A new season is upon us!

Are you impressed with your child's transition into third grade?  I sure am!

Our theatre classroom is in full swing.  We have lots to be excited about.

• Has your student enjoyed using IXL?  I am thrilled to share that our students have answered over 10,000 math questions in just over one week!  Amazing!  I'm getting great feedback from them.  I love listening in on their conversations about math as they describe what they're working on and discuss goals THEY are setting for themselves.  Impressive stuff!
• Has your child talked about the Daily 5 or CAFE at home?  Well, both are up and running in our classroom.  The Daily 5 is a something of a classroom management structure.  The students work to build stamina so that they can engage in meaningful literacy activities while I'm teaching individual students or small strategy groups.  I'm proud to report that they can work with independence for thirty minutes.
• They love the Daily 5.  The activities are:  Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, Work on Writing, and Working with Words.
• In addition, the Broadway CAFE is open for instruction!  During CAFE, I teach mini lessons that focus on reading strategies, writing strategies, words and their meanings, etc.  As the students learn reading strategies, they are posted on the CAFE menu board.  The students' job is to practice these strategies until they become automatic.  Wonder what the CAFE acronym stands for?                C - Comprehension, A - Accuracy, F - Fluency, and E - Expand Vocabulary!
• The students are writing, writing, writing.  Homework will be a bit ramped up next week with the addition of writing homework.  Please support your child in writing a one page narrative (story of an important moment in their life) when he or she has writing homework.  The focus is on capturing the moment and telling the story with detail.  You need not worry about spelling and mechanics at this stage.  Thanks for supporting your child as he or she works to develop his or her writing fluency.   
• We've finished our first math unit focusing on Number Sense.  We are midway through a unit on Data.  The students have enjoyed surveying students throughout our school and designing representations  to convey the meaningful information they've gathered.
• We've finished our unit on New England and Massachusetts geography.  We'll begin our study of the Wampanoags next week.
• Our Broadway stars are rock stars as well.  They are well on their way to gaining proficiency in meeting our science standards connected to the study of rocks and minerals.  At this point, they should be able to describe the differences between Igneous, Sedimentary and Metamorphic rocks and give examples of each. 
• Exciting News:  I just received the script and music for our Rocks and Minerals play.  I hope to have the cast ready to perform prior to the holidays.  I am anticipating great things from this talented cast.  

I hope you've enjoyed the sneak peek into our classroom through the Animoto Video.  I look forward to sharing the students' continued success with you!

All the best,
Marie