Week 3 Here We Go

Greetings from Room 25!

We had a great 2nd week.  We managed to not melt in the heat, I keep telling myself I am going to miss this weather in a couple of months.  Here are a few things that we are working on.

Storyline:

While our school wide focus is not technically a Storyline I still like to call it that because it takes the place of our Storyline time and it has such a wonderful connotation in our students mind.  We are working on and thinking about becoming Critical Thinkers.  In the next couple of weeks we will spend time defining the 5 tenants of Critical Thinking, thinking about what it looks like when we are thinking critically and what happens when we don’t think critically.  We are using Starry Messenger, a picture book about Galileo, to help us think through Critical Thinking. At Back to School night on the 25th you will be able to see the start of our work this year.  We have looked at some videos about how the bravery of Galileo to challenge assumptions has lead to so many cool discoveries today.  If your family would like to, you can check out OMSI’s Star Parties .  They allow people to look through a telescope at the very same sky as Galileo did over 300 years ago.  I have been in the past and they are so fun!

Math:

Right now in math we are working on solidifying their addition and subtraction skills so that we can move on to the coolest part of 3rd grade (in my humble opinion) Multiplication!  We are working hard on strategies to make addition and subtraction easy and quick.  We are playing games, focusing on specific strategies and building good math habits for the future.  If you are interested, you can check out Bridges family support at the Math Learning Center.  It lets you know what is happening and allows you to see what we are doing in the classroom.  There are specific pages called home connections and you can play games or just read explanations of what we are working on in class.  We are currently in Unit One, but we will soon move onto Unit 2 and I will post the connection again when we move onto a new unit of study.  One disclaimer that I want to write is that we don’t follow bridges exactly as it was written.  We have been doing it for 4 years now and we have really focused our instruction on what we think is the most important, there is not enough time in 2 years to cover every single thing.  That being said it’s all good stuff and it comes with directions so if your kiddo is like, I have never seen this before in my life, you can read together and know how to do it.

Lice Prevention

As you may have heard the year is just beginning and we have already had cases of lice in the 3rd grade.  It is so important that you check your student and be diligent so we can wipe this out and not have to deal with it later in the year.  We will have the school nurse, Cyndi, come to our class on Thursday to discuss the do’s and don’t of lice prevention.  We definitely need more hooks on our closet doors so that people have room for their backpacks and room to put their coats inside their backpacks.  If you, or someone you know, is handy with a drill let me know and I will get the hooks if you will put them up on our closet doors.

Unfortunately, the chemical treatments for lice are ineffective and really the only way to get rid of the little buggers is to comb them out.  I know last year families used the service Lice to Know You and were very happy with their results.  This is a frustrating problem for families to have and the disruption to your family life is…well I can’t think of a better word than sucky.  But if we are all diligent we can have this be a problem of the past.  Is your head itching yet?

In spite of my last post, I hope you have a great weekend and a lovely week 3

Allison