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Dear Families, We have had a few busy weeks. The students did a terrific job with the Hike through History. I am very proud of our classmates Kate Locke, Victoria Biddle, Amanda Couture, Noah Hanfelder, Eric Glidden, and Zach Mitchell who were presenters on the hike. The rest of the class did a great job listening and learning about our community while on the hike. A big thank you to all the parents who were able to join us on the hike. Our class took a walking field trip to the Counting House and visited the gundalow . The students enjoyed being on the gundalow and learned more about the history of South Berwick. Today we will have a visitor from the South Berwick Historical Society visit our class and build gundalows with us. In Science,we have been learning about the food chain. We practiced a mini &endash; play called "Life In A Field." The children were divided into small groups and were given a character role to perform. They also made headbands to match their characters. The students will perform the skits for Mrs. Hofacker's class this week. On Thursday , we celebrated filling the marble jar and completing over 12,000 minute as class with our reading logs. We earned a free choice time and made ice cream sundaes. We will be looking for some volunteers to come in to school and work on putting the third grade yearbook together. I'm not sure of the time and date yet. Please drop me a note if you might be able to help out.
REMINDER- Please return any photos you do not wish to purchase from picture day.
Thank you, Mrs. McDonnell
Friday afternoon will be the third grade talent show.
Important Dates; May 30th - Third Grade Concert 2:00 - 6:00 pm May 31st - Ice Cream Smorgasbord at Central School June 5th &endash; Mr. Burnell and Mrs. Kyle come to visit our class June 8th &endash; Bike and Walk to School Day 8:30 and 2:30 assembly- Volunteer Recognition June 12th &endash; Grade 3 visits Marshwood Middle School June 13th &endash; Field Day (rain date June 14th) June 19th Last Day of School/Early Release PTO Central Celebration on the front lawn (after school)
February 26, 2007
Dear Families, THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR YOUR SUPPORT OF OUR 100 DAY CAN DRIVE CELEBRATION, IT WAS A HUGE SUCCESS!! The entire school met in the gymnasium to share each classroomís collection. Every classroom met their goal of 100 items or more. Each class made a design with their items; our theme was, ìLeaning Tower of Spaghetti Sauce.î It looked terrific. I would like to thank everyone for bringing in items for our Valentines Day Party. It was a great success. The students had a lot of fun eating their breakfast treats and sharing their Valentines. I would like to personally thank the students for the beautiful Valentines Day cards and candy I received. I hope everyone had a wonderful vacation and enjoyed all the time off. Thank you, Mrs. McDonnell January 22, 2007
Dear Families, The students have been very busy since the beginning of the New Year. We have been working with decimals, place value through ten thousands, reading, writing, and ordering numbers. We are currently working on Geometry. Please continue to work with your students and their multiplication fact family triangles. We have finished our Science Units about Forces and Motions, and Magnets. Please take time to look at your student's science packets. I was very proud of their science write-ups. The students are now designing and building inventions in class. They are very excited about this activity. The children will be writing and illustrating about their invention, its purpose/function, and how it will help others. We are also starting our first book report to celebrate Black History Month. Each student will read a biography, write a report, illustrate a drawing of their famous person, and eventually make a certificate to nominate the famous person into the Hall of Fame. On Tuesday, January 16th, Scott Negley from Maine Stars Planetarium came to Town Hall and provided a wonderful solar system presentation for all the third graders. The children enjoyed this show a great deal and are excited that the solar system will be one of our next science units. Thank you for sending in cans of sauce. We have---________ cans of sauce and are working our way towards our goal of 100 cans by February 14th. Just a reminder, please have your student return their reading log every Monday. Your student should list the name of the book/books they have read, the author, and the number of pages they read. This is a very important part of their weekly homework assignments. Thank you, Mrs. McDonnell
December 22, 2006
Dear Families, Last Thursday we brought the sheets/comforter bedding set and two twenty dollar gift certificates to Town Hall. Our class raised $89.00 for this activity. Thank you for your support and generosity. The students were very excited to donate to a local family in need. The class would like to thank all of you who donated to our holiday party. We had a terrific day and enjoyed special treats. We enjoyed the left-overs today. We have been book buddies with Mrs. Hofacker's first grade class. One day a week we read a special library book to our first grade friends and they read their books to us. It has been a great experience for both classes and we will continue this throughout the year. We have had Mrs. Jacob in our class to help us learn to use the new laptops. We went on a roller coaster physics website. Our students worked with Mrs. Trites' class and had to design a roller coaster that would be both safe and provide a fun ride. Please ask your student about this activity. We also visited a website about Leonardo da Vinci and his inventions. We will be creating inventions in January. Please take the time to view these websites together with your student, if you have access to the Internet. Please have your student read during vacation. Students should continue practicing their fact triangles. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday and I am looking forward to a terrific new year. When we return for the new year we will be celebrating with an ice cream party for reading over 12,000 minutes and a free choice time for filling the marble jar! Sincerely, Mrs. McDonnell November 3, 2006
Dear Families; We filled our marble jar last week for the first time this year, and as a result the students enjoyed a half hour of free choice activities. The students chose to do arts and craft activities, played games, and read. The students really enjoyed earning this special half hour of free choice, and are already working hard to start filling the marble jar a second time. The students also completed reading over 12,000 minutes since the beginning of the year with their reading homework log. So we celebrated by having ice cream sundaes in class. We have completed our South Berwick maps and will be designing our own town maps. In addition, as a writing project the students are designing brochures about the town of South Berwick. In Math we are starting a new unit about measuring, perimeter, and area. Please continue to work at home on fact families with your students. Have a great weekend ! Sincerely, Mrs. McDonnell
Reminder - There is no school this Friday, November 10th. Also, any donations of paper towels, napkins, styrofoam bowls, and plastic spoons would be greatly appreciated.
October 23, 2006 Dear Families, We had a very busy and interesting week. On Monday,we went to visit the Sarah Orne Jewett House. The students enjoyed the trip and asked a lot of questions. We learned a great deal about her life as a child, her life as a writer, and a lot about her early years in South Berwick. After our visit each student chose one artifact from our trip to write about and illustrate. We will share our artifact information this week in class. This week in math we worked on solving comparison number stories, partial-sums algorithms, ballpark estimates, and trade first subtraction algorithms. We will be taking our Unit 2 math assessment today. In social studies we started reading from our "Our Town Book," which is designed to help us learn about our community and how it functions. We also learned about how important volunteers are in our community. On Friday, we took a trip to the Kittery Trading Post to carve pumpkins. I was attending a teacher workshop and couldn't attend this trip. Mr. Rowe, our substitute teacher, left me a note on how well behaved the students were and what a fun time they had. I would like to thank my chaperones for volunteering their time. Thank you, Mrs. McDonnell Reminders- I have tickets for anyone interested in attending the Central School Auction at Spring Hill on Nov.10th from 7-11pm. Please make your check payable to Central School PT0. September 22, 2006 Dear Families; Thanks to everyone for getting our Spelling homework off to a great start! The children have enjoyed getting their new Spelling workbooks and learning how to use them. We have been learning how to use the Flip chart method of practicing spelling words, and the children can share this with you at the Open House next week. The response to the Reading Log, charting our daily requirement of reading for 15 minutes, has been very successful also. I am very pleased to see the high number of students who are going beyond the 15 minutes per day goal, and the positive comments I am receiving from the their families. Several of you have left notes that you really like the way the chart works and makes your child accountable to read to a certain level each day, and they are taking on the responsibility. The rest of our school year has gotten off to a busy start. We have read several books as a class and have written and shared reading responses to these books. The students have done a terrific job with this activity. We will be studying the seven continents and four oceans as an introduction to our 'Mapping and Community' unit. We have also developed class rules and have had discussions on what we need to do to be good citizens. The children were introduced to their Math tool kits. They can share the contents of them with you at Open House. Some of the topics we have worked on so far are number grids, equivalent names, money and calculators, as well as analyzing data with tally charts and bar graphs. Have a great weekend ! Sincerely, Mrs. McDonnell September 15, 2006 Dear Families: We have gotten off to a great start during our first full week of the school year. We have developed some special friendships and have done a lot of community building for our classroom. We have gotten to know our new friends by sharing the posters that each child brought into school the first day, sharing information about themselves, their families, and their hobbies/interests. We have also had some partner sharing and will be putting together a class profile book from the information we have gathered. We have developed class rules to make all of us accountable for our actions during the school day, and to ensure that our school day runs smoothly, and provides a strong learning environment. Some of our activities the last week include:
Reminders Picture day is Friday, September 22nd Open House is Tuesday, October 26th, 5:30pm &endash; 7:00pm
Our Daily schedule is as follows: 8:25-8:40 Arrival/Pledge of Allegiance/Notes and lunch count/Math message 8:50-9:40 Specials 9:40-9:50 Bathroom break 9:50-10:50 Math 10:50-11:00 Snack 11:00-12:10 Language Arts/Reading/Writing Workshop 12:10-12:25 Class meeting/Story and sharing time 12:30-1:00 Recess 1:00-1:30 Lunch 1:30-2:00 DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read) 2:00-2:45 Social Studies/Science 2:45-3:00 Homework folders and Dismissal
Thank you to all for sending in school supplies to be used by your child as well as the rest of the class. Sincerely, Mrs. McDonnell |
