Junior Great Books

This past week, we finished our unit on Friendship in our Imagine It reading series. At the end of each unit, we will take a break from Imagine It, and will do a week-long lesson from Junior Great Books. The purpose in Junior Great Books is to enhance higher order thinking skills in our students. The series is designed to foster discussion between students about the story, and to help them with text dependent writing (a big part of our new Common Core State Standards).

We started our first lesson today. We read the story, "The Banza", and took some time while reading to record questions we had about the story as we read along. The questions the class generated were AMAZING! The story is a Haitian folktale, and we were able to cover some of the more common questions about the story (vocabulary questions, and general questions about the story). The class has some great questions about Haiti, so we took a break to do a little map lesson. We also had a question asking if "banza" was actually a Haitian word, and decided we will do some research on the word to see. Using the context clues in the story, most agreed it probably was a Haitian word, but then we discussed how there are words we use here in America (fiesta for party, for example) that did not originate here. I saw A LOT of deep thinking going on today, and was very impressed!

Please note, there are still spelling words this week, and we will take a spelling test as usual. However, there will be a text dependent writing assignment, versus the traditional  Imagine It assessment you are accustomed to seeing. We will resume Imagine It next week, beginning our unit on Animals and Their Habitats.

Survey Link

For your center today, please click on the following link to take a survey.

http://www.advanc-ed.org/survey/public/0861147

When you are finished, get on FCAT Explorer.

Getting Into the Swing of Things

I have been enjoying getting to know each of your children in the past two weeks. I can tell we are going to have a great year together.

We have started our Imagine It Unit on Friendship. Our first story is "Rugby and Rosie." We will take a test on this story Friday, along with a spelling test. Please note: Our first Imagine It Test will be a paper pencil test. All other tests throughout the year will be completed online. 

In math, we are studying place value. As you have seen on the homework, the book sometimes refers to thousands as "crates", hundreds as "boxes", tens as "stacks," and ones as "pieces". This is to help the students envision a real life example of what we are discussing. (For example I used an example of, if I ordered 100 T-Shirts, I would want my hundred T-Shirts delivered to me in a box, rather than each individual T-Shirt delivered piece by piece because it would be too many.) We have been working on different ways to express numbers, as well, and will continue to do so throughout the week, as we lead into addition with regrouping.

Please remember to check the agenda book nightly (and to sign it saying you have seen it). Your child should have his/her homework copied down in the agenda book each day so you are aware of what they are to be working on each night.

If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know.

Join our Text Alert!

Parents,

We will be utilizing a text messaging system this year for IMPORTANT updates (changes in homework, reminders about field trips, or emergencies that may occur.) I will still primarily update you about our class on the blog or through email, but if anything comes up that may need immediate attention, I will send a reminder via text.

If you have not done so already (or if you tried at Orientation and got an error message) please text @mrsowencl  to (352) 449-1340. 

Welcome to Mrs. Owen's Third Grade Class! 

I am looking forward to a wonderful year! The purpose of this blog is to give students a place to show off work, while also giving parents "eyes" into our classroom. Please be sure to check the blog frequently to see the great things we are working on in our class.

Outstanding Owl

Congratulations to Darell Williams, our Outstanding Owl for the month of May!

Darell won the Outstanding Owl Award for "Confidence."

Hmm...

Mrs. Owen gave us the task of building a balloon powered car. This is Cameri's groups' car. Cameri is now pondering how the car is going to move. Stay tuned to find out!