Here we are at the end of our 5th week of school, and we have been BUSY!! The week started off with Back to School Night on Monday. It was so great to finally meet all the parents of my fantastic students, thanks to everyone who came out.  We gave you a lot of information all at once so if you need to clarify anything feel free to get in touch with me.  E-mail, phone or text -I am always available for you. If you missed picking up a magnetic business cards for your fridge let me know and I’ll get one to you.  In the meantime, here is my information:

We had a lot going on last week including a fantastic visit from ReSET on Wednesday.  ReSET is an education outreach program provided by SHPE-USPTO.  They will visit Cora Kelly about 6 times throughout the year and will conduct hands-on STEM experiments specifically designed for third grade students. On Monday, the three third grade classes along with 10 volunteers explored gravity, force and motion with parachutes and balloons! It was such a blast, and we learned so much. Win-Win! Here are some pictures from that afternoon:

In reading this week we explored character actions and motivation using two mentor texts, My Rotten Redheaded Older Brother by, Patricia Polacco and Ferdinand by Robert Lawson.  On Friday we started working on comparing and contrasting characters using Judy Bume’s book, The Pain and The Great One and the ever-cool Venn diagram! We’ll explore this more in the coming week.

In social studies we are continuing to dive into geography.  We learned a really cool song about the 7 continents and practiced a lot on Friday! We should have those continents down by now 😉 We also explored road maps from 6 states in the USA and located some map features we’ve been studying like the compass rose, scale, title, and legend. Ms. Miedema is proud to report that after reviewing the cardinal directions, the entire class got a 100% on a quick check on North, South, East, and West.  This coming week, we will explore the various ways we can use this cool new knowledge.

We were introduced to our word study books this week- you may have seen them at home Wednesday night. Eventually they will go home every night, but right now we’re still learning about all the different tasks we’ll have to do. Alphabetizing is an important one!!

Hope everyone had a great weekend! See you Monday!