Is It Really December?

 Dear Families,

It is hard to believe that we are almost ready to turn the calendar to December.  I hope everyone enjoyed the Thanksgiving vacation.  Third Graders worked very hard to finish up their non-fiction book projects on the Tuesday before vacation.  I was very impressed with the focus and perseverance of all of the third graders.  We will continue to work hard and stay academically focused during the 3 weeks until the December break.

In math, we will be completing our addition and subtraction of mulitdigit numbers unit and focusing on fractions and multiplication with our December Number Corner Work.  Many third graders are making excellent progress with their multiplication facts.  Please encourage your student to continue to work on his/her multiplication facts for 5 to 10 minutes each evening.

In Literacy, we will be focusing on the different types of non-fiction text, in preparation for our upcoming biography and research units.  In addition, students will be choosing a novel that they will be reading at home and school over the next three weeks.  Students will be doing a book project with this novel.  The book project will be due on Friday, December 18th.  There will be time at school to read the book and work on the project, so students should bring their books and projects to and from school each day.

Please call with any questions or concerns.

Photo of the December Book Project

Third Graders Learn to Felt

Third Grade Felting Projects

Third graders had a wonderful morning of felting.  Thank you to Wanda Boise, for setting up a fantastic felting session with Jake Jacobs for the third grade class.  Jake brought in wool from her sheep and taught us how to felt.  All of the students worked hard and showed their creativity!

Students are hard at work on their nonfiction reading.  Everyone is reading a Magic Tree House Fact Tracker Book on a topic of their choice.  Students are using their book to create a nonfiction project.

We will continue to work on our nonfiction study until the middle of December.  After learning about the text features of nonfiction, we will use our knowledge to read biographies for our study of Slavery and the Civil Rights Movement.

On Tuesday, November 24 we will be celebrating Character Day.  All of the students at Salisbury School have just finished a unit on character.  As a way to celebrate our new learning, we will have a book character day.  Students are encouraged to dress up as their favorite book character.  The character needs to be from a book that your child has read.  Please have your child let me know what character he/she plans to be.  Costumes should simple.  If your child needs help finding costume items, please let me know.

We continue to enjoy time with our preschool buddies.  Here are some photos of third graders playing math games with their buddies.

Third Graders Get Vampire Teeth

Third Graders showing their teeth.

We have started our new Informational Text Unit.  As part of this unit, we will be studying about the history of Thanksgiving.  We will be looking at some of the facts and myths around the Thanksgiving

story.  Today, we did a "graffiti" activity where students worked in teams to record what the words Pilgrim, Mayflower and Thanksgiving meant to them.  It will be interesting to see how their ideas change form the beginning of this unit to the end of the unit.  As part of our work, third graders will be reading a non-fiction book, What Was the First Thanksgiving?   Students have been asked to read from page 1-21, for their reading homework.  This reading needs to be completed by Thursday.

Last week, we had a great time decorating pumpkins and gourds with our preschool buddies.  We also had the chance to decorate cookies!

That is one decorated cookie!