A-10 s Breaking News #1 The Quote of the Day: An investment in knowledge pays the best interest. --Ben Franklin The latest podcast is A Turkey Takes a Stand, which has been performed for the entire B-wing. They will perform another one in December and more over the course of the year, so stay tuned! A-10 READERS THEATERS By Audra The outstanding students of A-10 are recording and performing readers theaters. A-10 has performed four Readers Theaters: The Haunted Castle, How the Camel got his Hump, Anansi and the Talking Melon, and A Turkey Takes a Stand. You can find these podcasts at the Hudson website under Mrs. Armbruster s 3rd grade podcasts. The Haunted Castle is a story about a ghost who lives in a haunted castle. What would you do if you met a ghost? Find out what the peddler did when a ghost came to haunt him. How the Camel got his Hump tells how a camel got his hump and Anansi and the Talking Melon is an African trickster tale about a little prank pulled by Anansi. Mrs. Armbruster assigns all the students parts that fit their talented ability. Everyone Likes to Play Close to 1,000! By Nayan In Mrs. Armbruster s class, the students play math games during focus time. One of the math games is called Close to 1,000. In this game, a student gets a deck of cards and a partner. Then one student deals eight cards to each player. Both players try to make two 3- digit numbers. Then they add them together and attempt to add up to 1,000. If a player gets 1,000, the player then has a score of 0. If the player gets 1,007 for example, the player gets 7 as a
score. The idea of the game is to try to get the lowest score. Most students enjoy playing this game. Several students were asked how well they liked the game. After asking an A-10 student, Sam V., he said that he would rate it 4.5 out of 5 stars. Lots of students like this game because they get to pick their own partners. They like to play with their friends. binder. The poetry binder is full of tips on writing poetry, books letters, dialog, and personal narratives. The kids take home the binder each month for their parents to review and sign off on their work. When talking to the students several of them have said that poetry is fun! Poetry By: Violet On the second day of Mrs. Armbruster s class, the kids read their first poem in the classroom, Our Human Rights. First, Mrs. Armbruster read the poem aloud, and then the whole class read it together. That is what the kids do with every new poem. The most recent poems the students have read together were: Do Oysters Sneeze? and Sleepy Oyster. Do Oysters Sneeze? is a poem about silly questions you could ask an oyster. Sleepy Oyster is a poem about an oyster that is in a deep sleep when a storm is raging above him. While the oyster sleeps he dreams of a pearl. Because these poems are so much alike, the class filled out a Venn diagram about the two poems comparing the ideas found in the poems. So far Mrs. Armbruster s class has read fifteen poems together. The kids have also written their own poem called, If I Were In Charge of The World. The students keep their poetry in a red The Writing Game By: Cordelia The writing game is a game that Mrs. Armbruster s All Stars play to learn about writing. There are eight different stages of writing. Students, in A-10, have a star on a chart with their name on it. The chart shows the different stages of writing. The students put their star on which stage they are. As the students complete a step they move their star to the next square on the chart. Everyone in A-10 has completed the brainstorming space on the game board. Six students are on prewriting, seven students are on rough draft, one student is on peer conference, and two students are on revise.
Sherry is close to moving up to revise. Sherry says the writing game inspires the student to write and be creative. Violet has finished her personal narrative. The personal narrative is a story about something that happened in a person s life. Many students in the class enjoy playing the writing game. They say. It s a lot of work but it s fun. A few A-10 students thought that other students might like to play the writing game too. I feel good about this project because you can share your ideas, Erica says. All of the creations were wonderful and shows how the world can be a better place. Students have very colorful projects on the walls. These projects make me feel proud of the time and effort students put into their projects and I know that students will make the world a better place, says Mrs. Armbruster. The project goal was to show the student s creative side. You can see many of these projects on Mrs. Armbruster s website under 3rd grade photo/videos. Word of the Week By: Erica PTA Reflections By Sherry The children in A-10 completed a very exciting project. They entered the PTA Reflections Contest! Each child was to talk about something that could make the world a better place. The projects were due on October 31. The students in A-10 did a very good job. They had six different categories that they could choose from. The categories were: dance choreography, film production, literature, music composition, photography, and visual arts. Armbruster s All Stars are working on The Word of the Week. Every week, there is a new word for the class to learn about. This week they are working on the word superb. Their first Word of the Week was strive. Every word has a funny comic to go along with the word. The way they learn the words is by guessing what the meaning is and then Mrs. Armbruster puts in a card, which has the definition on it. A few of the words are: heed, envious, blunder, and so on. How do you feel about the Word of the Week? Here are some of the responses from some of the students in Armbruster s A-10. Sherry: I like the Word of the Week because it is fun and it stretches your vocabulary. You could know more words and you could know so many definitions. You could use them in sentences too!
Audra: I feel that the words give us stronger vocabulary and they show us how they are used in sentences. When we have heard the word 3 times, it retires and is put up on the wall above the chart. Sarah: I like the Words of the week because the words sound very interesting. So far, they have learned about more than 10 words. A-10 will continue this till the end of the year. Stay tuned for more articles! Explosive Words By: Fritz Mrs. Armbruster s class is doing a special project called, The Weighty Word Book. It contains words starting from A to Z. The letter A stands for Abasement (not the room underground). Abasement means to get lowered from stage or league. The students take words from the adult written book and write the meaning in their own book. Then, they put their own definition. Some of the words none of the students have heard before. After interviewing Hayden, he said his favorite word was Dogmatic. He rated the book 4.75 out of 5 stars. In this project, the students can write their own titles. Some of the titles are: Giant Unique Words, Sacred Scroll of Words, Words The Size of a Blue Whale, and Elephant Sized Words. The students are using these words in their spelling sentence, stories, and book letters. Their writing explodes with superb words! ALL ABOUT STEVE JENKINS By Hayden Steve Jenkins is a creative author and illustrator. Steve Jenkins has an unusual style with his illustrations. He usually writes about animals and makes them out of paper. This author includes more text with facts about the animal than most books. He researches on the main idea for the book. You might think it is cool that he does fiction and nonfiction books. He always uses bleeding covers. He strives to make his books the best they can be. The students in A-10 watched a video on Steve Jenkins. It showed how Mr. Jenkins creates his illustrations and about how he researches before he writes the books. Students felt it was a good video and suggested that others may want to watch. His book Down, Down, Down! is about the ocean. It has facts about the ocean and the animals that live there. Steve Jenkins makes a picture of the animal then shows how deep in the sea that animal lives. One of the students, Fritz, rated Down, Down, Down! 5 out of 5! Also all of the Armbruster s All Stars liked Steve Jenkins book including Mrs. Armbruster!
Interesting Idioms By Margaret Chen The Challenging Problems By: J.J. A-10 is a very hard working place. The students do many different things in their classroom like the Problem of the Week. In the Problem of the Week, there are creatures called the Quik-Wits. And they like to use their brains to solve tough problems. Sam V. said, The Quik- Wits always have a problem and have fun solving their problem. He also said, The problem the Quik-Wits give you makes you think. Sometimes it gets harder, and sometimes it gets easier. That means the Quik-Wits give really hard problems for the geniuses in room A-10. From a scale 1 to 10, Jimmy would give it a nine. Nayan said, It is fun to do the Quik-Wits homework at home. One student says they can t wait for Wednesday because that is when they get the challenging problem of the week. There will be many more challenging problems this year in A-10. Idioms of the day are fun to learn. That is what Armbruster s All Stars say. Armbruster s All Stars read one idiom a day in the classroom. Idioms are sayings that come from different origins. You cannot tell the meaning from the words composing it. For example, Labor of Love means that you really have a passion to do something without getting paid. The origin comes from the Bible and means to do God s work as Labor of Love. Armbruster s All Stars love to hear idioms, because they get to learn funny sayings and meanings. Armbruster s All Stars also made an idiom book. Each student chose an idiom to put in the book. Students would use the idiom in a sentence. Mrs. Armbruster says, I know the idioms but I always learn where the idiom came from. Book Talk By Sam V. In Mrs. Armbruster s class, the students gave book talks on the genre fables. A book talk is a short speech that describes a book and tries to persuade the listeners to read it. Giving a book talk helps the reader remember what the book was about and what they learned about the genre. Students had to choose a fable for
the book talk. Some types of fables are myths, fairy tales, trickster tales, and just-so stories. The book talks were one of the students first big projects and were in late September. The fun part of the book talks was that students got to see other books their friends had chosen. Students also used their own props and notes, which made the book talks fun. Some of the fun props were stuffed animals, puppets and drawings. Will there be more book talks this year? Mrs. Armbruster was asked that question and after talking to A-10 student Sam V., she decided yes. Book Letters By Sarah Book letters are what students in A-10 write. Sometimes they write letters after they read a book for their 30 Book Challenge. Armbruster s All Stars have to write 5 book letters each quarter. They do this so that Mrs. Armbruster can know what her students are thinking as they read the book. Mrs. Armbruster meets with a student one at a time so the student knows what they need to do or fix. Also Mrs. Armbruster helps the student to see what he or she needs to do for the next book letter. The students put their book letters in their binders to keep. They will have a record of some of the books they read in third grade. Math Choices By Sam G. In A-10, Mrs. Armbruster s class, when it is choice time many students choose to do math choice. Everyone in A-10 has an orange or black folder. In the folder you have fun math papers. For example, one of the class favorite papers was costly costumes. You would have to figure out what the cost was of the costume. Costly Costumes was one of my favorite math papers, said Tommy. Fritz says, I would rate math choices 5 out of 5. Another student says, that he loves to do math choices because they re fun to do and they teach you things. 30 Book Challenge By Whitney The Thirty Book Challenge is a challenge for students to read thirty books during the school year. The students have to read certain books (ex. fantasy, realistic fiction, poetry, biography, non-fiction.) Books will count as two books if they have more than two hundred and fifty pages. The books cannot count if they are toddler books with only a few pages. Students can read the books at home or at school. Once the book is read the students have to write down the title, author, and number of pages. Cordelia W. likes the 30 Book Challenge. She likes the 30 Book Challenge because, The 30 Book Challenge is easy and fun! Keep reading the A-10 newspaper for more news!
because it is the day they work on Google docs! A-10 Personal Narratives By Jimmy Google Docs By Tommy In A-10, Mrs. Armbruster s class works in Google docs every Tuesday and the students get to write stories about anything they want. A student named J.J. finished a great personal narrative about his Labor Day weekend. J.J. used great description and it makes you feel like you were on the trip with JJ. He went to an Ohio State football game and he said it was very exciting and Ohio State won. Now he is writing a fiction story about a high school football championship game. J.J. does a fantastic job describing what is happening in his stories. A student named Fritz says, I like Google docs because you get to write about anything, fiction or nonfiction, He would give Google docs a 5 out of 5. I like Google docs because it saves stories automatically, commented Margaret. She would give Google docs a 4 out of 5. Also a girl named Erica said, I like Google docs because you get to see your imagination on the stories. Erica would give Google Doc 4.5 out of 5. The class gets excited when it is Thusday This year in A-10 the kids are writing personal narratives. Most are done with their rough draft. After they finish the rough draft they have to fix mistakes. No one started the final copy. The class should work on theirs for a while to make it interesting. Some personal narratives are about vacations and others are about sports games. There are other subjects but those were just a few. By the end of the year there should be 16 finished personal narratives in all. Fritz s personal narrative is about his trip to Cedar Point. Erica s personal narrative is about a Halloween party. For a personal narrative you have to tell it from your point of view. Stay tuned for more personal narratives! The editors for this issue of A-10 s Breaking News: Audra and Jimmy
The objective of sudoku is to enter a digit from 1 through 9 in each cell, in such a way that: Each horizontal row (shown in pink) contains each digit exactly once Each vertical column (shown in yellow) contains each digit exactly once Each subgrid or region (shown in green) contains each digit exactly once The puzzler's job is to fill the remainder of the grid with digits respecting, of course, the three constraints mentioned earlier. Sodoko Made by Audra A Special thank you goes to our Amazing editors! Writer Workshop editors who help us with our writing: Mrs. Lozina, Mrs. Bhatia, Mr. & Mrs. Kirkwood, Mrs. Han, Mrs. Tuttle, Ms.Wasco, Mrs. Du, Mrs. Wright, and Mrs. Kelly. They make Tuesdays our favorite day of the week because that is Writers Workshop day!