theory of Knowledge Projects are due Thursday, May 31st.  Thanks for your ongoing support! I feel honored to take part in Lewis' gracious Teacher Appreciate Week.

 

Our week began with an eventful trip to the Historic Belmont Firehouse.  Thanks to all the fabulous parent volunteers who joined us.  Our final two field trips of the year will be: a walking tour of Downtown Portland on May 22nd, and a walking field trip to the Reed College Cooley Gallery on May 30^th.  Inside our classroom we are continuing to study how Portland has changed over time.  Ask your child what schools, transportation and technology were like in the late late 1800s.  There is a buzz of excitement around the Shadow Puppet project we started this week. Children will be writing fables in the form of scripts and will create shadow puppets to act out their fables.  So far, children have brainstormed which animals will appear in their fables, and have decided what lesson the fable will teach. Next, we’ll begin writing and designing our puppets.  We are going to need parent helpers to help us cut out the puppets with x-acto knifes next Wednesday, Thursday and Friday mornings.  If you’d like to volunteer to help on one of those mornings, please let Ms. Davis know.  We’ll make a performance schedule and invite you to see the final productions.  Unfortunately, Lewis' IXL account has expired and so we will not have access to our accounts for the remainder of the year.  I will still be available on Tuesday afternoons for homework support or to do RAZ kids in the computer lab.  Next we are going to be learning some strategies for multiplying one and two-digit numbers together before our end or the year unit on bridges.  The pictures are of our children having recess with their masks and of our trip to the Belmont Firehouse.

 

I hope this current blast of sunshine has added pep to your step. Happy Mother's Day to all of the fabulous room 16 moms!We are headed on a field trip to the Historic Belmont Firehouse this coming Monday, so please make sure your child is punctual on Monday morning. Ramona Baker has asked our class to join her in supporting a local food bank.  With your help, we’re hoping to fill a grocery bag with non-perishables by the end of the week.

For the past month, our weekly literacy discussions have focused on the theme of freedom.  This week’s question was, “When are you allowed to follow your dreams?”  Children’s responses were varied, but most ended up in two categories: 1.  You are able to follow your dreams when you’re left alone in a quiet place. 2. You are able to follow your dreams when you graduate from college.  In the story that followed our discussion, the protagonist followed her dream as a young girl in the midst of lots of people.  I found it interesting that most children thought that following their dreams took place in a particular setting or specific time in life.  In writing, we are focused on our Portland Unit and are writing journal entries from the perspective of early settlers in the region.  The vivid imaginations in our classroom have made these pieces come alive.  Children often request to read their pieces aloud because they are brimming with excitement about their writing.  If you have a moment, stop in and read your child’s last two journal entries. We had our second round of the OAKS test today.  We remembered to go slowly and use our strategies.  I am really proud of all of the effort that our students have put in to make sure they are doing their best work.  This week, we will be wrapping up our Money, Fractions, and Probability unit as we prepare to delve into strategies for tackling more complex multiplication problems.  You can support your child in this new unit by continuing to practice multiplication fluency with flash cards at home.  Thank you for your continued support.  The pictures are of Art Night and the children's Cezanne still lifes.

 

The displays of art that line the hallways are gorgeous. We are hoping that you will join us this Thursday evening from 6-8 to celebrate Art Night. Many of the children in our classroom have volunteered to be docents and have been practicing how to articulately describe the art projects our class has displayed. The docents are looking forward to a live audience on Thursday evening. We have two upcoming field trips, so please mark your calendar: May 14 – Belmont Firehouse, May 22- Downtown Walking Tour. Back by popular demand is the final round of the Theory of Knowledge Projects. Children will have the month of May to investigate whatever topic perks their interest. We look forward to the enthusiasm for learning that these projects generate. In math this week, we reviewed all of the ways to represent fractions: capacity, money, length, parts of a whole, and parts of a set. On Monday, I heard math being described as “delicious” as we figured out ways to share licorice evenly between friends. We have worked on ordering and comparing fractional amounts, and recognizing equivalent fractions. Homework will be sent home this week that gives students more practice with these concepts as a review before our OAKS test next week.  The photos are of our Mona Lisa art pieces.  Enjoy!

Our trip to the Portland Museum of Art couldn’t have come at a more opportune moment.  We had just finished studying the Native Americans living in this region last Friday.  Our museum tour was chock full of Native American artifacts and interesting stories that furthered children’s knowledge about Native American culture.  Ask your child about what he/she found most fascinating about the Native American Exhibit. 

The bulletin board in the dip is displaying abstract flowers that we painted with our buddies.  In writing, children recently wrote journal entries from the perspective of Native American children.  Children incorporated the knowledge they had gained during our Native American study to inform their writing.  We look forward to sharing our journals with you.  We are meeting with our buddies this Friday to work on a Mother’s Day gift, but we need your help.  We need a few garlic presses to add flare to our project.  If you’re willing to let us borrow yours, please tape your name on it and send it to school with your child.  I will send the garlic press back home with your child on Friday. This week in math we are working on firming up our understanding of fractions.  We have worked with several different models of ways to show fractional amounts - slices of pizza, parts of a geo board, pie charts, fractions on a number line and a ruler.  Now that we are feeling comfortable with identifying fractions, we are moving towards having strategies for adding and subtracting fractional parts and wrapping our heads around the concept of having a common denominator.  We are rapidly approaching our second round of OAKS testing.  Students benefit from having lots of practice using their test-taking strategies, especially when they come to tough problems.  If you are interested in the link or a print out of the practice test, let Ms. Elissa know.  Thank you for your ongoing support!  The pictures are from our current bulletin board and from our trip to the Art Museum.  We weren't allowed to take pictures inside the museum, so we took some while waiting for the bus.

As we were preparing for reading on Tuesday, a mysterious package arrived from the Oregon Historical Society.  The package contained four mystery artifacts that relate to Portland’s past.  The letter in the package asked third graders to figure out how the mystery artifacts tie into Portland’s history.  As we dive into our Portland Unit, we will solve the mystery and report our findings to the Oregon Historical Society.  Children will study the following four time periods in Portland’s history: The Clearing, Stumptown, The Great Fire, and Portland Today.  This study will take us on three field trips this spring: The Portland Art Museum, the Historic Belmont Firehouse, and a Downtown Portland Walking Tour.  Permission slips were sent home today.  We’d love to have you join us on one of the trips if you have a current background check.  In reading, children are deeply engaged in partner book clubs.  Children are reading the following books: Clementine, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator, Stone Fox, War with Grandpa, and Runaway Ralph.  Ask your child who is his/her reading buddy and what book they are reading together.  In writing, we’re working on Simile Poems about our animal masks that we made with Maranee Sanders. When we were practicing writing similes together, Ramona shared the following simile, “Ox are as hardworking as the students in room 16.” In math, we are doing some fun fraction activities.  Last week we surveyed a sample of our class to see what the students in Room 16 like and represented our results using fractions on a pie graph.  This week we are using food to think about fractions, namely PIZZA! (Because who doesn't love pizza?)  We are figuring out ways to share pizzas equally between kids and learning all about equivalent fractions in the process.  Last week, I mentioned the benefits of using IXL for additional math practice at home.  I know that many families have busy afternoon schedules and some people have had difficulty setting their child up on IXL, so I would like to extend an open invitation to all Room 16 families:  Starting next Tuesday (4/17) Ms. Elissa will be in the computer lab from 3-4 pm to support any students to who would like to stay and do IXL.  Please feel free to email (edingus@pps.net) or call with any questions.  The pictures of are a simple drawing piece we did using black crayola makers and water.

What a delight it was to come back from Spring Break to a class of eager learners. We jumped back into our routine without skipping a beat. We’ve been spending our writing time preparing for our Publishing Party by putting the finishing touches on our Character Trait Essays. We hope you'll join us in celebrating our finished essays at our Publishing Party tomorrow (Wednesday) from 8:45 - 9:10.   A new list of spelling words was sent home on Monday. The test is scheduled for next Thursday. In reading, we are beginning a new round of book clubs where children have the opportunity to read through a book in groups of 2 or 3. Each group will set their own pacing schedule, and I will check in with groups regularly to monitor comprehension. A Scholastic Book Order was sent home today. Orders are due next Thursday, April 12. Our class was full of curiosity and enthusiasm during our latest science unit, and although we have wrapped up our study of rocks and minerals, our probes have been finished and are now on display in the hallway. Come and check them out! In math, we are starting to delve in to fractions. Fraction concepts can be tricky for some students to master – IXL can be a great resource if you are looking for more practice with fractions (or other math concepts). We are working towards having a solid understanding of fractions as parts of a whole, using the number line model for fractions, and recognizing equivalent fractions. We are also working to become comfortable with writing and reading fractions and being able to use fraction vocabulary (numerator, denominator).  The pictures are of children working on spelling and partner reading.

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This week we are becoming song writers! Our class is working with two artists in residence on creating songs using some of the character traits we have learned about earlier this term. We are going through each step of song writing: choosing a topic, writing lyrics, adding music, and finally, recording! Our final product will be included on a CD with several other tracks recorded by the other 3rd grade classes. We are also wrapping up our Multiplication and Division unit (but keep practicing at home!) and starting our final drafts of our science probes into rocks and minerals. Our classroom buzzword is “effort.” We are focusing on putting forth our best effort in all we do during the school day. In writing, we are finishing our Character Trait Essays and will be hosting a Publishing Party after Spring Break on Wednesday, April 4th from 8:45 – 9:15 a.m. We hope you will join us. Thank you for your ongoing support. Have a safe and wonderful Spring Break!  The pictures and videos are from our mask celebration with Maranee Sanders.

Magical is the word that comes to mind when I reflect on the experience children have had with Maranee Sanders, our artist in residence. Last week, children painted and decorated their masks. As children finished, they slipped their masks over their faces and, without hesitation, became exotic creatures. I love the vivid imaginations of 3rd graders! This Friday, we will have a celebration where all children will share their masks and reflect on the process that they have gone through with Ms. Sanders. We look forward to this exciting experience. During the first half of the week, children focused on the OAKS Reading Test. I can say with confidence that all children followed the first test taking strategy on our list -do your best work. We are preparing ourselves for the math section of the OAKS test this week by thinking about test-taking strategies that will help us be successful. Some important ones are: re-read the question, draw a picture or write out the problem on scratch paper, and choose the best answer. Let Ms. Elissa know if you are interested in the web address or a print out of the OAKS practice test. We are also coming to the end of our Rocks and Minerals unit – each student will be completing an independent probe into a rock or mineral of their choice to show what they have learned. Next week, we will be meeting with a group of songwriters to compose and record a song as a class. More information to come next week! Thank you for your ongoing support!  The pictues are of kids painting and decorating their masks.