Holiday Celebration

Dear Third Grade Families,

The children were delighted with all of the delicious breakfast foods and crafts that were sent in.  Thank you to families and Room Parents for contributing to our celebration!  We had lots of fun together throughout the day!

 

Remember to read each day throughout the vacation, skip count, and practice the x 2, x 3, and x 4 multiplication facts.  Enjoy a fun and restful holiday with your families!  

Sincerely,
Keelin M. Simpson

Happy Holidays From Room 15

             

Third graders have been busy in Room 15 this December.  We celebrated all of our hard work with some snow mountain time outside!

                

Mathematicians have learned about measuring mass in December.  Students used gram weights on a balance scale to find the mass of objects around the classroom.

The objects in this bag have a mass of 1,000 grams or 1 kilogram!

                       

 Mathematicians earned some Chromebook time for all of their excellent work with measuring!

We spent some time making colorful snowflakes to decorate our classroom today!

Remember to practice the X 2, X 3, and X 4 multiplication facts throughout the vacation.  A  few minutes of practice each day will make a big difference!  Keep skip counting each day, too.  Focus on skip counting by 6's, 7's, 8's, and 9's.  

Have a joyful, safe holiday vacation!

Sincerely,

Mrs. Simpson

Room 15 News

 

Third graders are learning about Native Americans that lived in the Northeast Region of the United States.  Students have learned about foods Native Americans ate, the jobs of men and women within tribes, and the homes they lived in. Students are working on creating Google Slideshows to reflect their research and learning.  

Students made wampum necklaces from string, shells, and beads this afternoon.  Native Americans used wampum  as currency, for trade, to tell a story, and as jewelry.

 

 

 

Third grade mathematicians, remember to work towards memorizing the X 2, X 3, and  X 4 facts this weekend.  Practice skip counting; especially by 6's, from 6  - 60.  If you can count forwards by 6's, can you count backwards by 6's?  Challenge yourself! 🙂

Have a great weekend!

Sincerely,

Keelin Simpson

It's Time to Learn the X 3 Facts

Dear Third Grade Families,

          An important part of the third grade math program involves memorizing multiplication facts.  Third graders are off to a great start with learning the  facts.  Many students have learned the x 0, x 1, x 2, and x 4 facts already.  Way to go!  

         Practicing multiplication facts at home for five to ten minutes each day is an important part of learning the multiplication facts.  At parent/teacher conference time in November, families brought home skip counting activities and paper board games to help students learn the x 2 (Doubles Facts) and x 4 (Double - Doubles Facts). Please continue to keep up the great practice at home!  A few minutes of practice each day can make a big difference.  

         This week students are challenged to learn the x 3 facts.  Students have learned that the x 3 facts are called Doubles Plus One More Set Facts.  The x 3 facts were given this name because you can use  a Double (x 2 fact ) to solve x 3 fact.  If I know 2 x 8 equals 16, then I know that 3 x 8 is just one more set of 8, and 16 + 8 = 24. 

2 x 8 = 16, so

3 x 8 = 16 + 8 = 24.

3 x 8 = (2 x 8) + (1 x 8)

            Double + One More Set of 8

          Please let me know if you have any questions about the Doubles Plus One More Set multiplication strategy.   It is a different way of learning multiplication facts than the way that many of us learned growing up, but the strategies make sense.  The goal is to use known facts to solve unknown facts.  In this case, we are using our knowledge of Doubles to solve the x 3 facts.

          Please help your child to practice the x 2, x 3, and x 4 facts at home by playing the games that were sent home, building multiplication facts out of blocks or cereal, playing multiplication games online at Mrs. Simpson’s blog, or using flashcards.  The games Multiplication Bump x 3 and Multiples of 3 will be sent home with your child on Monday.  Watch for those games in your child's backpack.  

                                                                   

Sincerely,

Keelin M. Simpson

Mrs. Simpson’s Third Grade Blog

Dear Third Grade Families,

        In order to communicate with you throughout the school year, I will post announcements and updates on our “classroom blog.” Rather than send you a paper newsletter, I will post periodic classroom updates on our blog. This way, you can stay up-to-date with the learning that goes on in room 15!

        You can view the blog at any time through Chamberlin’s webpage, but you must subscribe to the blog in order to receive email updates. There will be some great features, such as sharing pictures, events, and websites. Plus, it’s convenient! The blog posts will be sent directly to your email.

        I hope you join our blog!

Here is how to view the blog and subscribe:

1.    Visit the Chamberlin School webpage: (http://chamberlin.sf.sbschools.net/)

2.   Click on Our Classrooms  (along the side menu on the main page)

3.   Next click on Mrs. Simpson. You will arrive at my blog!

4.   To subscribe, please enter your preferred email address in the box on the right where it says “Subscribe to Mrs. Simpson’s Blog.”

5.   After you have entered your email, click “submit.”

6. An email will be sent to you asking you to confirm your subscription. Your subscription will not go through unless you confirm this email!!

Thank you for joining! J

Third Grade News

Hello, Third Grade Families!

To begin this week, we would like to share a few business items:

1.    Next Friday, December 8th, is an early dismissal day. PLEASE remember to discuss with your child if s/he needs to order a school bag lunch, as orders need to be placed by Tuesday of next week. Your child is bringing home an order form today. The kitchen cannot guarantee student lunches without prior orders.  We appreciate your attention to this!  Students will be dismissed at 12:30 pm on the 8th.  

2.    The last day of school before the winter break will be on Friday, December 22nd.  On that day, we will take some time to celebrate December holidays and traditions.  We will also watch a movie that is a sequel to a readaloud we have been enjoying during literacy.  The book we are reading in called “The Best/Worst School Year Ever”. The movie we will watch has all of the same characters in a school holiday play, and is called “The Best/Worst Christmas Pageant Ever”. We look forward to seeing those wild Herdman kids in a new adventure!

3.    Winter is here! Please send your child with appropriate outerwear to be warm and comfortable for a twenty minute recess period. Please be advised that snowpants, as we tell the children, provide protection from the wet and cold as well as the snow. Please write your child’s name in his/her clothing help that clothing makes it back to its correct home!

4.    Please remember to return SaveAround coupon books.  If you do not plan to purchase the book, it needs to be returned to school. If you are purchasing the book, please return the envelope with a check. Thank you!

5.  We are sending the optional December homework packet for those families who enjoy having some at home work time.  These do not need to be returned to school.  Daily reading and number fact practice are required expectations for homework.

We had a wonderful time at the Flynn performance of Jazzy Ash and the Leaping Lizards this week. It was a lively, interactive presentation of American music, with a focus on New Orleans jazz.  We certainly saw the musical side of many of our students as they joined in the fun! You can find some of their music online and on Youtube.      

In literacy this week, we have been focusing upon how readers approach nonfiction text.  We have learned that we need to build our expectations by asking “what will this mostly be about?”, and thinking of what we might learn.  We then need to recall any prior knowledge we have about the text in order to deepen our understanding. If we have no prior knowledge, we need to prepare ourselves for some unfamiliar vocabulary, and be ready to re-read. We also learned that we can use our hand to help us organize chunks of text, stopping to ask “what is the main idea of this part?’ on our palm, and then using our fingers to think of supporting details. When we use our notebooks, we are calling this process “boxes and bullets”.  Please encourage your child to stop and discuss their nonfiction reading with you at home, using their palm and fingers to highlight the main idea and details.  Today, students will bring home reading logs to record their daily reading. Logs are useful for students to track their progress, and to set new reading goals (number of pages read, genres of books being read, etc.).

Third grade mathematicians have started a unit of study about addition, subtraction, and multi-step problem solving.  We continue to work towards memorizing the multiplication facts each day. Please make sure that your child is practicing the Doubles (x 2 facts) and Double-Doubles (x 4 facts) at home.  Students should continue to practice skip counting by numbers 2 - 9  (count by 3’s to 30, 8’s to 80, 9’s to 90, etc…).    

We are in need of cleaning wipes for our classrooms.  If you have a package to spare, please send them in.  

Sincerely,

Kathy Buley

Keelin Simpson

Sharon Robinson

Third Grade News

Hello, Third Grade Families!

We hope everyone is having success at using the signupgenius.com to schedule a parent conference. If you are having difficulty, please send an email and we will be happy to help you sign up!  We look forward to meeting with you and sharing your child’s progress in third grade.

We have asked our new member of the third grade team, Sharon Robinson, to tell us a little bit about herself. We are happy to have Sharon as an experienced, qualified teacher contributing her expertise to our third grade community. Ms. Robinson comes to us after teaching at Champlain School and having spent a year teaching in Portugal.  Sharon has been hired to fill the .5 position for Ms. Buley until the end of December. Here is what Sharon has to say:

My name is Sharon Robinson and I am excited to tell you that I will be the long term sub for Ms. Buley in the third grade. I will be working with the students every afternoon and assisting them with their writing, and some science and social studies.  I am already enjoying the opportunity to get to know each of the students and look forward to our studies over the next few months. I hope to meet all of you at the parent conferences coming up in the next few weeks.

Please remember that Friday, November 10th, will be an early dismissal day at Chamberlin for Teacher Inservice. Students will be dismissed at 12:30 on that day.  If you would like your child to have a school bag lunch, they will need to sign up by Tuesday, November 7th.

Third graders have now been introduced to our keyboarding program, “Typing Quest”.  The series of lessons are paced to measure both accuracy and speed, and students are required to achieve prescribed levels of proficiency before moving on to the next level. We also work hard to instill the habit of both hands on the keyboard, and correct placement on the home row.

Math News from Keelin:

During Number Corner, third grade mathematicians have been studying geometry.  Students have learned about the attributes of many shapes such as triangles, quadrilaterals, pentagons, and hexagons.  Ask your child to tell you about acute, right, and obtuse angles. Ask- your child to show you the sites on Mrs. Simpson’s blog related to symmetry, angles, and congruent shapes.  

Third grade mathematicians continue to learn strategies for solving multiplication problems.  We are learning to use facts we know to solve facts we don’t know. If I know 10 x 4 = 40, then I can solve     9 x 4 by subtracting one group of 4 from 40.  This week, we have studied doubling.  I can solve 8 x 9 by solving (4x 9) + (4x 9). Students should continue to practice skip counting by numbers two through nine (count by 3’s to 30, 4’s to 40, etc…) at home.  Five minutes of practice each day can make a difference!  

It’s time to begin practicing multiplication facts, too.  Students learned that the x 2 facts are called Doubles. We know that we can solve a number times two by doubling the number (8 x 2 = 8 + 8).  Help your child to learn the Doubles Facts at home by practicing them for a few minutes each day.  

Literacy News from Kathy:

Our third grade readers had some fun this week with seasonal literature. We enjoyed the story Heckedy Peg as a read aloud, and discussed the elements of Halloween that we noticed in our independent reading. How does an author change settings, characters, plot, etc., to turn a story into a Halloween tale? We also read a story called “Pumpkin Faces”, and answered comprehension questions about the text.

We are finishing up our first unit on fiction and “building a reading life”. Students are now reading one more chapter book as an independent assessment task, and we are beginning to prepare for our next unit on nonfiction.  This week we sorted books in our reading library, seeking nonfiction books and making observations about them.  We are noticing differences in the look and organization of fiction vs. nonfiction. We have also started to discuss in what ways an author’s purpose would be different between the two (to inform, educate, share expertise on a topic they would like others to be excited about), and the many types of nonfiction books that we will explore.

Our formal spelling program has begun! Students were introduced to the structure of the program and daily expectations, along with their first list of spelling words.  Third graders will be expected to complete their daily spelling assignments when they arrive at school each morning- this includes sorting the words according to their spelling pattern, writing words in sentences, putting them in alphabetical order, and doing a word shape activity to focus upon the visual aspects of the words.  

After the sadness of Stone Fox, we are enjoying a silly, funny book called The Best/Worst School Year Ever, about a family of very misbehaving children. Whew, good thing we don’t have any Herdman kids at Chamberlin!

We enjoyed a visit from members of the South Burlington Rotary Club on Wednesday. They came to present every third grader with a dictionary, as an annual service project. We are very grateful to them for their generosity!

We continue to work on finishing our personal narratives during writing time.  Because we will be moving on to our next writing unit, some students may find themselves needing to complete their personal narrative as a homework assignment. While students have had adequate time to complete this assignment, some have not done so, and it is important that they understand the need to meet expectations. We hope that you will support your child if they have work to do at home on this assignment.

Science:

Third grade scientists will be joined by educators from VEEP, VT Energy Education Program, in the morning on November 10th. The educators will lead students through hands-on, interactive activities related to our study of magnetism, force, and motion.

Other:

We would appreciate donations of cleaning wipes for our desks. Boxes of tissue are also appreciated.

Also, we would like families to know that students are welcome to bring in ear buds to use with their Chromebooks. In the past, families have purchased ear buds at the Dollar Discount store.  We do have headphones available, but some students prefer using ear buds.  Thanks!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Sincerely,

Keelin Simpson

Kathy Buley

Sharon Robinson