3rd Grade: 3/4

We hope you all had an enjoyable break!

Reading:

Before break we finished reading Because of Winn Dixie and started watching the movie. The kids were excited to see this story on screen and kept comparing it to the book, often shouting, “That is not how I pictured it!” Afterwards we read Dyamond Daniel and compared Dyamonde to Opal. They both moved to new places and were looking for friends. Dyamonde was nice to everyone, even Free who wasn’t nice to her, and looking for friends her own age. Opal did not want to be friends with the Dewberry boys as they were mean to her, and made friends with a dog and adults. We also noticed that the lesson is similar in both books: you shouldn’t judge someone as you don’t know what they’re going through and sometimes you need to let go of the past in order to be happy. After break we moved into book clubs. Groups of children are reading the same book and will have conversations about these books. Each time the club meets, children will read a chapter or two, answer questions, or talk about character traits, predictions, the problem and solution, and other story elements.

Writing:

We are continuing to work on our biographies of people of color. We have been looking at articles, books, books online, and videos to learn as much as we can about our person. Since some of them were alive more recently (or still are), they were able to watch or listen to them. After break we finished taking notes and began turning them into sentences and paragraphs. Next we’ll revise for understanding, edit, and add pictures.

Social Studies:

Before break we finished our study of New Amsterdam, learning what life was like for the typical child. They certainly had a lot more chores than we do today! We also completed our mural of New Amsterdam, adding people and greenery.

After break we started working on our social action job: trash monitors! We made posters for the garbage and recycling area to help tell people what materials go in which bin. Soon we’ll be monitoring it during lunch to make sure other students are following the rules!

We also continued our study of New York, fast forwarding to the 1800s and moving north, trying to figure out how to move good from New York City to the expanding country. We realized the best and easiest way was on water, so we have to build a canal from the Hudson River to the Great Lakes!

Judaics with Shira

Third graders launched their Social Action project- being Trash Monitors in the lower school. In the past month, we have had two visits from an educator with Repair the World, who taught us more about Reducing, Reusing, Recycling, and waste management in NYC. Students used the information that they learned to make presentations for all the classes in the lower school. Each third grader presented to ether Kindergarten, First grade, Second grade, or Fourth grade. Some of the activities that the third graders planned and executed were a play, a trash sorting game, and information sharing. I was so proud of the confidence, creativity, and collaboration that students had to use to create effective presentations. It felt so special to be able to visit other classrooms after two years of not being able to do that.

Hebrew with Rimma:

Students continued to practice Past Tense in this unit within the context of talking about when they were born and where. We recapped the names of the Gregorian months and the Hebrew months and learned 4 digital numbers for the year. We began with their date of birth and ended up with a discussion around some important historical events in the past while practicing how to say the year when it happened.

We practiced two and three digit numbers in a shopping role-play, practicing buying and selling items in a shop, asking how much something costs and negotiating a price.

Our next unit is about hobbies and after school activities.

Music with Heidi:

In Music class, Third Graders have learned the C, C7, Am, F and G chords! They are using these chords to play Arirang and My Dog Has Fleas. Third Graders are also continuing to learn to read ukulele music.

STEAM with Sammi

The third graders began a new unit in science this week: Bridges! This unit coincides with their Brooklyn Bridge unit in social studies. In science, we will focus on bridges as a whole, studying what makes them sturdy and why different types of bridges are best for certain areas. We will then use our knowledge to get a better understanding of the Brooklyn Bridge itself. To start, we studied 5 different pictures of bridges this week. We described what they were made of, where they were, why they may have been built, and what shapes we noticed. Students were then challenged to start thinking about a bridge design that included three main shapes- rectangles, arches, and triangles.

In tech class on Wednesday, the third graders jumped back into our digital citizenship unit (which was started before break but put on pause for some extra science work days). This week’s focus was on media use. Please remember to help your child complete their homework across this week. We will review their media tracker worksheet on Wednesday.