Mrs. Menke’s Third Grade

Well, I hope everyone had a restful February vacation!  What a fun day we had on Friday, Valentines Day!!  Before vacation our class had some exciting visitors.  They were visited by a five day old lamb from Mrs. Gross’ farm.  They were also paid a visit from my son Alex’s rabbit, Cheedo

Now that we are back we will continue to work on multiplication.

Our class will be reading, “Follow the Drinking Gourd”, a story about the Underground Railroad.

In spelling we will be learning past tense verbs some ending with the suffix “ed”, some irregular.  The basic five are: liked, stopped, made, called, were.  Choice 1: had, did, baked, cared, ate, won, was, graded, wrote, scored.  Choice 2: stared, caught, piped, kept, bought, taught, sloped, chopped, thought.  The children all do the basic 5 then select 5 more of their choice.

We will be starting poetry.  The six poetic devices we will touch upon are: alliteration, personification, simile, onomatopoeia, rhyme and repitition.

Dear Families, 

 Is it May already? How can that be? There’s still so much to learn and teach and practice and explore and refine and develop and read and discuss and research and share and … and…and… it can’t be May yet!

 QUICK RECAP OF APRIL

MATH  We finished math unit 5: multiplication and division. I was extremely pleased with the results of the end-of–unit assessment.

READINGIn reading, the students read the same book with another student or small group of students and responded to the text in a variety of ways including: group discussions, written response, identifying main characters, setting,  conflict and resolution, identifying character traits, drawing an important part in the story, and performing a scene from the story for the class.

SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES Focus on Earth Day and how to help our planet using the 3 R’s: reduce, reuse, recycle. Our field trip to the Johnston Landfill and Recycle Center was very informative. We thank our chaperones Mr. Beck, Mrs. Duncan, Mrs. Flynn, Mrs. Sylvia and Mrs. Tierney.

 COMING UP IN MAY/JUNE 

READING AND WRITING

This month, the children will be working on biographies. This week, each student selected a famous person they want to learn more about. Our theme is “Gone, But Not Forgotten”.  In order to qualify for study, the person selected by the student must be a person who has made a positive difference in our world and is no longer living.The actual writing of the biography will be done as a homework assignment. The students are also being asked to make a three dimensional figure or doll of the famous person. This is the first and only long term homework assignment this year. The children are actually quite excited about it. We are doing a lot of the prep work here at school. Mr. Jennings is helping us with research in the library and the students have been given an organizer to help with note taking.For the first note-taking assignment we used the encyclopedia to find basic information. The students will also be using approved sources on the internet to learn about their famous person. In addition, each student will be reading one or more books devoted to their famous person.Quality, not quantity will be expected of the written biography. We will be reviewing the six-traits of writing: ideas, organization, sentence fluency, word choice, voice and conventions. It will be expected that the biographies show evidence of each of these traits.

 MATH We are currently working on perimeter, area and angles.Next week we will start our unit on fractions.  

SCIENCE AND SOCIAL STUDIES Solar system, sound, Narragansett

 TESTING  In the next two weeks the children will be taking the reading, math and language MAP tests as they did in the fall.  

NEWS  Due to the construction project, all classrooms on our wing will be moving. By June 9^th our class will be moved from room 11 to room 3. This is obviously very inconvenient.  We have done everything possible to postpone the move to a more convenient time. We have been given an extra week, as the original date was June 2. At this point I am resigned to the inevitable and am trying to view the situation from a positive viewpoint. It will be an adventure! And the kids will love it!

 UPCOMING FIELD TRIPS and EVENTS 

June 3 – Imax Theater

June 13 – Planetarium at Roger Williams Park

June 6 – Field day Canonchet Farm – TBA

Tour of Narragansett – TBA

End of year picnic – last day of school                                                                

Warm regards,                                                                        

 Reminder: Race for Grace (Sam Reddington’s sister) May 24^th  

Also – check out our blog on the NES website next week. I hope to have some pictures on our field trip.  

PARENT NEWSLETTER

Dear Parents,

Hello and happy spring! We are “busy bees” here in room 11.

Today was a big day for our class. We had the final Battle of the Books. The winning team from our class competed against the winning teams in Mrs. Davis, Mrs. Morrissey and Mrs. Westkott’s classes. And although the competition was strong, our very own American Reader’s won the battle. Our congratulations to Makenzie Babcock, Max Laurie, Milan Marzilli, Julianna Risica and Sam Reddington. Our entire class will be enjoying a pizza party to celebrate their reading achievement.

Last Friday, we were all sad to say goodbye to our friend and classmate Riku Nitta. He and  his family moved back to Japan. We will miss Riku.

This week is Reading Week. We have had several guest readers so far: Mrs. Dandurand, Mrs. Duff, Mr. Jennings, Mr. Menke, Mrs. Lubic and our very special guests: Mr. and Mrs. Mancini.

As part of Reading Week, we will be having a one hour silent reading time on Friday afternoon. I’ve told the children that they may bring in a pillow or cushion on Friday if they wish.

After vacation, we will be starting on biographies. Your child will be bringing home a list of famous people soon. I hope you will help your child choose someone you think they would find interesting and are curious to know more about.

In math, the children are doing a great job with their multiplication and division. We’ve had plenty of “real life” problems to solve. For example: Mrs. Menke wanted to buy planet stickers for each student in the class. There were four sheets in each package.  How many packages did Mrs. Menke need to buy so that each student would get one sheet of planet stickers? If there are nine stickers on each sheet (the stickers were obviously manufactured before poor Pluto was demoted to a dwarf planet), how many individual planet stickers are there in one package? Two packages? Four packages? Etc.

April 22nd is Earth Day. I am currently in the process of booking a field trip to the Johnston Landfill. It is so important for our children, who will be the future “keepers of the earth”, to be aware of how important it is for all of us to reduce, reuse and recycle. The added bonus to this trip is the spectacular view from the top where you can see all the way from downtown Providence to the Newport Bridge. So, if you are interested in accompanying us to the dump, to the dump, to the dump, dump dump!, please sign up as a chaperone when the permission slip comes home.

Wishing you all a wonderful spring vacation,

Sandy Menke

Dear Parents,

Last week our class read Follow the Drinking Gourd, a story involving the Underground Railroad and how one family provides safety and aid to another family who is seeking their freedom from slavery. If you get a chance, ask your child about this story and what the title means. This coming week, the children will be involved in “book clubs” or “literature circles”. Each student will select a book to read with one or more classmates. The group will decide as a whole, how much reading to do each night. Then each student will be responsible for the assigned reading and will be expected to come prepared for a discussion of the material. The students are looking forward to this and I look forward to sitting in on some lively and thought-provoking discussions.Also this week, we continue the “Battle of the Books” with Mr. Jennings. The Reading Dragons, Magical Express, Reading Army, American Readers, and Reading Rattlesnakes have all done quite well. The scores have been very close. Within the next week or two, the team, which will represent our class, will be determined. I’ve been very proud of both the children’s knowledge of the books, and of the good sportsmanship they’ve displayed.Last week, you should have received information about our current Investigations Unit on multiplication and division. The letter included some good ideas to try at home. You may also want to refer to the parent handbook pages 39-53 over the next few weeks.

• Thank you for sending in Box Tops for Education.

• We will be placing our order for Scholastic books at the end of this week, please have orders in by Friday, March 13th.

• Pizza Pig Out this Friday – See you there!

COMING UP LATER THIS MONTH

• Report cards and portfolios will go home on Thursday, March 20.

• No School on Friday the 21st

• March 25th Math Night for parents. Sharon Martin will hold a workshop on fractions (our next unit).

• Reading week March 31 to April 4th (more about that later)

Thanks to parent volunteer Mrs. Abilheira, you may read this newsletter on Mrs. Menke’s blog on the NES website. We hope to get some pictures of the students at work on there soon! Warm regards,

Sandy Menke

Hello families. This is my first blog! I feel so high-tech! I hope that this tool will increase communication between us, we’ll see. I’ll be working on this blog off and on. I’m learning. Stay tuned.

Welcome to Edublogs.org. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!