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Portfolios and Conferences

Happy weekend!  We'll see many of you on Monday and Wednesday next week as we continue with fall conferences.  Thanks for checking the sign-up page for your slot and being mindful of our busy schedule.  

Your SBLC student is coming home with portfolios of their work from the first 7 weeks of school.  They have taken time to reflect on their progress and further growth opportunities, and are excited to present this body of work to you.  Thank you for valuing this hard work and for using the blue forms as a tool to guide your conversation and your feedback. We use these notebooks daily, so please make sure your student can bring them back to school on Tuesday morning.

SBLC mathematicians have been exploring multiplication in lots of ways this week.  Third graders are exploring multiples and using hundreds charts to study patterns as they skip count.  We've all been using compatible numbers to more flexibly and efficiently multiply by 3, 4, and 5.  We've also studied visual proofs of multiplication area models and have worked in groups this week to create our own.  This work took us through a feedback and revision process, then we presented in groups.  We know that our brains learn math better when there's a visual component and that our brains remember information better in color, so these visual proofs have been big brain food this week. 

We've also had some fun with multiplication number talks.  I've added a 15-minute video about this fabulous strategy for building number sense to the resources page of the blog and included a link here in case you're curious:  Number Talks Info

As scientists, our multiplication and decimal understandings helped us a lot as we tested our first boat prototypes.  Knowing that it would be best for our boats to have the least possible mass but a larger volume, we constructed with light and flexible aluminum foil and straws.  Once we knew that our boats could float, we counted the number of pennies that each boat could hold. Knowing that a penny has a mass of 2.5 grams, we used our calculators to find the total mass that each boat held.  Not sure which was more exciting - floating and sinking our boats or using calculators for the first official time this year!


SBLC readers are working slowly and persistently through our book, Eleven. This week, we examined symbolism and parallel stories! It is amazing how deeply we are interacting with text...analyzing, responding, connecting, envisioning.

In writing, we have been also using the text to learn techniques of a good author. We explored three different ways authors help their readers create pictures: description, show, don't tell, and figurative language. We noted how each of our senses are engaged with the various ways authors purposely select words, and also have been challenged to being doing that in our writing too!

Writers also created their own outlines in preparation for our first expository piece. SBLC writers are gradually taking on each piece of writing a five paragraph expository essay, and they are showing their growth mindset as we edit and revise.

In Social Studies, we are studying about environment, adaptations, and basic needs. We were Black Bears for a few hours and experienced gathering natural resources, and then evaluated whether this habitat could support our whole community.






He's here! We are so happy to let our SBLC family know that Cameron Lawrence Blake arrived on Monday, October 2nd at 8:15 am. Everyone is doing well, and we are so excited for Mrs. Blake as this new adventure begins. Here are a few pictures!

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