Home note

February 22, 2012

Dear Parents,

We are in the midst of finishing several projects. Currently in the hallway is a nearly completed timeline of facts the third graders have illustrated and recorded based on their individual research. Wheel-and- axle vehicles that the children constructed from recycled materials are displayed on a hallway table. This latter endeavor engaged resourceful problem solving as well as trial-and-error experimentation. The children implemented many possibilities in a series of constructions to result in imaginative machines that successfully roll! Finally, a thoughtful use of repetition and word choice are two literary tools applied in recent poetry writing. A poster of “Who Am I?” poems is posted outside our entrance.
It is clear that more and more third graders are seriously undertaking the challenge of learning their basic multiplication facts. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT! Please help your child keep this review and drill part of a short but daily routine during school weeks and vacations. Mastery of these provides students such a great advantage in both current and future math activities. We now are in a math unit that will soon extend these facts to multiples of tens, hundreds, and thousands (e.g. 30 x 4000). Division and fraction work will be integral strands of current and upcoming units as well. Of course, ready recognition of fact families is key to allowing a student to focus her/his mental energy on other aspects of a complex number story or calculation.
Revisions, revisions, revisions! We are at a point of the school year when a creative piece requires much more time in the sharing, discussing, reworking phases. Right now third graders’ current stories represent a wide range of stages because it takes time to conference and thoughtfully reflect on what to delete, move, add, etc. when revising a series of drafts. I am confident that all students’ work will be published, illustrated covers and all, for their peers and others to enjoy by the end of next week.

UPCOMING TRIP DATES: March 20, Tuesday-Leave TGS at 10:30, Visit Thompson House (please let Michelle know if you can help with transportation.) Thank you.

March 22, Thursday-Leave TGS at 8:45 via bus to Brattleboro to performance of Windham Orchestra’s children’s concert at Latchis Theater, 9:30

Have a wonderful Friday and weekend. Please feel free to contact me with questions or concerns.


Respectfully,

Linda