I LOVE FALL!

 Oh, how I love fall! :) Perfect for a hot chocolate or a pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks in the morning, then a nice big glass of water or iced tea in the afternoon. 

Sorry for the delay in this week's post. I usually try to have them sent out on Fridays, while everything is fresh in my brain. However, last night I had to cheer on the Prairie Hawks with my daughters. There is nothing like sitting in your old stomping ground, surrounded by a sea of orange and black, only to be wearing your Marion Red Nation shirt. I think I received a few confused looks!

Here are some of the things we did this week: 
 
Math- This week we took another addition time test. I am very impressed with how much many of the kids have improved on their addition facts in the last few weeks. We have moved on to practicing subtraction facts, 2-digit and 3-digit subtraction problems. Yesterday, we spent the entire math block talking, modeling, and practicing how to regroup and borrow to answer a subtraction facts. There was a lot of confused faces when we started, but you could hear the "ah ha" as we continued through the lesson. I am sure there will still be a need for practicing this skill as it is a tricky on to catch on to. 

*Please continue to have your child practice their basic 0-9 addition and 0-20 subtraction facts. There were some frustrated moments with a few students this week as having to count or draw pictures for each problem becomes tiring and cumbersome.   

Reading- This week we read Roberto Clemente: Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates by Jonah Winter. 

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This story starts on an island called Puerto Rico. On this island lived a little boy who wanted only to play baseball. Although he had no money, Roberto Clemente (Rah-BEAR-toe Cle-MENT-tae) practiced and practiced until--eventually--he made it to the Major Leagues. His hard work paid off. He came to America to play baseball in Pittsburgh! As a right-fielder for the Pittsburgh Pirates, he fought tough opponents--and even tougher racism--but with his unreal catches and swift feet, he earned his nickname, "The Great One." He led the Pirates to two World Series, hit 3,000 hits, and was the first Latino to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. But it wasn't just baseball that made Clemente legendary--he was was also a humanitarian dedicated to improving the lives of others. The story ends with Clemente's untimely death in an airplane crash one stormy night, when he was transporting relief supplies to earthquake victims back home. 

Next week, we will not have a story from our book. We will instead be reviewing what we have learned so far and taking a couple of unit tests to apply our knowledge. This will also effect our spelling tests. Next week there will be 25 words instead of 14, but they will all be review words. 

Writing- This week we worked a lot on grammatical things to assist our writing. We talked about how to write the names of books, using correct capitalization of important words and underlining the title. We also spent a few days talking about plural nouns. We focused on what is a plural (more than one), when we would need to add a -s, an -es, change the -y to an -ies, and irregular nouns that change words or stay the same, such as tooth turns to teeth, goose turns to geese, or deer and fish stay the same whether you are talking about one or more than one. Sorry, I forgot to take a picture of our work for this one. 

  Science and Social Studies- The kids are amazed as how much our plants have changed. All week we pollinated our plants with our bee sticks. Now we are almost completely through the flower stage and are working on creating seed pods and forming seeds. We will continue talking about the importance of bees, parts of the plant, and what it takes for a plant to grow. I am expecting we will be filling out a study guide sometime next week and will take our test a week out from there. 

Pollinating

Close look at a new seed pod

Bee in action by Mr. Beans

It is a lot harder to take a picture of a live bee! :)

Double Pollination

Still observing how our plants change everyday

BEE STICK!

Look at those seed pods and how tall Hailee's plant grew!

Busy little pollinating bees.

We could have a lot of seeds if they continue to develop.

Oh, and sorry if I have your kids singing the the parts of the bee in the tune of "head-shoulders-knees- and-toes." We kind of got carried away! :)
Head, Thorax, Abdomen, Abdomen
Head, Thorax, Abdomen, Abdomen
Compound eyes, 6 legs, and 4 wings
Head, Thorax, Abdomen

Additional Note: Yesterday, we made homemade applesauce in a crock-pot. During Daily 5/ Guided Reading time we spent 20 days going through the strategies and building stamina. Last week and this past week I have had all groups reading the same books, just to get us in the routine and setting expectations for when I am busy with groups. This week we started Ready Freddy Apple Orchard Race. In the book Freddy goes on a class field trip to the apple orchard, where they talk about all the yummy things they could make with apples. The class devoured 2 crock-pots full of homemade applesauce. I am also including the recipe as the kids were asking for more! :) 

We made the entire 3rd grade hallway smell delicious!

I told the kids the picture didn't look very appealing. They thought it was funny and I should add it anyway! :)

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CROCK POT APPLESAUCE

10 lg. cooking apples, peeled, cored & sliced or cut in chunks (this round I used Gala apples, but I have made this with many different kinds)

1/2 c. water

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/2 to 1 c. sugar 

(I actually used just less than 1/4 cup sugar, as the apples were already very sweet)

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

Upcoming dates: A lot of fun to plan around in October!
Tuesday, October 1st- Hannah's birthday, School Pictures, DIBELS letters home, I will also try to make midterms.
Wednesday, October 2nd- Homecoming Assembly 2:30
Thursday, October 3rd- Homecoming Parade 6:00 PM
Friday, October 4th- Homecoming game
Tuesday, October 8th- FMI Night at Wendy's, Happy Birthday Breanna and Rayna!  
Wednesday, October 9th- 1:15 Dismissal
Monday, October 14th- Field Trip to Gallagher-Bluedorn (10:00 am- 3:00 pm) *I will send a reminder note about lunches
Wednesday, October 16th- Our student teacher Ms. Wild starts
Thursday, October 17th- America Reads Day!
Friday, October 18th- No School, Professional Development All day
Tuesday, October 29th- Happy Birthday Justice and Vincent!
Wednesday, October 30th- Mrs. Yuska's birthday
Thursday, October 31st- Fall Party (usually 2:00-3:00) *I will send home more information as it gets closer.


Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Jodie Yuska

A Rollercoaster of Weather

We are starting the time of year when the weather is unpredictable. Please watch the forecast and send your child with a jacket or sweatshirt when needed. Recesses can get very breezy when the kids are out in the open.

Here are some of the things we did this week: 
 
Math- This week we were ahead of the other 3rd grade classes in math so we took a step back to review place value and how to add 2-digit numbers. The kids are using a lot of "inventive" math, which I know was strongly pushed in 2nd grade. This year, we are working a lot on solving a standard algorithm.  This includes, lining up our numbers vertically, starting in the ones place, then moving to the tens place. Next we will we move on to the hundreds place with 3-digit addition. The next few weeks we spend on 2-digit and 3-digit addition and subtraction. We have quite a few students need help practicing and memorizing their basic facts (single digit addition and subtraction 0-9). This will be very important as we continue to move through our third grade math curriculum. We will continue practicing them at school, but I would like your help with this at home also. I have created a page at the top of links to work on math facts. Basic flashcards can work wonders too though. Ideally, third graders would have these memorized as we go through our year. Otherwise when we get to multiplication and division, lessons can be rather cumbersome. :)      

Reading- This week we read Pop's Bridge by Eve Bunting. 

In this story a boy named Robert tells the story of watching his father and a thousand co-workers build the Golden Gate Bridge over the San Francisco Bay during the 1930s. He refers to the project as "Pop's Bridge" believing his father's role as an ironworker (or as called in the book a Skywalker) is more significant than those of the other workers. Robert and his friend Charlie Shu, whose dad is a painter on the bridge, watch the bridge's progress through binoculars from Fort Point. They also spend their time creating putting together a jigsaw puzzle of the design of the Golden Gate Bridge. An accident happens on the bridge leaving Robert with a new appreciation for all of the construction workers, including Charlie's dad. This helped up discuss the emphasis on team work, and how everyone is important and plays an equal part, no matter what job they complete.

Writing- This week the students wrote a story of "Mrs. Yuska is Missing," when I was absent on Monday. The rest of the week has been spent making T-charts to plan and writing a personal narrative paragraph or story. Here are some of the tools we used to help guide our writing:

T-chart to plan out our writing

What is Narrative Writing?

Going from a big topic to a specific topic

The difference of a Personal Narrative

 
Science and Social Studies- A lot has changed on our plants though out the week. Since plants change daily, we are keeping a log with the number of days since we planted, the date, an illustration, and at least 3 sentences worth of observations. We also take the time to measure our plants daily.

This week we spent a few days discussing the parts of a plant as well as each parts importance.  Look! A lot of our plants bloomed flowers today.

Today we introduced honeybees. The kids each received a freeze-dried honeybee, which they were able to take an up close and personal look at. We glued our honeybees to a toothpick to get ready to use to pollinate our plants and discuss their interdependence. We will continue talking a lot about the parts of a plant and a bee for the next few weeks.

Big ideas for science this week:
1)Plants need soil, water, and light to survive.
2) Plants are made up of roots, stems, leaves, and flowers. (Later we will take a look at the parts of a flower, too)
3) Plants, just like people grow at their own pace. But also like people, plants can have growth spurts.

When we planted our plants, we also planted a "root view" garden. The kids were very excited to see that we were starting to have some growth. We can now see tiny carrot sprouts, no onion sprouts yet, and there is a lot of growing going on underneath of our lima bean seed coat. :)

Today we had electronic time as a reward for filling our Brownie Point Tray. Yes, it is a baking tray covered in paper brownies! :) I was so impressed with the kids. Even though they each had their own piece of technology, which would make it easy to isolate themselves. They were all interactive and stilled played with each other. This is really a great group of kids!

Upcoming dates: 
Rest of September- I should be here and hopefully we will finally have "normal" weeks of school! It has been crazy that we have not had a single week yet of all 5 full days of school. 

Have a great weekend! 
Mrs. Jodie Yuska

I am so excited for cooler weather!

This week we celebrated Noah's birthday! Happy Golden Birthday Noah! :) 

The cooler weather make me think fall. This is my favorite season of all, cool morning and evenings, not usually 100 degrees, apples, changing colors, a lot of birthdays and FOOTBALL. Speaking of GO CYCLONES! OK, I had to sneak that in, even if you cheer for a different team. Please keep reading! :) 

Here are some of the things we did this week:
Math- This week we played a couple games to put our place value work into practice. The kids loved the game "Close to 100" where students were paired up and had to draw six cards. From there they chose four cards to turn into two 2-digit numbers for them to add together and see who could get their number combination closest to 100. We have also worked a lot with rounding to the nearest 10 and the nearest 100. The kids seemed to catch on the the nearest 10 quickly. To the nearest 100, needed a few more examples. It wasn't until I started to use real life examples that I saw some light bulbs going off. :) For example, if there are fire departments every one hundred yards, so there is a fire department at address 300 and a fire department at address 400. My house is on fire at address 378, to which fire department would I run or should arrive first. We are ending the week with taking our knowledge of rounding to the next step my estimating addition problems. When we estimate, we round then add. For example. 38+54, would round to 40+50=90

  Reading- This week we read Destiny's Gift by Natasha Anastasia Tarpley. 

I this story a girl named Destiny loves the small bookstore in her town. She also finds a great friend in the owner, Mrs. Wade. She lets Destiny's help her in the store and they often read and look up the meaning of words together. One day when Destiny goes to the store the owner Mrs. Wade is sad. She was reading a letter and tells Destiny that the store might have to close because the store doesn't make enough money to pay the new price rent.The entire town comes together to try and raise money for the store. In addition, Destiny gives Mrs. Wade the gift of words, written in her journal, about the love of the store.

Here is a link I found for the audio part for our reading stories.

http://www-k6.thinkcentral.com/content/hsp/reading/journeys2014/na/gr3/ese_9780547894515_/vol1/launch.html

Note this link will take you to the cover of the book, just click the arrow or enter in the page number that you want the book to read. The only down fall is after every page you have to hit play again.

Writing- This week we looked at a lot of examples of narrative writing. Today we started planning our narrative writing piece, which of course got me off topic and sharing lots of stories. :) The kids didn't seem to mind at all. We will continue writing a narrative sample next week. 

Science and Social Studies- A lot has changed with our plants already. I came in over last weekend (as I do most weekends, with the need to leave earlier this year to meet Katy at her bus stop) and was pleasantly surprised our plants had already sprouted. 

On Tuesday, I helped the kids thin and transplant their plants. We planted extra seeds in each, just in case some seeds decided not to grow. When more than one plant grows in each quad, we thin, or take one plant out. This way each plant can have some room to grow. I transplanted a plant we took out into any quad to had a plant not grow.

Caden's plants before thinning

Caden's plants after thinning

A pile of all the plants, which were thinned out

Look how long the roots are already!

It is hard to see, but at the end of the stem, the seed coat is still attached to the plant.

Here are our plants after 7 days of growth. Quite a difference! The kids were also interested and asked a lot about what the plants will look like through out their life cycle, so I am attaching a short time lapse video about the life cycle of the plants (Brasica Rapa, Wisconsin Fast Plants) we are growing.

If you would like to order you can send the book order back to school or you can order online at https://orders.scholastic.com/GKJ69 by Wednesday, September 18th.

Upcoming dates:
Monday, September 16th- I will be gone all day

Have a great weekend! 
Mrs. Jodie Yuska