Super Busy Short Week

I don't know what it is but short weeks always seem so much busier than regular ones. Perhaps it's because we're so used to planning over five days, that it seems like we have to fit everything into four when it's a short week. This week we worked on finishing up our recounts. Most are done or almost done and I have begun putting them up on the bulletin board in the hall. We covered the letters/sounds "s", "t", "u", and "v" in our daily comptines. The grade threes worked on the sound "on" with its two spellings on/om in the story "Le trésor de Gédéon". We also began doing some other fall poems as shared readings that will be in their homework duo tangs next week to read at home with parents.

Recounts

It took me longer than it usually does to get my guided reading ready to go with reorganizing. I've finally got all GB+ assessments done, though with some delays due to all the absences this fall from illness etc. We will begin on Tuesday with predictions on the books and then I will be rotating through the five groups. The groups will be rotating through choral reading, partner reading and independent reading throughout the week when they are not reading with me. There is also a follow-up activity where they will be searching for words with some of the sounds we have covered this year in their books. 

All set for Guided Reading

In math, we have been focusing on using base ten blocks to make a number in several ways. We also spent considerable time discussing when to exchange ones for a ten, tens for a hundred, and hundreds for a thousand. The grade twos have been doing written activities where they have to group and count objects by 2, 5, and 10. The primary focus has been counting by 10. The grade threes have been looking at how many groups of 5, 10, and 25 are in a hundred as well as skip counting by 2, 5, and 10 both forward and backward from various starting points up to 1000.

In science, the students have been working in groups to discuss stable structures (don't move) vs structures that do move. We will begin looking at different types of levers/simple machines shortly. Next week we'll be going back to working on social studies with more community activities. Unfortunately, due to timing with the Peter and the Wolf and start-up of the Swim/Skate program, we had to put the Urban/Rural communities field trip on hold. We'll try to go again in the spring when the weather is again nice and hopefully the schedule will be a little more open and accommodating. 

Great visual for the differences between types of communities (grade 3)