This year, our weekly newsletters will be emailed to parents and also posted to our new website. You’ll be able to find archived 3/4 newsletters here: brooklinschool.org/mrs-thoner. 

Upcoming Events:

• Week of September 9th-13th: NWEA testing
• Tuesday, September 10th: Brooklin School Committee meeting at 6:00
• Wednesday, September 11th: Back to School BBQ at 5 PM
• Monday, September 23rd: School Picture Day
• Friday, September 27th: Early Release at 1:00
• October 16th-18th: Schoodic Education Adventure

3/4 ELA – Mrs. Thoner

This week students helped prepare their room and do team building.  We also worked on how to engage in classroom discussions effectively and respectfully, and how to be considered trustworthy.  We began our first lesson, which is an introduction to the book: Love That Dog by Sharon Creech.  This is written from the point of view of a young boy named Jack who is trying to figure out what poetry is.  His teacher helps him by taking his writings and making them look like poetry.  Students are focusing on how to summarize (find the gist) a piece and how to find evidence in the text to support their responses.

3/4 Super Studies – Mrs. Bebell

What a fun group of scientists the 3/4 class is! The students spent the week exploring the science part of Super Studies, which also includes social studies and technology. They practiced their observation skills while exploring the school grounds. Bits of plants were collected to compare the different scents. Mirrors were used to see things from a different perspective. Different textures were searched for in the woods. Pictures were drawn to represent the sounds heard in the woods. Tea was made to sample different leaves, needles, and berries found around the school.

3/4 Math – Mrs. Tapley

We had a wonderful first week of school in 3rd and 4th grade math! Together, we discussed expectations for our classroom community. We also completed a team-building exercise with our math tools, creating structures out of our unifix cubes. Students exercised their math brains by taking part in estimation activities that they thoroughly enjoyed. Our 3rd grade mathematicians began their unit on multiplication and division, starting with a focus on understanding that multiplication is the same as repeated addition. Our 4th grade mathematicians took part in an activity where they had to estimate the size of a person that would be ten times as tall as they are, 100 times as tall as they are, and then 1,000 times as big as they are. Their first unit begins with the concept of place value, so this understanding of the magnitude of base 10 is an important first step.