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Mr. Casey Dyson » Posts

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Friday 11/6

Hello again folks,
 
We have completed an exciting week of conferences and field-trips, and here is a brief recap:
 
  • In English we worked on our By the Great Horn Spoon diaries where we analyzed some quotes from the book
  • In math we postponed our unit 1-2 test until next week, but we did a practice test and test corrections, including work on 2-part word problems
  • In science we have been hard at work on posters for the science far, and the posters are due November 11th! Some students have assured me they are working at home, so keep that date in mind and please try to send kids to school with materials on Monday as we will be putting finishing touches on our posters next week
  • We also had our first field trip to the Farallones center and it was a fantastic success, so you can ask your child about seaweed adaptations and how starfish eat
Other notes for next week:
  • Monday is Pirate day, so don't forget to dress up!
  • Science fair projects are due Wednesday morning!
  • We have another field trip next Friday, this time to watch a Lewis and Clark play
Thanks for reading and thank you to the chaperons for helping with the field trip!
 
Mr Dyson

Happy Halloween!

Hello folks!
 
The Halloween week has finished, and here are the notes:
  • In English we read So You Want to Be President? and continued working on our diaries for By the Great Horn Spoon
  • In math we did more addition and subtraction work, learned to use Marcy Cook Tiles and began reviewing for our next test
  • We worked on typing our science fair projects in preparation for putting our posters together
  • We had a parade around the neighborhood in our costumes and sang Halloween carols to the neighbors
Next week we will:
  • Finish writing our letters to ourselves for our time capsule
  • Practice challenging word problems and take a math test
  • Have a field trip to Farallones Marine sanctuary on Friday!
Friday folders are not coming home this week as the materials will be discussed in parent-teacher conferences next week.
 
A big thank you to Carla for bringing snacks for the in-class party today!
 
Thank you for reading and have a Happy Halloween!
 
Mr. Dyson

Friday Update for 10/23

Hello again,
 
After another productive and exciting week, here are the updates:
  • In English, we started reading By the Great Horn Spoon, a gold rush novel. We are also doing a 'character diary' writing activity to accompany this novel
  • In math we have been scaffolding addition and subtraction via word problems and bar modeling
  • We have been typing up our science fair projects and learning about habitat competition in science class
  • In social studies we are still researching for state-projects and getting more familiar with the Northeast region of the United States
Next week we are looking forward to:
  • Picture retakes and FULL DRESS on 10/28
  • Science fair experiment results are due on 10/29!
  • Wearing costumes on 10/30 and having our first class party!
Miscellaneous:
  • With the 1st quarter coming to an end, look out for report cards
  • Friday Folders are coming home today with 4/5 items
  • In Friday Folders students should be bringing their Behavior Calendars for parents to SIGN over the weekend. Again, please sign under the Yes or No at the end of this week. Several students came to school with unsigned calendars last week so please try to sign those
  • Some students have not been doing front row, so when front row is assigned, please try to secure some computer time for the students so they can complete their homework!
  • I have modified the homework posting system, so be sure that you are subscribed to the '3rd grade' class so you will receive homework updates. I had them broken into different subjects before and that may have been causing problems with the updates/emails so hopefully this streamlines the homework updating process
Thank you for your help with all of this!
 
Mr. Dyson

10/16 Update

Hello everyone,
 
Another week has come and gone. First, let's get some housekeeping out of the way.
 
In response to concern over the spelling menu, we have begun a spelling menu calendar. Students will record their assignments and the point values on the days that they do them, then they will turn the WHOLE WEEK'S assignments in on Friday. The calendar will live in English folders at school. This will ensure that students have achieve their 30 points and will make it easier for me to keep tabs on where each student is in their week-long spelling practice.
 
The behavior calendar has begun and will be coming home TODAY inside of the FRIDAY FOLDERS. Friday folders have about 10 assignments in them for parents to look at and keep. Behavior calendars should be returned on Monday with a parent's signature in the far right column under the "YES" or "NO" that signals whether the students received their Friday Free Time.
 
The representatives for the Hilldale All-Star's next week are Samantha for Respect, Ben for Leadership, and Liam for Independent Lifelong Learner, so congratulations to each of them for being nominated by their classmates and for working hard this week. As a reminder, the respect representative gets to eat lunch with the teacher on Friday, the leadership representative gets to be the teacher's assistant including feeding the classroom fish "Dash," and the independent lifelong learning representative gets to sit in the "reading reef" chair during all rug activities and they get to read a story on Tuesday and Thursday to the kindergarten class.
 
This week we finished our Lion to Guard Us book reports, practiced bar modeling in math while doing sum and difference problems, and we began typing up our science fair experiments.
 
Next week we will again have our weekly spelling test, will finish typing up the first portion's of our science experiments, and continue improving our daily habits so we can earn the full 15 minutes of Friday Free Time.
 
Thank you for reading and for all of your valuable feedback,
 
Mr. Dyson

Happy Wednesday!

Hey there everyone,
 
The behavior log has now officially started! Students should bring home their behavior calendar each night so you can check their behavior each day if you wish. I will send the log home on Friday in the Friday folders along with graded work and over the weekend I ask that each student get a parent signature on their calendar. The graded work is your to keep. There is an 'earned Friday Fun time' section with a "Yes" or "No" under it. I will have circled one or the other. I ask that underneath the yes or no parents sign to acknowledge that they have seen the calendar and know whether their student earned their bonus time and whether they had any behavioral issues during the week.
 
Thank you for your help with this!
 
Mr. Dyson

Thursday update (10/8)

Hello everyone,
 
As I will be out tomorrow, here are the weekly notes:
 
  • In English, we finished our vacation stories and read "Coyote School News"
  • In math, we learned 'The Sums Game,' a game picked up at the Singapore Math conference
  • We turned in our Science Fair abstracts and had individual check-ins to ensure that all projects are 'experiment ready'
  • We worked in the computer lab researching our States for state projects
Next week we can look forward to:
 
  • bringing Science fair materials to work on in class. To clarify, this does not mean bringing experiment stuff, it means bringing display board and other documents to begin working in class on the presentations. That means that, if possible, this would be a great weekend to do experiments or to get longer experiments underway!
  • behavior logs. We are going to start behavior logs next week so the Friday folder's will become daily folders. Papers will still come home on Fridays, but the log will come home each day for parents to review. (With regards to Friday Folders, they are NOT coming home this week, but in the future I will let parents know that they are coming home in order to help hold students accountable for giving graded work to parents).
Thank you all for reading!
 
Mr. Dyson

Weekly Update (10/2)

Good afternoon everyone!
 
This week saw the beginning of some exciting projects and the end of some good ones as well:
 
  • The seed dispersal experiment is over, and as our first science project of the year it was a great success
  • We began our year-long state-by-region projects that will culminate in some exciting and creative PowerPoint presentations
  • We began worked on mental math skills
  • We learned about 'What Jo Did'
  • We submitted science fair proposals
 
Next week we can look forward to:
 
  • Submitting science fair Preliminary Abstracts which expand on the proposal forms and should be aided by our recent experiment and lab report
  • More 'vocabulary picture it'
  • Continuing our Favorite Vacation writing assignment
Our first field trip is coming up in November so look forward to upcoming details as well as requests for rides!
 
Thanks for reading,
 
Mr. Dyson

9/25 Update

Hey there 3rd grade fans!
 
This week brought changes and adventures in the form of:
 
  • A new desk configuration and seating chart
  • Three "Hilldale Habits All-Stars" represented by Kai for Respect, Skylar for Leadership, and Ben for Independent Lifelong Learning. Kai got to have dinner with the teacher and a friend on Friday, Skylar was Mr. Dyson's assistant, and Ben got to sit in the Reading Reef disk chair while reading and studying and he also got to read a story to kindergarten
  • Math test review and the introduction of new games
  • Spelling dice for spelling practice
Next week we can look forward to:
 
  • New "Habits All-Stars"
  • Make a difference day
  • Science fair proposals are due!
Thanks to everyone for reading! If you haven't looked in the photo album yet, we have three folders for the first quarter so check them out!
 
Mr. Dyson

9/18

Happy Friday folks,
 
This week the class was getting down to the nitty-gritty by:
 
  • doing math review in preparation for the first math test
  • studying a new word list in wordly wise and expanding our vocabularies
  • working on a travel guide for U.S. States
  • drawing character portraits from A Lion to Guard Us
  • learning about being a good friend in our friendship groups through a 'web' game
Next week we can look forward to:
 
  • the beginning of the science fair!
  • the first set of privileges for class-nominated Hilldale Habit all-stars
  • finishing the travel guides for social studies
I want to apologize for the lapse in homework posting online, but we will be back online starting Monday!
 
Thank you,
 
Mr. Dyson

9/11 Update

Hello again folks,
 
Third grade rolls on, and this week we:
 
  • Learned rounding, played rounding games and place value games, including 'beat the teacher'
  • Read "On the Banks of Plum Creek," learned more grammar, and worked on wordly wise
  • Practiced mapping, including some basics of using an atlas
  • Read a book in Ethics about manners and developed a list of classroom rules together
  • Friday folders are coming home today!
Coming up, we can look forward to:
 
  • Pool party on Saturday!
  • Singapore Math parent's night on 9/14
  • Our first Math test!
Hopefully everyone has followed the 3rd grade homepage as well as the homework page, so that you get notifications about new posts in both areas.
 
Thank you all for your support and if you need anything, don't hesitate to call or email,
 
Mr. Dyson 
 
 

9/4 Weekly Update

Hello all,
 
Another exciting week is done and here are some highlights:
  • We continued reading A Lion to Guard Us and filling in our character chart
  • We worked with manipulative number dots in solving word problems as well as getting our first tastes of frontrowed.com
  • We learned more about using an atlas, including work with elevation maps
  • While learning about animal adaptations we did some adaptation drawings
  • We did some skits in ethics to identify good problem-solving techniques
  • We practiced typing during our technology period
Next week, we can look forward to:
 
  • No school Monday
  • Picture day Wednesday
  • Free dress Friday!
  • Our first week of Friday Folders
I have begun posting homework on the Hilldale Page, so subscribe to the third grade AND the homework pages in order to receive updates on homework and other goodies.
 
As always, if you wish to reach me over the weekend, please email me.
 
Thanks and have a great weekend,
 
Mr. Dyson

8/28 Update

Hello all, 
 
After an exciting first week, here is a quick recap of activities:
 
-In English/LA we worked on handwriting, read "Because of Winn-Dixie" and started our first novel, "A Lion to Guard Us"
 
-In Math we worked on numbers to the 1,000s, rounding, and learned to use frontrowed.com
 
-In Social Studies we learned about longitude and latitude, different land formations, and three Native Californian tribes
 
-In Science we did our first activity where we saved "Fred" and learned about animal adaptations
 
Next week we will learn some new math games, continue work on "A Lion to Guard Us," and begin working on grammar!
 
Have a great weekend!
 
Mr. Dyson