September Retirement Ceremony

Can you believe September is already over?!

At the end of every month, we "retire" our calendar by taking turns rolling a di and removing pieces:

This routine is another way we build number sense and review important skills learned at the beginning of the year as the months pass.

As we approach day 30 on Monday and students are now familiar with some of our Calendar Math routines, I will choose student leaders to facilitate discussion. These leaders will rotate monthly.

Let's Get Visual

The ability to visualize ("see") numbers is one of the most powerful math strategies. Visualizing allows us to better understand how numbers are built and how they interact with each other. Two new strategies for most third graders are number lines

and bar diagrams

Though it may seem like you want to pull out your hair inefficient at times, I encourage you to be persistent. I highly recommend having students use one of these visual strategies on homework and assignment corrections. Honestly, I would rather have fewer problems completed on homework that show deeper understanding (just write me a note on the homework stating that this was what the student was able to do in the 20-25 minutes allotted for math). There is a time and place for "shortcuts", but most rob students of developing strong number sense if they are taught by themselves. From this point forward, I will post our math anchor charts on our class blog, so you can see which strategy (or strategies) students are learning in class. I often modify or combine strategies the textbook for the sake of simplicity or building greater number sense. For example, here are my preferred ways to teach rounding:

(A Note of Encouragement for Our Students: Just as you edit and revise your pieces in Writer's Workshop, us teachers sometimes make MANY revisions on our charts before the "perfect" ones you see in class get posted. One of these charts required three revisions on notebook paper before I was satisfied and wrote it on chart paper. One of them has a title that I cut and pasted after deciding to change it. And there is even white out on one of the charts. :-))

Classroom Government

We applied our understanding of rights and responsibilities to our classroom by starting to write our own Class Constitution, which will eventually include a Preamble (our goals), Bill of Rights (how we will respect each other), branches of government (executive, legislative, judicial), laws (our school's behavior expectations), classroom procedures, and amendments. Our Constitution will help us make sure we are safe, treating each other fairly, and that our days go smoothly.

We held our first classroom election to vote for table runners. The students brainstormed expectations for the election process and table runner position, which we added to our Class Constitution.

We even made some amendments (in red) this afternoon and discussed how sometimes laws or procedures need to be changed to be more specific. Congratulations to Rebecca, Ryan R., Lauren K., Emily P., Ben, and Morgan who were voted by their classmates to serve as table runners for the next four weeks. Some students filled out job applications to be our class' political correspondent, so I look forward to turning over classroom government updates to them soon!

Spirit Night Recap

Thanks to everyone who came out to Papa Murphy's last night to support our school! Here is one of our students waiting for his delicious pepperoni and mushroom pizza:

If you went and remembered to take a picture, send it to us, and we'll post it! :-)

Alimacani Spirit Night @ Papa Murphy's Pizza

(A question for everyone) Who likes pizza? (A question for the parents) Who doesn't want to cook dinner on Thursday night?

Our school is having a fundraiser at Papa Murphy's Pizza on Thursday night from 4:00-7:00! Tell them you're from Alimacani when you pick up your pizza from the location in the Publix Shopping Center on Atlantic/Hodges. Already have dinner plans for Thursday night? Since Papa Murphy's is a "take and bake" kind of pizza place, you can still pick up a pizza, throw it in the freezer, and know you're supporting our school! Have your parents take a picture of you at Papa Murphy's or with your pizza, then e-mail it to us, and we will post it on our blog!

Active Listening

Every Monday, both classes meet together for a Second Step lesson. Second Step lessons teach us how to get along with each other. Right now, we're in our Empathy Training unit, which is teaching us how to understand our feelings and others' feelings. Today we discussed active listening. We learned how to show others we're actively listening by stopping what we're doing, facing them, nodding or saying that we understand what they're saying, and asking questions (without interrupting). Using active listening skills is a respectful way to treat others who are speaking. Sometimes it is difficult to be an active listener, such as when people talk for a long time, when you're late for something, or when there's something else you're interested in. We discussed several strategies for these situations, both at school and home. Active listening is a skill we use every day in both classes to make sure we understand directions given.

Being an active listener not only helps us learn, but is also useful in our friendships. During today's lesson, we also did some role-playing with a partner. We discussed how we could tell our partner was listening to what we were saying and how we felt when we could tell s/he was listening.

Happy Birthday!

A special birthday shout out goes to this marvelous student who celebrates her birthday tomorrow! :-)

Open House

Thank you SO much to all who made it to last night's Open House! We had a full house, so overall, I'd say it was a great success despite feeling like this guy (showing my age here...) For those who couldn't attend, I will e-mail our PowerPoint and we'll send home the Open House Folders we prepared. I will also elaborate a little more on a few things we had to cut short on our blog over the next week. Enjoy your student and family time this weekend! :-)

"Poetry? I thought you teach math?!"

Many students (eventually, adults) dislike or are disinterested in math because they see it as boring and limited-- problems assigned in textbooks/homework, or as just another subject learned in school. One of my goals is for your student to enjoy math, to see it as relevant and useful in everyday life outside of school, perhaps even interesting, as we discover patterns and challenge ourselves to "solve puzzles and mysteries". This year, I have started integrating more literature and reading comprehension strategies into our math workshop. One of my favorites has been our poem of the week. Each week, I select a poem with mathematical connections. At dismissal, we've been reading and interacting with the poems each day to help us practice the skill of visualizing, which is crucial to problem solving. Mondays I read the poem aloud, then the students join in the reading. Tuesdays we focus on unknown vocabulary terms. Wednesdays we look for a math skill connected to the poem. Thursdays we interact with the poem through movements or assigning parts (the students love this!). Fridays we practice visualizing-- brainstorming what we "see" and illustrating the poem.

I look forward to sharing more ways we're making math meaningful and igniting our curiosity and sense to wonder. Today was also Jaguar Spirit Day!

Stay tuned! Soon we'll be using football to continue building our number sense. Have a great weekend! :-)

OPEN HOUSE REMINDER

A blue note was sent home indicating that our OPEN HOUSE date has been changed. We will have open house on SEPTEMBER 13th! Thank you for helping this to be a great start to the year. We look forward to talking with you about our expectations and answering questions. It's going to be a great year.