Music, Mindset, and More

Dear Third Graders,

    Last week was busy!  We got to enjoy our fourth and fifth grade chorus, orchestra, and strings concert. I am always impressed with the talent we have at Rosendale!

     

Mr. D and some friends at G.E. also presented about our Growth Mindset Challenge!  I hope you have been working on your rocket prototype!  We had fun Friday making catapults and trying to improve on the design.

   

     Our caterpillars finished going through metamorphosis and emerged as butterflies. It was amazing to watch the process.  At times, the whole chrysalis would shake. The day the butterflies emerged was also two of our friend's birthdays! Super exciting.

      

     

 Bear Hugs,

 

   

Rain, rain Go AWAY!

Dear Third Graders,

     The rain has not slowed us down!  Today, we got to visit Mrs. Meyer's fourth grade class and give input to the entrepreneurs on their prototypes. It was exciting to get a glimpse into next year.

   In math, we have been working on geometry. There are a lot of new terms that can be confusing. We have been doing many hands on activities sorting, identifying, and playing games to get us using the vocabulary.

    We have begun to read books on the countries picked. We will continue to read this week and begin to take notes by the end of this week into next week. Given that this is my first year, I don't have many examples of boards made but Mrs. O'Connell let take a look at some she had. We noticed what was done really well and what could be done to make it a level 4 project. TIP:  before drawing and writing on your board, create a mock board paper just like we did for our Weather Reports.

 Our international festival is Wednesday, June 5th from 8:15-9:00 am. We will be sending home an RSVP slip so that badges can be printed ahead of time. If you have other family members attending and they can stop in prior to and get their ID into the system that would be amazing. Once a person is in the system, it is saved for future years.

Bear Hugs,

Moving May!

Dear Third Graders,

      May seems to be moving full steam ahead! 

     We celebrated a friend's birthday, finished our last of the NYS tests and celebrated with some yummy treats from Jack's mom, received our painted lady larvae, had jump rope day with parents, watched some amazing bike tricks during our Dialed In assembly, and much more. 

Investigating our Painted Lady larvae as part of our new Butterfly unit in science. 

    Our reading and writing focus is biographies. In reading, we have been working on reading informational text and taking notes. Our strategy is to read a few paragraphs of a section and try to pull out a few key words (2-3) to capture the main idea. We are doing a nice job with this in a small, teacher lead group. Application during independent biography note taking is at various levels. We will continue to work on capturing notes versus coping the author's sentence. 

    Most of us have turned in our sheets for our International Festival! I will be communicating more information in the next few days as well as sharing some examples. 

Bear Hugs,

     

Beautification Day

Dear Third Graders,

     This week was full of learning and fun! We had gorgeous weather for our beautification day celebration. We started out by helping plant flowers in the front of the school. We then painted Kindness Rocks, learned about pollinators, as well as bird calls.

    Check out the really cool one and a half minute video Rosemary's mom put together!

Beautification Day Video 

Here are some pictures from the day!

We are very lucky to have an amazing PTO and parent volunteers.  If you have not signed up for the buzzables (click here), please do so you are aware of all the amazing things happening at Rosendale. I also encourage you to be an active participant in our PTO! 

Bear Hugs,

China Day

Dear Third Graders,

       Wow!  We had an exciting day full of learning, food tasting, crafts, and celebration.  Emma's mom came in and taught us more about China. She shared about growing up in Beijing. She also shared how America and China are alike and different.  Next, she taught us how to use chopsticks! Most of you are light years away from me! Emma's mom also brought a HUGE assortment of foods to try along with a few of our friends. I was impressed how everyone tried most of the foods! Delicious!

 Chopstick game! 

Yummy!

Outfits and artifacts!  (Somehow I missed the gorgeous pillow my one friend brought in!  Kodak moment fail.


He made the Chinese Flag on his shirt and even looks like he should be performing in the Chinese Opera house!

   Dragon dancers

Chinese Newspaper!  Soooo cool. 

Brushes used for writing... and a Chinese Singing Chicken Toy! 

 Lantern

    Wow, we had a packed day!  I am looking forward to beautification day tomorrow! 

Bear Hugs,