Newsletter: January 6

Dear Families,

We're back! We started off the (almost) second half of the year with a bang. Representative Annie McDaniel (District 41) came in on Monday to speak to us about her role in the SC General Assembly, the importance of voting, and the need for citizens to contact their elected officials in an effort to make our communities a better place for all. She did a fabulous job of helping us understand what it's like to cast a vote in the legislature and even spoke to the fact sometimes there is a lot of pressure on her from various people on all "sides" when it comes time to vote. And of course, she was incredibly impressed with the kids' attentiveness, quality questions, and previous experience with advocacy. It was such a wonderful way to start off 2020.

Rep. McDaniel takes questions from the class.

In math we are launching a study of multi-digit multiplication. To begin, we're identifying patterns when multiplying by multiples of ten (such as 10x3, 20x3, 30x3, etc). The goal here is to help the kids find these products more quickly and easily.

Table 4 sorts base-10 blocks to figure out how many units they have all together.

 The strategy we will use this year for multi-digit multiplication is to use the partial products method. To do this we will break the larger number up into parts then multiply both parts separately before adding them back together. For instance, to solve 15 x 4 we will first multiply 10 x 4 (40) then 5 x 4 (20). We'll then put the 40 and 20 together to find the product, 60. Next year the kids will also learn the traditional method for solving this problem. The purpose of using partial products in third grade is to help them build a conceptual understanding of how these problems work.

Table 2 counts by tens to figure out how many units they have all together.

In writing we are currently engaged in a songwriting unit. The kids have been invited (assigned, really) to send me lyrics of a song they really like so we can all study it together. We're using these songs to learn about organizational structure (verse, chorus, bridge, intro, outro) and rhyme pattern. This will play nicely into the study of poetry we'll launch later in the year. As part of this study, the kids are working in small groups/bands to write their own songs. As we progress deeper into the unit I'll begin asking them to analyze their own songs for organizational structure and rhyme pattern.

Class analysis of Into the Darkness (from Frozen 2)

You know a study is really engaging when the kids ask to bring in stuff
from home. 

In reading we just started a literature study of Charlotte's Web. This is a much more challenging text than we've used in previous whole-class literature studies. It will provide us a great opportunity to put into action all we've come to learn about reading fluency, comprehension, and building discussions about literature.

I told the kids they can keep these copies of the book when we finish. This allows
us to go ahead and write right in the margins of the text to record our thinking as we
move through the story. We're working to make inferences and predictions, ask questions,
share emotional responses, and draw connections between this text and others we've read.

All of these responses to the story prepare us for turning and talking with friends about
the story. Building quality discussions around literature is important because it supports each
of us to understand the story more fully.

That's it for this week. If you have any questions or need anything at all be sure to let me know!

Chris