November 21 - December 2 (Week 14 - 15)

Week 14 - 15 (November 21 - December 2)

Thanksgiving Celebrations
We spent a great deal of time discussing what Thanksgiving meant years ago and what it has come to mean today. We discussed how the settlers and Native Americans' first contact with one another played out and also what happened afterwards. 

The kids felt that today's Thanksgiving was about being thankful for many things in their lives. We used this as an opportunity to write letters of thanks to those that we are most thankful for! Hopefully some of those letter made it to the hands of parents and other family members. 

The kids had a blast at the Thanksgiving feast. I took joy in watching them interact with their families and I believed they also took joy in having their family and friends in the same setting at the same time. I hope that you all enjoyed the feast as much as the kids did! The kids and I really appreciate your participation. 

Celebrating Dwayne
Thanks to Dwayne's parents we were able to enjoy some very delicious cupcakes during independent reading time, in order to celebrate Dwayne's birthday with him! 

Summarizing 
3rd grade as a whole has been working on our summarizing and questioning skills. This week Mrs. Pearson came to our classroom after reading the amazing "Rough Face Girl". Their job was to summarize what they had read and to present that to our class. As they partnered up with a the students from out class and read their summaries, our kids asked them questions about their summaries. This helped Mrs. Pearson's class understand what they had forgotten to include in their summary and also helped our students to always ask fro more details and also to use their speaking and listening skills. The kids had a really good time!

November 7- 18 (November 7 - 18)

Week 12 -13 (November 7 -18)

Matter Matters

Our kids have the different states of matter down to the why! They even know how to change from one state of a matter to another. We’ve also been looking at way to measure and characterize matter. The kids have been doing lots of measuring with milliliters and liters when it comes to liquids and grams and kilogram when it comes to solids. We’ve also briefly investigated what measurement is like with gallons, cups, pints, quarts, and pounds. Next week we will be having a concept day to explore the different states of matter a little more closely. During this day the class will rotate to each 3^rd grade teacher to dig a little deeper into matter.

Watching our Garden Grow

WOOOOOOW! Our vegetables are really started to grow!

Writing in Sequence

This week we’ve been focusing on writing things in sequence and discussing what type of writing we would need to write in a sequential matter. The kids thought that procedural things such as getting ready for school and summarizing were the time when we needed to write in a sequential form. Some of our kidos thought that adding sequence could add details to our stories and help our readers better understand our stories! How brilliant are our kidos?

The Great Debate: Native Americans vs. Settlers

After learning many things about the Native Americans and Settlers of South Carolina! We’ve been getting into some heated debates about whose land it really is and who’s to blame for the changes that occurred. The kids have had lots of questions and frustrations in relation to the relationships between the Native Americans and the settlers. So we decided to have a debate to argue opposing sides of two questions. 1. Who should get the land? 2. Who is responsible for the Yamassee and Cherokee War? ¼ of the students served as speakers for the Native American and ¼ of the students served as speakers for the settlers. The rest of the class served as judges to decide who won each debate. It was interesting to watch the kids present their arguments and reasoning behind their arguments.

Girls on the Run

I’d like to congratulate all of the girls who participated in the Girls on the Run 5k and thank all of those who came out to support them! It was a fantastic, long run!