Thank you for partnering with us last Thursday and Friday for parent-teacher conferences. This time with you is really important and productive for us, and we hope it was for you too! We also felt so appreciated by the lunch and treats provided during conferences . . .

Our field trip to Coyote Hills was a definite highlight of the year and began with a presentation about the Ohlone that included maps, authentic clothing, dioramas, and hands-on tools like a bow and arrow. We then walked about a half a mile through the wetlands to the Ohlone village site, which is over 2,000 years old. There we learned more about the Ohlone and entered an Ohlone-style house, sweat lodge, and shade shelter. We spotted some animals that call the wetlands home, and also saw signs of animals. Thank you to the grown ups who drove and joined us on the field trip.

The tule boat we saw at Coyote Hills inspired us to try making a smaller version with the help of Julianne. We used basketry reed and rafia and discovered that using natural materials to make a structure like a boat is a lot more difficult than we thought . . . but also fun! This work continued in studio art and the third graders helped each other throughout the process. We also read about Ohlone society and children in small groups, and then students had the choice to present what was learned visually on posters or by acting it out.

The students from California College of the Arts came in to present two prototypes and asked our students to interact with them and get our feedback. These prototypes are interactive lessons on the Ohlone that we will be gifted when the process is done. One is a trading game and the other is a map with Ohlone shelters and figures. The Temescalians really enjoyed working with the prototypes and we can’t wait for them to come back and see their progress.

We read and were inspired by Carl Sandburg’s poem about fog. Students were invited to literally cut up the poem however they wanted and read the results to the class pausing at the end of each line. We discovered that changing the line breaks can change the rhythm and even meaning of a poem. Then we wrote our own poems about weather. We also tried out lyric poetry inspired by “Autumn” by Emily Dickinson’s and “April” by Sara Teasdale. The Temescal poets are working really hard on their writing and have been excited to share their poems with the class.

In math we used a read aloud to help us to think about dividing 100 in different ways, and then we learned a game with remainders. Hands-on games with tiles have been really helping us to visualize and learn how multiplication and division are related. Last week before conferences we focused on area and estimated and measured the area of things around our classroom. We recorded customary units of measurement in our math journals, square inches, square feet, and square yards, and discussed examples of when we would use each. As a challenge we worked on Pentominos with pieces that need to be flipped, rotated, and fit together like a puzzle in the area of different irregular shapes.

Hail was an exciting break from our regularly scheduled programming . . . it also inspired us in our writing when we wrote poetry comparing weather to an animal, just like Carl Sandburg did in his poem about fog creeping in on its little cat feet. We brainstormed together how the hail came in like . . . a polar bear, a herd of elephants, or a flock of white birds.

We had a special guest (and Temescal grandparent) from Read to Me International come in to read a Hawaiian picture book about how to stand up to bullying. He also donated two books to our library, which the third graders are enjoying during Reading Workshop.

Help your child remember to wear orange for the National School Walkout this Wednesday at 10:00 am and please join us if you can. Wednesday is also Pi Day and Temescalians are already excitedly trying to memorize as much of pi as they can, which is bonus work in their homework packet this week. Bringing in a pie on 3/14 is optional but having fun with pi is mandatory!