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

A very busy and productive week!

Happy Birthday Samuel!

Week in Review- "This week we did so many things, we didn't have time to write a week in review!"- members of 3Y

Here are some of the things we did this week:
Math- This week we continued to work on place value. We talked about numbers in standard form (197), word form (one hundred ninety seven), and expanded form (100+90+7). We worked a lot with reviewing place value cubes and the importance of starting with the ones. There are a lot of students who want to add and subtract starting in the tens or hundreds place. Hopefully we can correct this as it may lead to some confusion when we need to carry or borrow numbers. Towards the end of the week, we worked on extending our thinking with brainstorming as many different number combinations as we could come up with for specific numbers. The kids caught on to patterns quickly. Every morning we begin our day with ADD (Arithmetic Developed Daily) math, this allows us to work on reviewing basic facts, concepts, and a daily story problem. 

  Reading- This week we read The Trial of Cardigan Jones by Tim Egan. 

In this story a new moose comes to town. His name is Cardigan Jones. Cardigan gets accused of stealing a pie from the window where it is cooling off.  Many witnesses claim to have seen Cardigan by the pie before it went missing, but did not actually see him eat it. However, since he was near it, he has to be guilty of taking the pie.  Cardigan admits to taking a whiff of the pie but claims his innocence. Meanwhile, he continually knocks things over with his antlers, toppling a courtroom statue, the flag, and, finally, the judge himself. It doesn't take the judge long to figure out what happened: the whole jury goes back to the open window where pieces of apple pie are splayed out over the shrubbery. "It didn't smell very good any more." We had a long discussion about it is not always best to jump to conclusions or listen to rumors. We worked on the words convince, honest, guilty, jury, murmur, pointed, stand, and trial. One of the kids' favorite parts of the week is when they are able to reread the story with a partner.

Writing- This week worked a lot on nouns and how a noun can be a person, place, thing, or an idea. I am trying something new this year. As we discuss different writing components we are going to add them to our language notebook. We will include the Common Core Standard we are covering, as well as the "I can" statement we used and some examples of what we are discussing. So far we have set up a table of contents, two pages for nouns, and a page of pronouns. (I am hoping to eventually get books like these created with the kids for reading and math.)

We had a little extra time on Thursday, when music class was cancelled so we got in a few extra cursive letters. I think this has to be the class' favorite thing. There is ALWAYS a cheer when we get a chance to pull out our cursive packets! Today, I was able to get a few pictures in. So far we have learned the lowercase a, d, g, q, c, and i. 

Science and Social Studies- This week a lot took place in science. We started our Plant Growth and Development unit! :) On Tuesday, we started by talking about what we already knew about plants. Then we took a look at a dry lima bean and recorded our observations. We placed the lima beans in water and let them soak overnight. 

Dry lima bean on top, soaked lima bean on bottom

On Wednesday, we recorded our observations about our lima bean, which soaked in water. Then we had a chance to disect our lima beans and take a look at the parts of a seed. Morgan also brought in his microscope and we were able to take a look at a dicotyledon, similar to what is found inside the bean. Thanks for sharing Morgan! 

Seed coat (protects the seed)

Inside the seed

Dicotyledon- food for the embryo

Embryo- baby plant

 Thursday- We read tbe book A Fruit Is A Suitcase For Seed by Jean Richards. The idea behind this book is that a fruit helps transplant seeds and take them to places all over the world.

We investigated some suitcases by slicing them open and having a taste testing party. :)

Our Suitcases (Fruit)

Orange

Apple

Peach

Kiwi

Pomegranate

The kids were amazed at how the pomegranate is like a heart with different chambers, and how many seeds we pulled out of one side. The picture above is after each student ate about four seeds! 

Friday- Planting day! Today, the kids were amazing. It was probably the best planting day I have had in the last nine years. Let's hope that continues to make the best plants I have seen in nine years! :) It was a lot of work, with many steps, and directions, but the class was great. We are growing Brassica Rapa plants, also known as Wisconsin Fast Plants. These plants will go through their entire life cycle in about a month. We will hopefully start to see some sprouts by Monday. :) 

Our planting materials, all ready to go!

The VERY tiny seeds we planted.

Busy little planters. 

 

 

Our quad containers, under the light in our room. We are hoping for our plants to grow big and tall!

Book orders went home on Wednesday. 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 9th- Happy Birthday Noah! 
I will be gone in the afternoon for a meeting at Grant Wood AEA
Wednesday, September 11th- I will be gone all day for a meeting at Grant Wood AEA
Monday, September 16th- I will be gone all day

Have a great weekend! 
Mrs. Jodie Yuska

We were feeling HOT, HOT, HOT! :)

This week we tried to get a break from the heat as much as possible. This included early dismissals, which I normally dislike because they not only change our schedules and routine, but the amount we can get done. However, I was quite happy to get a chance to get out of the classroom and find a cooler place to relax. I am sure the kids went home and were just as exhausted as I was this week. Heat can take a lot out of you! I really hope no one gets sick from the big change in temperature.

Week in Review- "This week we made addition flashcards. We all ate A LOT of popsicles. Today we had a chance to start talking about our first Science unit, Plant Growth and Development. We watched a video about seeds and plants. We worked and gained stamina on Read to Self, as part of our Daily 5. It was HOT! We took our first spelling. There were a lot of new fun things to learn and try this week. " - members of 3Y

Here are some of the things we did this week:
Math- This week we took some end of the year second grade assessments to see what the students still remembered from last year. We started our first Investigations unit called Trading Stickers and Combining Coins. This unit will cover addition and subtraction as well as the number system. So far we have reviewed place value and started to add and subtract two and three digit numbers. We also answered story problems to determine "How Many More?" and "How Many To Get To 100." While working on these lessons I introduced multiple ways to solve a problem. Some of these included the standard algorithm, number lines (how many to the nearest 10, then count on 10's), and a hundreds chart. We spent today working on creating addition flashcards.
 
Reading- This week we read A Fine, Fine School by Sharon Creech. In this story an enthusiastic principal, Mr. Keene, gets very excited about all the fine things he sees happening at school. He often strolled through the school stating, "Aren't these fine, fine children? Aren't these fine, fine teachers? Isn't this a fine, fine school?" This caused Mr. Keene the principal to want to have school seven days a week. Later he included all summer. Before too long he added everyday, including holidays. Finally, one brave little girl named Tillie went to talk to Mr. Keene about who this affected and who might now be learning things. This included her dog and little brother. Mr. Keene did not like that people were not learning, so he changed school to just be five days a week and not on holidays or during the summer. The students, teachers, and town celebrated what a fine, fine principal they had. We worked on the words soar, principal, certainly, fine, announced, proud, strolled, and worried.

Writing- This week we discussed sentence structure. This included multiple lessons on subjects (the who or what of the sentence) and predicate (the action or description of the who or what). For example, if I had the sentence The quick, new puppy chased the ball, my subject is The quick, new puppy and my predicate is chased the ball.  Towards the end of the week we continued to just work on gathering ideas and not to be afraid of writing what pops into our head. For that we completed "Free Response" pages in our writing notebook. I pause different times during the reading and have students reflect and respond to various forms of written work or pictures. We will complete more of these next week. Most seemed to really enjoy this activity! :) Poems and picture can be found below. 

Thursday- 

Welcome Back to School
by Kenn Nesbitt

 
“Dear students, the summer has ended.
The school year at last has begun.
But this year is totally different.
I promise we’ll only have fun."

“We won’t study any mathematics,
and recess will last all day long.
Instead of the Pledge of Allegiance,
we’ll belt out a rock ’n’ roll song."

“We’ll only play games in the classroom.
You’re welcome to bring in your toys.
It’s okay to run in the hallways.
It’s great if you make lots of noise."

“For homework, you’ll play your Nintendo.
You’ll have to watch lots of TV.
For field trips we’ll go to the movies
and get lots of candy for free."

“The lunchroom will only serve chocolate
and Triple-Fudge Sundaes Supreme.”
Yes, that’s what I heard from my teacher
before I woke up from my dream.  

 

Friday- 

"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 

 Science and Social Studies- This week was used as a time to try to cool down and relax. During this time we enjoyed our daily popsicle, and a read a loud. Today (Friday), we watched a 13 minute video to introduce the science unit we will start next week. 

Have a great extended weekend. Hope you are able to stay cool and healthy! 
Mrs. Jodie Yuska

A great first week

We have covered all our expectations and procedures. I am very excited to teach this group of individuals this year. They have shown they like to have fun, but are quickly learning to have fun in a respectful and responsible manner. We will continue to review our classroom routines and procedures as well as expectations next week as well as throughout the year. 


As something new, I asked the class to write a week in review. I will try to include this each week. Here is what they came up with: "We read Horrible Harry Moves Up to Third Grade. Our class worked on making and being friends. I like our "Keys to Friendship." We made "Me Poems" to let others learn more about us. I had a lot of fun. We took reading assessments. Cursive can be fun, it can also be hard. Mrs. Yuska read a lot of books. We enjoyed learning more about Mrs. Yuska this week." 



Here are some of the things we did this week:
Math- This week we worked a lot on procedures. With math time being a little shorter, we are getting in the routine of getting everything out and completed. This week we worked a lot on reviewing our addition facts.
Reading- This week we read Horrible Harry Moves Up to Third Grade by Suzy Kline. In this story Harry and Doug are coming back to school, starting their third grade year. So many things have changed, yet they soon realize a lot is the same. We discussed finding the main characters, creating a super sentence, and determining the setting where the story takes place. The class loved listening and reading along to this book!


Writing- This is an area where students have the most struggles at the beginning of the year. I am working a lot with just getting ideas down on paper versus correcting all their grammar and punctuation, which I will do on many items. We have also been working on describing ourselves in a positive way. We wrote comments about on cards saying, "I am, I hear, I see, I think, I feel, and I know." Me poems have clues about a person. These are on display outside of our classroom. I have also included pictures under the "Student Work" page above. Me poems include, their first name, two things to describe them, two things they enjoying doing ending with an -ing, a phrase of something they like to do with their family, two ways to describe how they feel, and then their last name or nickname. 

Science and Social Studies time has been used for team and community building opportunities. We have interviewed members of our class, talked about how to become a bucket filler, and played numerous games to get to know one another a little better. We have focused a lot on being a friend. This includes what it means to be a friend, how to make a friend, and how to keep friends. Our class even practiced playing games with kids in our class we may not yet know, or whom may not be our best friends. They did great! On our door you will find "A Key to a Good Friend." 

                                                          

 

That is a quick wrap up of our week. We have quickly built a community, which I am so proud to be a part of. Thank you for your assistance in raising such wonderful children. I look forward to our adventure to success together.
A few handouts have come home. Three were orange, Cheerleading, SODA, and Chorus. Today there was a green one about lunches for our field trip in October. One was about a t-shirt order. If you are interested, please fill out and send back, if not, feel free to recycle. Hopefully, purple take home folders and agendas are working out well for everyone. 

Parent Night is on Tuesday, August 27th there you will learn more about our school and classroom procedures as well as the curriculum I will be teaching to your child. It is going to be extremely hot in our classroom. I will create a PowerPoint if you can not attend or choose not to attend due to the heat. Children are welcome this year, this is different. :) Last year, they were concerned about space I guess.
Mrs. Jodie Yuska

Welcome to our class blog

Welcome to 3rd Grade and to FMI! I hope you had a great summer. I have been spending a lot of time the last few weeks trying to get our room organized and ready to go. I can not wait to hear and see all the fun and learning that will take place in our brightly colored room!   Our new room is very bright, colorful, and a little wild (kind of like me!). You are all off for a new adventure in a new building with a new principal, but there should still be some familiar faces in the crowd.

First, let me introduce myself to you. My name is Mrs. Yuska. I know that looks like an unusual name. It is pronounced like "YOU- SKA" (only without the "O"). This is my ninth year teaching 3rd grade in the Marion School District. I taught five years at Starry Elementary, two years at Emerson, and this will be my second year at FMI. My husband, Brandon and I live in Cedar Rapids with our two daughters Katelyn (Katy will be 6 at the end of October and starting Kindergarten this year) and Hayden (turned 3 in June, and is anxiously awaiting the beginning of preschool) and our dog Dakota (a German Shepherd/ Black lab mix).

For the last few years I have been using a blog as an additional form of communication. I started blogging because I knew notes sent home often got shoved to the bottom of a child's bag or better yet lost altogether. My attempt was to place my newsletters on this site as well as any additional information you may need to provide a place to keep you up to date on what is happening in our classroom. This should also help limit the amount of paper being sent home. It has proved to be a great resource and I look forward to the added use of technology. This also allows be to let you feel like you are more of a part of our class, by posting pictures of work and activities as they are happening.

Some things about 3rd grade...Every night your child will be taking home a planner stating what we have learned that day. If an item is highlighted, it will be an assignment to be completed and returned to school the next day. This is a great opportunity to sit down with your child and talk about the day. I also ask that you sign or initial the bottom of the column so I know you have looked at it. If you have any questions, or comments for me, feel free to add them at the bottom of the planner. In the front cover will be your child's behavior chart. There is a key on the side of what each color of smiley face means.

There will also be a weekly homework assignment, usually a poem to read aloud 5 times. This not only helps our reading skills, but also works on becoming a responsible individual.

We have a lot of new curriculum we will be teaching this year. It should be exciting! :)

I look forward to meeting each of you for the Supply Drop Off Night on Thursday, August 15th between 4 and 6 pm.

Also, mark your calendars for a Parent Information Night on Tuesday, August 27th.

Mrs. Jodie Yuska
jyuska@marion-isd.org