Thanksgiving week is here!!  Woot!  I have so much to be thankful for...something I try to acknowledge every day, not just this week.  I'm especially thankful for wonderful parents like you...sincerely.  I hope you enjoy your extra time with your children this week.  I can honestly say I will miss them! 

We FINALLY earned our Teamwork reward.  We usually get tons of compliments, but it took awhile to get a complete row of 10 on our hundreds chart.  They literally got 5 compliments in one day.  The kids chose as their reward....free reading time.  Yep.  Don't you love it?!  I threw in some ice cream, too.  ;)  We'll get to enjoy that tomorrow. 

The class and I have been studying the First Thanksgiving and using a really fun site...http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/  We learned a lot comparing our lives to the lives of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag.  The kids were very impressed with the bathroom facilities...or lack thereof..on the ship.  We used lots of visual imagery, especially when we learned about the journey on the ship.  Here's another great site...http://www.plimoth.org/.  Check them out!

We have been studying life cycles of different animals, and on Monday we will become Owl Barfologists.  (They love that term!) We will be dissecting owl pellets( we order them from a great company.  They heat them at high temps to kill germs and any critters in there.)  We will be sorting and graphing anything we find, making inferences on what the owls ate, drawing conclusions on their diet, and oodles more!  Don't forget to ask your Barfologists how they earned their "degree"!! Hee-hee!

Thanks for everything that you do for your kiddos...enjoy your week!

We have a busy few weeks coming up! I hope you are having fabulous conversations with your child about what we are accomplishing in room 17!
This week we will be taking the Terra Nova tests.  The district uses this data to determine gifted elegibility.  No need to loose sleep-we tackle this like we do everything, with 100% best effort!
We will be having our Thanksgiving luncheon this Thursday.  We have an adjusted schedule.  Third grade will eat from 11:50-12:20.  I loosk forward to seeing all of the volunteers and especially getting to eat lunch with the best class at Worthington!  :)
Please keep those food donations rolling in!  For every donation, my students will get a CHAMPs award.
This year we continue with the Jaycee's Secret Santa.  We will be collecting for a nine year old boy named James.  On his list:  a ripstick, bike, skateboard, size 10 shoe, size 32/32 jeans, socks, and large men's shirts.  I have been to get most everything on the list in the past.  I'm sure this year will be no different!  This is such a caring and compassionate class!  Thanks in advance for your generosity. 
As always, thank you for being a great partner in your child's education!

Sorry that I missed last week's post...I was out of town rooting on my hometown team!  We got a little wet, but had a great time sharpening the saw!
We have completed our Pumpkin Character projects!  The kids really out-did themselves.  I'll post some pictures this week. 
Our annual Food Drive starts this week.  Can goods and non-perishable items can be brought in anytime before Thanksgiving break. Let's break some records this year!
Worthington picture retakes will be Wednesday November 7th.
Our fabulous Veterans Day assembly will be Thursday November 8th. It is always a touching tribute to our Veterans.
Our Language arts standards this nine weeks are:

• inference
• context clues
• cause/effect
• sequence
• synonyms
• multiple meaning words
• homophones, metaphors
• using charts
• verbs
• using quotation marks and commas

We work on these in guided reading groups, whole group, intervention, using our reading anthology, leveled readers, and our new reading workshop novels.
In math, we will continue working on rounding and estimating, and then we start multiplication!  We will start times tests each week, so practice will be so important each night.  We also will introduce patterns and relationships, as well as geometry/solids and shapes.
Life cycles, rocks and minerals, and soil will be our focus in science, and we continue to explore communities in social studies.
I'm so proud of each and every student and the way they conducted themselves during our conferences this past nine weeks.  The way they explained themselves and more importantly, their learning, was impressive!  We will be setting new goals(love those big rocks!) and continue to monitor our progress.  As always, if you'd like to see their leadership notebooks, just ask your child to bring it home.  Thanks to all parents that came to share in your child's learning!
We will be talking about the Seven Habits in more detail...although the kiddos really amaze me with their understanding AND application.  What a wonderful atmosphere to work in!