What’s Happening in Room 8

Thanks so much for coming in to chat at conferences. It was great to see everyone, and I appreciate you taking the time to work with me to make this the best year ever for your child. It’s a team effort, and we are all off to a great start! Please feel free to come in at any time if you have questions or concerns, or just want to say hi. You can also call, send a note, or email. (jmyrmel@hpseagles.net)

Have a great weekend, and enjoy the weather.

Alexa’s mom took some pictures at our Halloween party, so you can have another look at the fun!

Thanks so much to Emma’s mom for organizing the Halloween party-under tough circumstances! At the last minute, new helpers had to be lined up because of all the sickness that’s been going around. So another big thanks, also, to the people who came in to help–they all worked hard and the kids had a great time. We started by watching the lower el kids parade in the gym, then got our own costumes on and started our party. Just look to see all the fun we had:

Last week we received a nice surprise-a big box of dictionaries! The members of the local Grange bought a dictionary for each third grade student. You wouldn’t believe how much fun the kids had with these books! They learned about Presidents, how to do the alphabet in sign language, what the longest word in the English language is, and lots more fun information. Today we worked on writing thank you notes so we can let the Grange members know how much we appreciated them thinking of us. Learning is fun!

In Social Studies we are studying the human features of Michigan. We started by talking and reading about the Mackinac Bridge, and today we looked at maps to find highways and cities. The kids worked in groups, and had a great time. They even folded the maps without incident when they were done-an important life skill!

Friday morning Miss B’s class of first grade writers came to share their books with us. They have worked hard to write and illustrate their stories, and we had lots of good things to say about their work. The third graders were impressed with the 1st grade writing, and also with how they have grown as writers since they were in first grade. It’s easy to forget how far you’ve come!

We have been working on using a timeline to organize our personal narratives before we start writing. It’s a great strategy, and allows us to do some editing before we even start writing. Ask your child to tell you about some of the interesting stories they’re writing.

On Friday, the Superfans, a group of students from the High School, came to get the kids fired up about that night’s homecoming game. It was loud, and fun, and the kids were very excited. Check out the video:

Today we started doing “Sprints” to practice addition and subtraction facts. The kids are doing a great job understanding the math concepts in the lessons with Mrs. Rich, but are sometimes slowed down in working out the problems because they need more practice on the addition and subtraction facts. This will be important for all the math they learn. We’ll practice at school, and any help you can give at home will make a difference too. It takes a lot of repetition for facts to become automatic. Here’s a website where the kids can play games to help them practice. Thanks for all your support at home, the kids and I really appreciate it!

Last Friday Mrs. Rich and I put our classes together to have some fun getting acquainted. First we took turns talking to each other, then we went outside in teams to look for bingo chips on the playground. The students couldn’t talk, they had to organize their teams according to an animal sound. We had clucking chickens, oinking pigs, mooing cows, and many more. We all had a great time getting to know each other! Third grade is a lot of fun!

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