Passionate People

We wrapped up the reading portion of our nonfiction unit by nominating one of Steve Jenkins books for a fictional award inspired by the Orbis Pictus medal for nonfiction. The readers had to use what they know about text structures (i.e. question/answer, cause/effect, chronological, narrative, etc.) and Jenkins use of text features as criteria for their award. See this week's Let's Recap for some of the books they chose and their reasoning behind it.

Now we have moved into the writing portion of the unit where students will use what they know about text structures and features of nonfiction text to research and write an informational piece about a topic of their choice. The choices they have made range from spicy peppers to snub nosed monkeys and everything in between. We have jumped into notetaking and next week we will use Google Slides to begin to organize our notes with headings. Then students will decide on which structural elements they will include. Maybe they will choose to have a vocabulary section, a question and answer text box, side bars, diagrams, or endnotes. We can't wait to share our Passion Projects with you when we return from the Winter Break. An invite for our Passion Project breakfast will be sent home next week.

We wrapped up our math unit last week and students self-assessed their growth. Many of them were so proud of themselves for how much they grew in developing efficient strategies for multi-digit addition and subtraction and using estimation and rounding to support a reasonable solution. Now we are moving into Unit 4 where students will be learning about measurement of time, mass and volume and beginning to explore fractions. Read here to learn more about the math concepts in this unit.

Also this week we are excited to welcome Vermont author Natalie Kinsey-Warnock. She will be visiting all of the 3/4 teams for an interactive and in-depth look at her writing process. Look forward to some pictures after her visit next week!

Please remember to have your child bring all of their winter gear to school and expect to change into some more comfortable shoes upon arrival. Our rugs are taking a beating from the salty/sandy boots!