NOVEMBER NEWS

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in Portland!

We went to the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory play in Portland last Wednesday. First we had a great and active time eating lunch in the park near the farmers' market. We took a quick tour through the market and saw piles of chanterelle mushrooms, along with other seasonal and local produce!Here we're on our way to a surprise stop before we go to the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory playSURPRISE! We stopped at the Moon Struck Chocolate shop and learned many facts about chocolate. Our mouths were watering! Luckily, we all left with a little hand made spider truffle each!

All hand molded and formed!
The play was fantastic! We will soon be preparing for our own plays.
After watching the Tom Sawyer and Charlie and the Chocolate plays, the students will have a lot of ideas to draw from.


B STREET FARM: What Lives Here?
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Students spent a fall afternoon exploring and categorizing the life they found at B Street Farm and recorded what they found in their journals in writing or illustrations. The categories were: seeds, fungi, insects & arachnids, birds, mammals & tracks, trees & leaves and other plants.

This student has sorghum in her hand. We learned that molasses comes from the sorghum plant. In our read aloud, Little House in the Big Woods, Laura and Mary make candy with a mixture of molasses and sugar poured into the snow in tin pans. The students are hoping that it snows this winter so that we can try to make this candy. Sounds like a great opportunity to learn about measurement and proportions of ingredients in invented recipes. Perhaps we'll write a candy cookbook. If you have molasses, sugar, or pie pans the Barn Swallows would love it!

This student has the sap from a cedar tree on his fingers. We spent time smelling the cedar's sweet, green branches and observing its bark so that we could find it again. In Little House in the Big Woods we are learning about collecting the sap from maple trees in the early spring, boiling the sap down to syrup over a fire, and then crystallizing it into sugar. We are inspired to see if this would work with the maple trees here in Oregon. Laura's grandpa whittled little spouts to go into the holes in the trees and we have our own whittler in class, Kyle!

B STREET FARM:

Scavenger Hunt of What Lives Here
& Maple Tree Study
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009

After choosing their own seats each day for almost two months, students have been able to get to know each other well in many academic and social situations. I have also been able to see who works well together. Students thought of at least 8 people who they either have helped often or have been helped by, and wrote them down on a card. This was to help me form more permanent groups of students that will be able to support each other academically and socially. Through using regular team building activities, students will become comfortable with one another, making it possible to take more academic risks. Students will also be able to know how to help and support each other in academic and social situations. We will also learn more about small group communication.

Here we are at B Street Farm, in our newly formed groups. Students were each given a scavenger hunt list and their mission was to complete it as a team. Students figured out different ways to make sure that each person was included, heard, and valued. From giving each other turns to lead the group around to find the next item, to using each others' backs to write, students were learning not only about what lives at B Street Farm, but also about team work.

Items on the scavenger hunt list were: Seeds (maple, acorn, walnut, and calendula), fungi (three colors; white, brown, purple), leaves and needles (maple, oak, two types of walnut, cedar, long and short pine needles), creatures (pill bug, worm, ladybird beetle), and birds (scrub jay and robin). Students had to read the list, use the pictures, work together, identify pieces of nature's web, and follow their senses for this lesson.

Maple Tree Study!
October 27th, 2009

ONE...

We are learning about farmers' almanacs and are reading a great one written for children called Linnea's Almanac. The authors are from Sweden and have many other great books for children.

After the scavenger hunt at the farm, the kids gathered on the patio as I read aloud from the almanac. We read Linnea's excerpt for October and she taught us about maple leaves. We can identify maple leaves because they are shaped like our palm. Linnea also drew a diagram, with step by step instructions for making your own maple leaf crown through threading the stems and folding the leaves. We had to try it!

TWO...


THREE!

A large gust of wind blew the 'helicopter' maple seeds into a frenzy, inspiring us to see what the wind would do to leaves in the air!

August and I figured out how to make the maple leaf crown together. It was a lot trickier than it seemed! We used a little twig to make small holes in the leaves to thread the stems through. Our leaf chain had at least 9 leaves on it, but Linnea says you need about 22!

Here is an official leaf crown, made with team work!

Many students were inspired to invent and create with maple leaves!









Finding Our New Table Groups!

Students were surprised one morning to learn that they were going to find out who was in their table group by doing a puzzle piece search around the classroom. Each student's name was written on a puzzle piece, which matched only with the other students in their group. Students were able to find their puzzle pieces and then their new groups by putting the pieces together. They have been working on making a talent quilt as well as brainstorming and discussing their group name.

Music Class

We will be having music class on most Friday afternoons. Parent volunteers are donating their talents and time, taking turns each Friday to share their love of music with level 1. Here we have Ben's dad, Peter, singing a song about a hound dog that would rather be friends than enemies with a raccoon!

Solomon has started taking violin lessons after school and wanted to play 'Happy Birthday' to Kyle! We are looking forward to the day when Solomon plays for our first class square dance, just like Pa from Little House!

After music class is over, it's hard for us to stop! We decided to experiment with jars of water. Each student took a turn improvising a song for the class. We have very creative musicians! We like to sing and make up actions during our morning meetings. Ask your child to teach you the Little Bird song and dance. Little Bird is sung by children's folk singer, Elizabeth Mitchell. We have really been enjoying her songs!

Amaranth Grain and Onion Seeds

We have spent A LOT of time getting our amaranth grain ready and are learning that it's a very delicate and time consuming process! I brought in my little scale and we have been weighing the grain. We've learned that 16 ounces makes 1 pound. So far we have at least 3 ounces of amaranth grain and a little more than 1 pound of mixed grain and fine debris. We first weighed the container that the grain would go in. Then we weighed the container with the grain and subtracted the weight of the container to find out how many ounces of grain we had. We will continue to invent ways to separate the grain from the debris and hope to have a taste of amaranth warm cereal or amaranth 'popcorn' by December! We also hope to save some of our seeds to plant next spring.

Literacy

Every day after morning meeting, where we do a greeting, sharing, song and quick team building activity, we have an hour long literacy block. Students have been using the five finger rule and reading just right books independently, doing one on one reading assessments with me, practicing hand writing, doing word sorts (word work), playing grammar games in small groups and writing stories.

Currently we are learning about how to choose a 'good fit' book using 'I. P.I.C.K.'

• I choose a book
• Purpose: What is my reason, or purpose for reading it?
• Interest: Is it interesting to me?
• Comprehend: Do I understand what I am reading?
• Know: Do I know most of the words?

When choosing books to read at home, ask your child to about the I. P.I.C.K. strategy and the five finger rule.

We are also learning about a reading routine/system called the Daily Five. I am introducing this system so that students can spend extended periods of time doing one meaningful activity at a time, in depth, and independently, while I am working with small groups. Regular literacy activities in this system include:

• Read to self
• Read to someone
• Work on writing
• Word work (spelling and letter patterns)
• Listen to reading

Once students learn the independent behaviors and expectations for each literacy activity, they will begin to make their own choices about which one to do during each block of time. I will arrange the schedule so that the choices each day include reading and writing. Mini lessons on reading and writing strategies will break these blocks of time up. The mini lessons will give students a 'body and brain break' as well as introduce them to the reading and writing skills we will be focusing on in small groups.

We are learning what 'read to self' looks, feels, and sounds like through practicing it each day. We have also been learning about the word stamina and agree that our actions and choices every day should help increase our reading and writing stamina. Next we will learn many different ways to independently read to someone, as well as continue the read to self routine. While students are learning to independently engage in meaningful literacy choices, read to self or read to someone, I will be doing guided reading and work on focused skills with small groups. My goals for guided reading are for students to foster a love of reading and become independent and thoughtful readers. These lessons in small groups will be based upon students' personal learning plan goals and will range from working with letter sounds to reading fluently with expression.

Math

In third grade math we have been learning about the names of different types of addition problems with numbers up to 20. Ask your child to explain the following facts: zero facts, counting ons, doubles, neighbors, fast tens, fast nines, make tens, and leftovers. This review of addition, as well as the 'Make the Sums' game which was sent home, is to lead to efficiency, confidence, and ease with these facts, leading into addition of double, triple, and quadruple digits. We will use what we understand about the named addition facts and relate it to subtraction, through looking at the relationship between the two operations. We will work with subtracting double, triple, and quadruple digits. We have also been learning about collecting data through surveys, displaying data on bar graphs, identifying the title and legends of graphs, and making comparisons of the data displayed.

We are about to do a black bean project with beans that I grew this summer in my garden. The beans were the third sister in a 'three sisters' section of the garden (the other two being flour corn and heirloom squash). I would like to know more about the relationship between the numbers of bean pods to the weight of the shelled beans, as well as the relationship between the length of the bean pods and the number of beans inside. I would also like to know the relationship between the weight of the bundle of dried stems, leaves, and bean pods, and the weight of the black beans after they have been shelled, to estimate how many pounds of black beans I have before I shell them.

In table groups, students will first weigh their black bean dried plant bundle and record it in pounds and ounces. They will make predictions about the relationship between the weight of the bundle and the weight of the shelled beans from the same bundle. Then they will get all of the bean pods off of the stems. Students will estimate how many shelled beans they think their table's bundle has, based on opening a few pods and counting the beans.

Next, students will learn how to measure the black bean pods in centimeters. They will learn how to round up or down to the nearest centimeter. Students will learn how to make a T-chart and begin gathering data on the beans. They will write the bean's length in centimeters, rounded to the nearest whole centimeter, in one column, with the number of beans inside of the pod in the other column. Students will make predictions about the length of the bean pods in relation to the number of beans inside of them.

Through looking at their piles of shelled beans, students will first estimate how many they have. To practice addition, students will total up the number of beans they have shelled individually through adding the number of beans in each pod, naming the type of additon fact they used as they go, rather than counting. Table groups will then find the total number of shelled beans they have, through adding double or triple digit numbers, as well as find the total number of bean pods they had. They will compare the total number of shelled beans to their estimate from before. Students will analyze their T-charts to see if there is a relationship between the length of the bean and the number of beans inside and write a brief reflection. They will also weigh the final table groups' shelled black beans and compare it to the weight of the dried bundle. Students will write reflections on the relationships they noticed through this black bean project.

My goals for this project are to give a real situation that calls for math and allows students to see mathematical relationships. Students will learn or review; weighing in pounds and ounces, measuring using centimeters, rounding to the nearest whole centimeter, gathering data, displaying data on a T-chart, making predictions of mathematical relationships, estimating, counting, adding single, double, and triple digits, and writing to show their mathematical thinking.

Pear Picking Blog and Student Advice!

If you haven't read our pear picker blog, please be sure to check it out! Leave us a comment or a question and we will write back. Scroll all the way to the top of this blog to click on the blog address.

Important Dates

• Scholastic book orders are due November 11th. (You may order online and earn books for the class!)
  
• Veteran's Day is Wednesday, November 11th (no school)
  
• Thanksgiving break is from November 25-27th.
  
• Celebrations of Learning is Wednesday, December 2nd.