Greetings, families!

I started my “solo teaching” last week. I’m teaching all subject areas, but feel very comfortable doing so, thanks to Mrs. Berggren helping to prepare me and give me ideas, suggestions and wonderful advice!

All of last week was Reading Week.

The week began with students designing quilt squares about their favorite books. This was the setup o f each quilt square: (Please forgive my Microsoft Paint Skills…college students are too poor to buy photoshop! J )

Mrs. Berggren then glued all 20 squares to a poster to create our class “quilt”. It was so colorful and the kids did an amazing job on it!

Our principal, Mrs. Weber came in to read to us on Tuesday, as she made her rounds throughout the school, reading to every class!

Our next task for Reading Week was making “Vocabulary Hats.” Mrs. Berggren bought the class white hats and gave each student a vocabulary word with the meaning from our collection of “words of the week”. The students then had to think of a sentence with the word, and decorate the hat with things that relate to the word and its meaning. We marched in a parade around the school on Wednesday, April 1^st, to show all classes our hats and the words in which we displayed!

On Thursday, the whole third grade went into the cafeteria to watch a magic show based on Reading. The magician was fantastic! He asked for student volunteers and really amazed us all. He also explained why reading is so important in all aspects of life, and many of his tricks were based on classic children’s book characters and ideas!

After the magic show, we had a URI athlete read aloud to us. She plays on the Women’s basketball team and volleyball team and the kids asked her some great questions afterwards!

Thank you to all of the parents who came in last Friday to listen to your children read! Students read aloud to their parents or with a partner. Many students shared our class book, The Best Part of Me, which was my very first lesson that I taught to Room 7 back in September. The students did a great job with the book months ago, but it is still so wonderful to see how much they have progressed in writing since then!

We just finished our two multiplication units in math.

We started off with multiplication cups that I made for the kids. Each student had 6 mini paper cups stapled together, and used uncooked macaroni as counters. Each cup counted as a group, and the macaroni counted as the number in each group. For example, if we filled 4 cups with 6 pieces in each cup, our two factors would be 4 and 6. The students then counted all of the macaroni and figured out that 4 x 6 = 24.

We then moved on and learned the basics of multiplication. We learned it as repeated addition and as a way to group things.

We also learned the patterns of certain factors and the multiples of each times table. We learned the Commutative (Order) Property and the Associative (Grouping) Property, and strategies to figure out multiplication sentences.

We practiced “Writing to Explain” and multi-step problems that involve multiplication, subtraction and addition.

After vacation, we will be learning division for the first time!

We began our Richmond unit by filling out our Richmond Town Government Booklets with information from online research! We used the school set of laptops, and explored the Richmond Town Website to learn all about the town departments. This was all in preparation for our mock town council meeting. We assigned roles for the meeting, and I introduced the make-believe problem that the meeting would be based on. The problem was that there was a black bear roaming around Richmond. The students then created problems the black bear could cause and came up with possible solutions. The attendees of the meeting were as follows:

5 Town Council Members (Alexandra, Will, Dana, Zac R. and Jacqui K.)

-To listen, take notes and vote on a solution

3 Local Business Owners (Devan, Jackie B. and Jared)

-To tell what problems this causes for them and what they think a good solution would be.

3 Local Homeowners (Jaimin, Grant and John)

-To tell what problems this causes for them and what they think a good solution would be.

The Treasurer (Justin)

-To explain how much money can be spent on trying to fix the problem.

The Police Chief (Daniel)

-To answer any questions or give any ideas about what the police can do to help.

The Animal Control Officer (Allison)

-To answer questions and give ideas about what animal control can do to help and to make sure the solution

is safe for the bear.

The Town Planner (Tyanna)

-To talk about any areas that may be available to build on and how these areas could be used as part of the

solution.

The Zoning Board Official (Matthew)

-To explain the problems the bear has caused to the land in Richmond that was originally available to build

on, and to allow the normal rules to be changed for this case.

The Public Works Officer (Zach D.)

-To explain the dangers caused by the problem on the roads in Richmond, and to offer a solution to the

problem.

A reporter from the Chariho Times (Breanna)

-To record what happens at the meeting and report it in the newspaper the next day.

The Town Clerk (Maddie)

-To record what happens at the meeting for the Town Hall records

The Town Moderator (Haylee)

-To act as a chairperson and make sure everyone acts properly. If there are people who act

improperly, the moderator will ask them to leave the meeting.

The meeting was fabulous! The students really worked hard to learn about the role they would be playing and really got into character. They shared well-thought out ideas and make believe problems. I hardly interfered at all…I wanted them to take on the task themselves, and they did a great job! Ask your third grader about the role they played and about the solution that the Town Council voted on!

We are working on our Grammar in Room 7. We practice with out Daily Oral Language books. The books have a sentence that is not written properly, and the students have to re-write the sentence correctly.

Example of an incorrect sentence in the book:

“me and my friend have saw professional hockey games befor”

The students will then try to fix the sentence, which should read:

“My friends and I have seen professional hockey games before.”

The students seem to have the most trouble choosing the proper words to describe actions in the past tense, and with verbs coming after “I,” “he,” or “she.”

Here are some things you can practice with your third grader:

Correct form of sentence	Common mistakes students make
I saw that movie yesterday.	I seen that movie yesterday. I have saw that movie yesterday..
I have seen that TV show twice before.	I seen that TV show twice before. I have saw that TV show twice before.
I hit the baseball out of the park last week.	I hitted the baseball out of the park last week.
I put my shoes in the closet last night.	I putted my shoes in the closet last night.
He makes dinner every night.	He make dinner every night.
She looks like someone I know.	She look like someone I know.

Keep in mind that all third graders often make these mistakes, and as teachers, we expect them! Otherwise, they wouldn’t make workbooks filled with items like those above to practice! As a matter of fact, students of all ages have difficulty with these Grammar rules.

I’m very impressed with how well the students did in learning and practicing syllabication! Last week, our spelling words were all 2 syllables that contained the vowel-consonant-consonant-vowel (VCCV) pattern. The syllables are split in the middle of the two consonants in these types of words. I passed out dry erase boards to each student, gave them a spelling word and they wrote it on their board separated into syllables. I then counted to 3 and had them all hold up the boards at once. They had so much fun with this, and really showed me how much they learned!

Sadly, my last day teaching your wonderful children will be May 8^th, as I graduate the next week. I’ve formed such wonderful relationships with each and every student that it will be hard for me to leave. I’ll be sure to visit them a few times in the remainder of the school year! They have taught me so much about being a teacher, and each and every one of you should be so proud of your third grader and know that each student has such wonderful qualities.

I have uploaded and resized a bunch of pictures to my computer from the last few weeks, taken mostly by Mrs. Berggren, and a few by me. Please check our class photo album at:

http://community.webshots.com/user/b_pacheco7

as I will be adding them to the album shortly after this post!

Have a safe, fun and relaxing April Vacation!

As always, please feel free to comment on this post by clicking the number of comments (eg. "0 comments) at the bottom of the entry.

Also, do not hesitate to e-mail me with any questions, comments or concerns at B_Pacheco7@yahoo.com

-Ms. Pacheco