Early this week your took their perimeter assessment. The students needed to measure two shapes that were taped on the floor and then calculate their perimeters. Students in Mr. Borzick's math group should have received their graded assessment on Thursday while students in Mrs. Lew's room should expect to receive theirs when you return from break.
After completing perimeter, we began to dip our toes into geometry through two activities. The first activity is called, "Quick Images." In this activity I display a picture for three seconds and students must work to draw the same shape from memory. They then get to see it one more brief time so they can make corrections to their work. I will then display the image so that everyone can fix their picture and make it perfect. As a class, we then discuss what strategies students used to help them remember the shape. Some students see patterns, some see pictures, some break the larger picture into smaller shapes. Through these quick images we hope that students will begin to think about shapes in different ways.
The second activity the children participated in was building Tetronimos. Tetronimos are shapes built using four cubes; for parents familiar with Tetris, the shapes in that game are the
shapes of the tetronimos. Students worked to find all of the possible arrangements and then learned just because a shape is rotated, doesn't mean its a different shape.
In writing this week, we continued to work on the parts of speech and proper sentence construction. Each student composed one sentence about winter and then created a poster to illustrate their sentence.
This week also found another assembly. Several members of the American Legion visited Kozy on Tuesday to discuss the etiquette surrounding the United States Flag as well as present Kozy with a new flag to replace the worn one flying outside our school.
Students continue to work on both their typing and cursive skills. I have several students who have completed the TypingPals program already and several more who are almost done. This is a great accomplishment and I'm very proud of the hard work these students have shown. A reminder to all that children can practice their typing skills from home. The link to typing pals can be found on our classroom website, www.3grade.ws, under the "Your Web Tools" link.
Finally, I'd like to add that students have just about wrapped up the cursive work for the year. We have completed all of the lower case letters and are about half way through the capital letters. I plan on completing the remaining letters by the end of the second quarter.
