I love fall!

I love fall! Cool mornings and evenings, beautiful afternoons, it just doesn't get much better! 

We had a terrific week in 3Y this week! Here are some highlights:

The last two weeks we were getting used to having guided reading groups. During this time we read and discussed Johnny Appleseed, we also used Ready Freddy Apple Orchard Race. These were books and activities that everyone participated in. It was a fun way to set up expectations in and out of group. The students enjoyed various apple activities one of which was homemade applesauce. Here is the recipe in case it did not make it home. Think apple pie without the crust! :)  

CROCK POT APPLESAUCE

10 lg. cooking apples, peeled, cored & sliced or cut in chunks

1/2 c. water

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 to 1 c. sugar- (we used 1/2 cup)

Put all ingredients into Crockpot. Should be about 3/4 full. Cover and cook on low 8 to 10 hours (high 3 to 4 hours). 

The applesauce blended in nicely to tie a lot of 3rd grade curriculum and team work together. We discussed the life cycle of an apple tree (to go with our plant unit in science) and how an apple really starts out as a flower. We cooperatively measured the ingredients. Breaking our fractions apart. "If I need 1/2 a cup of sugar and I want 2 people to do this job, how much would each person add?" While eating the applesauce we read the book How to make an Apple Pie and See the World. We looked at a map describing where a lot of our ingredients come from. An additional plus- it made for a yummy afternoon treat! 

Text Talk- This week we read The Rough-Faced Girl. This is a Native American rendition of Cinderella. The youngest of three sisters is left to tend to the family fire, which leads to her face and body getting scared as well as her hair getting burnt. All three sisters want to marry the invisible being. The two older sisters take the nice buckskins, mocosins, and beads their father has, which leaves nothing for the youngest sister. However, when going to the wigwam, the oldest two sisters can not answer questions about seeing the invisible being and were sent home. The youngest sister explains how she can see his face everywhere. The invisible being and his sister instantly see how beautiful the youngest sister is because of her kind and loving heart. They are married and never parted. Words we studied were: charred (turned black from fire), awesome (amazing), haughtily (to think your better than others), suitable (just right), feverishly (in a hurry), and prevail (to do it before others).

Reading- This week we did not have a story. We reviewed the stories we had read so far and took a unit test. We used the time to cover the comprehension strategy of fact and opinion, discussing how a fact is something we can prove and an opinion is someone's belief or thought. 

*Since we are through the unit test and it is almost half way through the first trimester (that is so hard to believe!), I will be sending home a grade sheet where your child is currently at in reading. I will write a little letter to go with it also, about grading expectations and just a few general notes. Also coming home will be two bookmarks. I have them pictured below. These are basically just to use while you are reading with your child. They will help "coach" how to help if your child gets stuck on a word, or ask them some basic comprehension questions. The blue bookmarks have some more in-depth comprehension strategies, (these are the strategies we use for reciprocal teaching) which we will cover through out the year. Some of these strategies are better with certain text. Please take a look at them and let me know if you have any questions. 

Reading strategies to help your child decode words (not sure why it turned out green)

Some basic comprehension questions to get your child thinking about what they are reading.

More in depth comprehension skills

Continues strategies on back

Math- This week we continued to worked on rounding to the nearest ten and hundred. We also added  two and three digit numbers, as well as practiced column addition problems (3 or 4 -2 digit or  3 digit numbers stacked up to add!). We continued to practice as some children were still not completely sure about place value and regrouping. Next week we will move on to subtraction. 

Science- Our flower pedals have fallen and we now have a TON of seed pods.  This week learned about pollination. On Monday I placed paper bags with a flower on the outside and Cheetos on the inside. Students had to travel from flower to flower collecting Cheetos and could not lick their hands. Once we traveled back to our own flowers at our desk, we dropped the pollen (cheese from Cheetos) onto our flower. This gave the kids a great idea of what our bees would be doing. Then we pollinated our plants with bees. 

Collecting Cheetos

Gathering Cheeto pollen

Cheeto pollen

Bee sticks (dried Honeybees glued onto a toothpick)

How we pollinate with bee sticks

Our plants on Monday

Our plants on Friday

Writing-This week in writing we began writing paragraphs with a topic sentence, three big ideas with basic transition words, and a conclusion sentence. We started with paragraphs that were started and ended for us, and gradually became more writing for the students. We will continue paragraph writing next week and pull further and further away from having a form to fill in to the student creating and doing the work. I may or may not continue to give them topics or prompts for their writing depending on their need. 

*Just a reminder to have your child wear their red FMI shirt every Wednesday! We had a fabulous turn out this week!  

Have a great weekend and enjoy the weather! :) 

Mrs. Jodie Yuska

week 5

Sorry for the delay in the blog post. It was a crazy end to the week and a very busy household for me! 

Few quick notes: 
1)Red t-shirts went home on Friday with a yellow paw print. These t-shirts were purchased for your child from the parent group. T-shirts were made to be worn every Wednesday to show that we know and can be an active member of "The Marion Way." We want students to take pride in and remember to be responsible, respectful, show safety and integrity. These t-shirts are for your child to use both years at FMI. Please help your child care and be responsible for their shirt for the two years they are in our building.

2)I will be gone again on Friday for another PBIS (Positive Behavior and Intervention Support) team. I am a coach for our building, which means I am creating and supporting the development of our "Marion Way."  

3)Mark your calendars- October 2nd is picture day. Envelopes went home on Friday also.

Here is a description of our week: 

Math- Last week we worked on rounding to the nearest ten and hundred. We also added and subtracted two- digit numbers. This week we will continue adding two and three digit numbers as well as estimating numbers to add. 

Reading-  Our story this week was Meet an Underwater Explorer by Luise Woelflein. This story is about an underwater explorer named Sylvia Earle who shares her story of what life is like as a marine biologist. She is having set diving records, tested new equipment, and headed an all-woman science team that lived on the ocean floor for two weeks.  With this story we looked at what it would life underwater would be like. We also took a deeper look into the story to find main ideas and supporting details in the text. Looking at which pieces of information the story was mostly about and supporting that one idea with other information from this nonfiction text did this.

Writing- This week we discussed how sentences are put together with a subject (who or what) and a predicate (what the subject is or does). Here are some examples: 

While I was away the students worked on a "Mrs. Yuska is missing" poster and story. What I have read so far has been VERY cute! I can't wait until they are finished.

Science-The plants are growing rapidly. This week there were a lot of changes. We started the week noticing buds develop. We ended the week with flowers on most of our plants. 

On Friday we took the chance to look at a dried bee. We identified some of the parts of the bee and glued them on to a tooth pick to aid us in pollination this week. I took pictures on Wednesday, hoping to send out the blog on Thursday. I will take more pictures during this week so you can see more details of our plants.

Mrs. Jodie Yuska

We are welcoming the cool down (week 4)

Please make sure your child is always dressed for the weather. As a parent myself, I know it is hard to always have a chance to catch the weather report, but with the feeling of fall in the air, it is important your child brings a jacket or coat to school everyday. We will let them know if they don't need them in the afternoon, but morning recesses are a bit chilly. Plus, I think it is a good way for the children to dress in layers. I have a feeling that is going to be a MUST for our new room, no matter the season. :)

Happy September birthdays to Colin, Keenan, and Alyssa!

Here is a description of our week: 

Math- We took a step back and continued talking about single digit addition and subtraction facts, as well as strategies to solve addition and subtraction problems, and how to solve story problems. We will continue working through these skills in our McGraw-Hill and Investigations books. Next week we are going to work in the Investigations book and discuss place value and ways to make a 100. This will even include a few new games! :) Hopefully, these lessons will lend themselves nicely to 2-digit, then 3-digit addition and subtraction. A big concept is regrouping. I know this will need a lot of practice for some students, but it will come in time. These are skill we will work on all year.

Reading- Our story this week was Animal Fact/ Animal Fable Seymour Simon. This story invites the reader to guess whether common notions, such as “ crickets can tell the temperature with their chirps” are true or false. The author goes on to discuss the fact or fable behind these beliefs. This week we explored the differences between fact and opinion. 

 

Text Talk- This week we read The 3 Questions (Based on a story by Leo Tolstoy) by Jon J. Muth. In the book, Nikolai asks his friends; What is the best time to do things? Who is the most important one? What is the right thing to do? Nikolai knows that he wants to be the best person he can be, but often he is unsure if he is doing the right thing. After not receiving a decent answer from his friends he goes to ask Leo, the wise turtle. When he arrives, the turtle is struggling to dig in his garden, and Nikolai rushes to help him. As he finishes work, a violent storm rolls in. Nikolai runs for Leo's cottage, but on his way, he hears cries for help from an injured panda. Nikolai brings her in from the cold, and then rushes back outside to rescue her baby too.  Vocabulary words we discussed this week are advance, priority, drenched, uncertain, insecure, and injure. 

Writing- (these lessons will be different if your child goes to Mrs. Gatrost at this time) 

This week we discussed writing complete sentences using, who (noun), description (adjective) what (action-verb), when, and where. For example, Mrs. Yuska danced on Saturday in her living room. :)We worked on looking at pictures then simply trying to describe a who, what, where, when, and why. Monday we took a look and described the following two pictures: 

Tuesday we wrote super sentences about bears. Wednesday we wrote super sentences about robots. Today we did a review of different types of nouns and which nouns would need to be capitalized and which nouns would stay lower case. Tomorrow, students will draw their own picture and write a sentence. If we have time we will start to dive into using good descriptive words, and making an OK sentence into a better sentence (this will be our focus all of next week also.) Next Wednesday, expect a sheet to come home, which looks like this: 

Students will have written a sentence inside and will bring it home to share it with two people. Please have two people sign the back to lines then send it back to school. :)

Science-  Everyday, your child will be measuring and writing observations they see about the growth and changes in their plants. This week they discussed the seed leaves (smooth leaves at the bottom) and true leaves (the rigid leaves they grow further up on the stem).

Today we talked about how a seed is like a suitcase (ask your child to explain!) :). We even cut open different fruits to see how the seeds were carefully packaged inside, then had a tasting party. The kids love it (some more than others!) :) 

Pomegranate

Orange

Apple

White peach

Next Monday, I am sending home two sheets a lot with the spelling list. I am not planning on sending these home each week, so please put them in a safe place. The white sheet will give you some ideas to have your child practice their spelling words at home. The bright pink sheet is scrabble tiles for one of the activities. If you were not sure, yes, we are still teaching words their way and looking at patterns and sorting at home. But with parent requests, all of third grade is sending words home in a list like form. Here is what you can expect: 

Have a great Friday! 

Mrs. Jodie Yuska

Another busy week (week 3)

I hope everyone enjoyed their nice long weekend. Thankfully the weather has cooled down. Our classroom felt incredible today! 

Here are some of highlights of our week:

Math- We continued to look at place value with ones, tens, and hundreds. Next week we will add the thousands place and start to add and subtract 3-digit numbers. A challenge in the past has been to determine the expanded form of a number (ie. 345 would be 300+40+5=345). We also took at look at standard form (ie. 145) and the word form (ie. one hundred forty-five).

Reading- Our story this week was Lon Po: A Red-Riding Hood Story from China.  A Chinese version of the famous tale, this story teaches the important message of triumph of courage and cleverness over evil. Dramatic illustrations that incorporate techniques used in ancient Chinese panel art make this selection even more interesting. Strategies we looked at with this story was comparing and contrasting other versions of Little Red Riding Hood and analyzing character and plot, as well as determining the moods used to tell the story. 

 

Text Talk- Text Talk is a program that provides robust vocabulary instruction tied closely to comprehension. With this program, I will read aloud a picture book stopping at key places where we will discuss comprehension questions, check for understanding, or review vocabulary words. Each day of the week, we will complete some fun short activities using these vocabulary words in and out of context with the book, then take a multiple choice quiz. This week we read Wolf! by Becky Bloom. In the book, A wolf trades in his "growl" for "spoken words" in order to impress a group of educated farmyard animals he has met. He goes to school and shows a lot of perseverance to become a great reader whom everyone wants to listen to.  Vocabulary words we discussed this week are concentrate, industrious, achieve, passion, confidence, and emergency.

Writing- We completed our last "free response" activities for a while. We read poems by Jack Prelutsky and Shel Silverstein, both whom I greatly love reading.   Enjoy! :)

Tuesday we responded to: 

"LAST NIGHT I DREAMED OF CHICKENS"
Last night I dreamed of chickens,
there were chickens everywhere.

They were standing on my stomach,
they were nesting in my hair,
they were pecking at my pillow,
they were hopping on my head,
they were ruffling up their feathers
as they raced about my bed.

They were on the chairs and tables,
they were on the chandeliers,
they were roosting in the corners,
they were clucking in my ears.

There were chickens, chickens, chickens
for as far as I could see...
when I woke today, I noticed
there were eggs on top of me.

Jack Prelutsky 

Wednesday we responded to: 

"Smart"
My dad gave me one dollar bill
'Cause I'm his smartest son,
And I swapped it for two shiny quarters
'Cause two is more than one!

And then I took the quarters
And traded them to Lou
For three dimes -- I guess he don't know
That three is more than two!

Just then, along came old blind Bates
And just 'cause he can't see
He gave me four nickels for my three dimes,
And four is more than three!

And I took the nickels to Hiram Coombs
Down at the seed-feed store,
And the fool gave me five pennies for them,
And five is more than four!


And then I went and showed my dad,
And he got red in the cheeks
And closed his eyes and shook his head--
Too proud of me to speak!

- Shel Silverstein

Thursday we responded to:

"Jimmy Jet And His TV Set"

by Shel Silverstein

I'll tell you the story of Jimmy Jet --
And you know what I tell you is true.
He loved to watch his TV set
Almost as much as you.

He watched all day, he watched all night
Till he grew pale and lean,
From "The Early Show" to "The Late Late Show"
And all the shows between.

He watched till his eyes were frozen wide,
And his bottom grew into his chair.
And his chin turned into a tuning dial,
And antennae grew out of his hair.

And his brains turned into TV tubes,
And his face to a TV screen.
And two knobs saying "VERT." and "HORIZ."
Grew where his ears had been.

And he grew a plug that looked like a tail
So we plugged in little Jim.
And now instead of him watching TV
We all sit around and watch him.

Today we responded to

"Spaghetti" by Shel Silverstein

Spaghetti, spaghetti, all over the place,

Up to my elbows—up to my face,

Over the carpet and under the chairs,

Into the hammock and wound round the stairs,

Filling the bathtub and covering the desk,

Making the sofa a mad mushy mess.

The party is ruined, I’m terribly worried,

The guests have all left (unless they’re all buried).

I told them, “Bring presents.” I said, “Throw confetti.”

I guess they heard wrong

‘Cause they all threw spaghetti!

Science- This week we looked at the properties (color, size, texture, odor) of a dry lima bean and one that was soaked over night in water. The kids were amazed how much they grew over night. After recording their properties we took the lima bean apart and took a look inside. The students located the seed coat (used for protection, like our coat in the winter), the cotyledon (the embryo's food source), the embryo (baby plant), and the leaves of the embryo can even be spotted. Today we planted our Brassica Rapa plants also known as Wisconsin Fast Plants.  Picture attached are of our "quads" (containers of 4) that we planted and have under a light and on water tubs 24 hours a day minus the time we will take to observe and discuss them growing. 

Assessments- a lot of our beginning of the year assessments are finally coming to an end. Your child had their DIBELS assessment this past week. An additional component of this test is a retelling section. For this section, your child had a minute to retell everything they could remember that happened in the passage they read during their one minute DIBELS timing. In the past a student has simply been asked to read as fast as they could and we determined their rate. Two years ago we added a DAZE, comprehension in sentences component which I believe starts in third grade so was new to all the kids. They looked at me rather strange while I was giving the directions. :) I am sure I will get a chance to report out scores soon! 

Hope you have a wonderful weekend. I am looking forward to watching Iowa State win on Saturday! :) I just had to throw it in!

Mrs. Jodie Yuska