Welcome back!

Welcome back from Spring Break 3rd graders! Your teachers have missed you and we are so glad to have you back in the classroom! You began your morning by finding your new seats with your new cohorts and checking out your updated rotation schedule. During morning meeting we played a truth or fib game and talked about a couple new things. First, every independent rotation will be at your desk. That means no computer time, read to self, spelling practice, or math menu will be done around the room. However, your cohort can earn TABLE points for good transitions and behavior. If you get 10 table points, you can move from your seats around the room for the day. Quite a few cohorts got a lot of tally marks today, good job!! Another thing we discussed in morning meeting is that there are only 28 days until State Assessments, 33 days until FastBridge testing, and ONLY 42 days left until summer break! Wow! We have lots of learning to do still, but we have plenty of fun activities planned as well. So, let's make this the best 42 days ever!

Since it was the first day back after a long break, we decided to do whole group lessons instead of rotations today. We began with a whole group reading lesson over our new unit - Native Americans: Regions and Cultures. Before the read aloud, you talked with your cohorts about what you already know about Native Americans and typed your responses on Answer Garden. You knew quite a bit about Native Americans already, but there were a few misconceptions. Not to worry though, we will straighten out these misunderstandings and learn new information during this unit. During today's read aloud, you identified the cause and effect relationship related to the change from nomadic Native Americans to Native Americans who settled in one place. For an extra dollar, comment below what the word nomadic means.

After we finished the read aloud, you all got new spelling lists and practiced doing your spelling rotation the right way with your cohorts. You spent 10 minutes practicing your words and then we moved on to reading Chapter 1 in your Little Readers. Most of the chapters in this little reader are told from a child's point of view. Today's chapter was titled, "Etu, the Hunter" and is a work of historical fiction. Historical fiction has two important features: the stories and characters are made up, but the times and places are real. The real place in this chapter is the region of North America called the Northwest. The real time is the Ice Age. Once we finished reading the chapter, we discussed internal and external character traits. External character traits are what people can see on the outside such as hair color, eye color, and clothing. Internal character traits are what we learn about the character's feelings, words, and thoughts. So for example, one of Etu's external character traits is that he has long, dark hair. One of his internal traits is that he listens and follows directions well. We will discuss internal and external character traits in more chapters.

After lunch and recess, you returned to the classroom for Desk Pet Adoption Day! Several of you adopted pets and started decorating their habitats. If you did not get to adopt a pet today, you will have another chance when we open up the class store. Remember, you need at least $75 to afford a pet and their habitat. While students were picking out their pets, the rest of you worked on a word search and multiplication coloring page. Next you went to library for checkout and played dodgeball in PE.

We continued with whole group lessons in the afternoon. After specials, you either went to Math Prime Time or worked on your new math Menu. Once Prime Time was over, we began our whole group math lesson. In today's lesson, we used the Read Draw Write process to solve word problems. Using the RDW strategy to solve math problems helps us to visualize and better understand the problem. Once we read the story problem, we drew a picture to show our thinking. We drew tape diagrams, number bonds, and other pictures to help solve the problems. We will continue using this strategy in future lessons! After you finished your exit ticket, you worked on math some more on Dreambox.

Next on the agenda was read to self time. Remember, you should always have a book to read and keep it in your book box. You can check out books at the library, find one in our class library, or bring one from home. You should NOT need to get a new book everyday.

We wrapped up our day by taking down your space mobiles, cleaning and packing up. We had some extra time and we were able to play Multiplication Around the World before it was time to go home.

Enjoy your evening and try to stay dry. We will see you tomorrow!