Tho fall OAA scores are in!  Third grade overall did well, with our class having a 90% passage rate.  This week, I plan on having student conferences to discuss each individual score with the kiddos.  If you have any questions AT ALL, please text me or give me a call! 
We are continuing to collect money for the Secret Santa child.  The kiddos can bring in any amount of money through December 14th.  That gives me time to shop!  What a fabulous way for this class to pay it forward!
We have started our multiplication facts last week.  Every week, we learn a new song/trick to help us memorize the facts.  We've learned how multiplication is repeated addition, and also how to show multiplication as arrays.  We really need to know the facts by heart, so that doesn't get in the way of the process.  You will see a practice log coming home this week.  Your child can practice any way that works for them...as long as they are practicing!  Each Friday we will have a 2 minute quiz.  They must achieve an 85% to pass.  If they don't reach 85%, they still must study that set for the next. week.  We will introduce new sets each week, and your child can retest on Wednesdays.
Mr. Saxton visited our class on Thursday!  He spoke and answered their questions, then read Big Al.  We made so many connections with the Seven Habits!  He loved the class so much, he'd like to come back and teach a social studies lesson!  Thanks, Mr. Saxton...you rock!!
Thank you for being a partner in your child's learning!

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!

It's hard to believe that the end of the first nine weeks is here! We will be taking our quarterly assessments this week: one in reading and one in math.  This year, we get to take them on the computer...something new and exciting for us.  We have been reviewing and should be ready to show what we know!
With fall in full swing, we will be doing some project-based learning about bats!  Be sure to check our  Wiki for links and photos.
We did not have a spelling contract or list this week because of our Thursday/Friday break.  We will start our new list for the week on Wednesday, and the contract will be due next Tuesday.
The board meeting this month is this coming Monday, October 22.  We will be having several students sharing their Leadership Notebooks and talking about the Seven Habits.  Feel free to stop by tomorrow, Monday the 22nd, at 5:30 in Worthington's cafeteria.
Thanks for being a partner in your child's education!

We had a lot of fun this week!  We practiced following directions while making a spider out of pretzel sticks and Oreos...and reviewed main idea while answering questions and completing a type 2 writing.  We also tackled our first writing project...by using lots of adjectives in our Haunted House for Sale project! They are currently decorating the hallway.   In a few short days we will be finishing up the first nine weeks of school and taking our quarterly assessments.  Time sure does fly...
This is a short week...no school for the kiddos on Thursday, October 18 and Friday, October 19.  I'll still ask them to complete a reading log, but we will not have a new spelling contract this week. 
Hopefully, the Pumpkin Character project is taking shape at home.  We will be starting our writing portion this week and finish it up by the end of the month. 

My favorite month is here!  This month we get to explore creative writing, and we complete two of our favorite projects!  Your child should have shown you the Character Pumpkin Project...these have been so much fun in the past and the kids really learn a lot about writing while having fun.  The actual Pumpkin Character is due at the end of the month...the kiddos will work on these at home. We will complete the writing portion here at school.  As long as your child is reading his/her book that we selected for the project, please record the reading log for their reading in the packet that we keep in the baggie.  If your child finishes the book, then they can go back to writing reading responses in the usual reading log.
I got this great idea from The Clutterfree Classroom.
We also will be creating a project called Haunted House for Sale!  We focus on descriptive words, grabbers, and persuasive writing...should be "boo-tiful month for writing! ;)

On our classroom Wiki, I create a Question of the Week.  I've asked your child to respond to that question sometime during the week.  I usually pertains to the skill we are working on.  Feel free to check it out!  You can access the Wiki from the school's website.  Just go to libraries, then Worthington, then Worthington Wikis, then classroom Wikis, then Mrs. Hornyak!
As always, thanks for being a partner in your child's education!