This week 12/14-12/18

Reminders:
***Recipe Project and Presentations are due tomorrow!!!!***
***No School 12/19-1/3***



Reading: This week we are working on comparing and contrasting. I have noticed that students are able to identify some details that are the same and some that are different, but they are missing others. We will be practicing identifying the main idea of each paragraph first. We will then go sentence by sentence to look for information that is similar and information that is different.

Writing: This week we will vote on our next research project. The new research project will start in January. We will focus on paragraph formation and checking our work for mistakes.

Science/Social Studies: This week we are taking a test on soil and making a North Pole map to show what we have learned in geography.


Special Info: Thursday will be an entire day of coding activities!!!! Don't forget to ask your child what he/she did that day!

***Practice Ideas at Home :
1. Do Achieve3000 at home over break!!! We will be doing an incentive :)
2. Read, read, and do more reading! Come prepared to take AR tests on books read over break!

This week 11/30-12/4

Reminders:
***Our 12th  home challenge menu is due back this Friday 12/4. My email is aforino@reyn.org if you need to send me evidence of home challenges done at home***
***Tiger Town Meeting is 12/4***

***No School 12/19-1/3***
***Our Recipe Project is due on 12/16***



Reading: This week we are completing the Fall State of Ohio Assessments. We are doing it in two parts. We will also continue analyzing and comparing and contrasting the plots of two different stories by the same other with similar characters.

Writing: This week we will making sure all of our research about Christmas in other countries is complete and accurate. We are practicing skimming for information. We will start planning some of our paragraphs as well.

Science/Social Studies: This week are comparing political maps to physical maps in geography and we are reviewing the layers of soil and learning about different types of soil in science.


Special Info: In December we will be doing many things to celebrate computer science specifically with code.org. The third graders will start this week by helping to introduce how to code to the other grade levels. December 17th the third graders will get to spend an entire day experimenting with code!

***Practice Ideas at Home :
1. Compare and contrast as much as you can at home. Really have the students stating how things are different and how they are alike with details to support their claims. 
2. Practice building paragraphs : http://www.learninggamesforkids.com/graphic_organizers/writing/paragraph-burger.html

AIR Testing this week

This week we will be taking the fall AIR English Language Arts Assessment. We have split the three hour testing time to two 1.5 hours blocks. We will take the first 1.5 hour tomorrow (12/1) and the other 1.5 hour portion Weds. (12/2). The 3rd grade AIR ELA test is completely online which is why we have been doing all our assessments online in reading this year. Please encourage your child to do the following:

• get a good sleep the night before
• eat breakfast (or get it here)
• arrive to school on time
• answer every question
• read each article at least two times before attempting the question
• eliminate silly answers first
• use evidence from the articles to support your answers
• try your best!!!!!!

http://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Early-Learning/Third-Grade-Reading-Guarantee/Third-Grade-Reading-Guarantee-Family-Resources

Holiday Movie Incentive

We will be doing our annual holiday movie (usually Polar Express) on Friday, December 18th this year. The movie will be a reward for good behavior in the month of December. Students will start earning the movie incentive on November 30th. Each day that my students stay on 3 points or higher on our behavior chart they will earn a star for the movie. The goal is to have at least 12/15 stars by the date of the movie to earn the whole movie. If students earn less than 12/15 stars, they will start to lose some of the movie. An office referral or act of violence will cause a student to immediately lose the whole movie. We hope to encourage positive behavior in class because we understand that as the holidays get closer it is harder to focus. Students that can get 15/15 stars will get hot chocolate and a candy cane with me on December 18th.

Next Week 11/23-11/27

Reminders:
***Our 12th  home challenge menu will go home on 11/30***
***PTO Turkey Feather Fundraiser is going on. Feather donations are $1/feather and the class with the most feathers wins a pizza party.***
***No School 11/25-11/27***
***Our Fall AIR Assessments will be on 12/1 and 12/2***


Reading: This week we comparing and contrasting the first Thanksgiving to our Thanksgiving celebrations to continue our practice of comparing and contrasting.

Writing: This week we will be updating our Christmas in other countries facts to make sure we have the info needed to make a brochure.


Science/Social Studies: This week are practicing grid maps with a turkey themed mapping worksheet.


Special Info: We will be doing Thanksgiving Stations next week with 2nd grade. We will be designing a budget for a Thanksgiving meal, doing a floating activity with Thanksgiving foods, designing a boat to carry the most Pilgrims, and doing turkey glyphs.

***Practice Ideas at Home :

Watch the Mills Staff "whip" out a new video to get students excited about our Habits of Mind

Mills Staff #WeRSTEM video

Practice AIR

Today we took a practice AIR Assessment in class online. This was done for only an hour and the purpose was for districts to check their wifi and make sure that districts all have the capability to give the online assessments all at the same time. The awesome thing about this practice test is that it gave the students and teachers a chance to really see the format of AIR and what typically questions might be like for math and reading. The students had a chance to play around with the tools and ask questions after it. We will continue to take our quizzes and assessments in reading online and I will continue to strive to make these assessments mimic what they will see on the AIR fall assessment (taken Dec 1-2) and the AIR Spring Assessment (take in April). Please feel free to ask your student about what they noticed or what may have surprised them on this practice test.