November 2007                                                                    First Issue


Enjoy this first edition of the Durkin Digest!

In their own words, here is what our class has been up to: 

Get Ready, Get Set...TYPE! 
By Lindsay
      To begin with in Mrs. Durkin's class we have been learning how to type like professional typists! The computer program is called Type to Learn. It all started on a Wednesday in the computer lab... We were sitting at our computers waiting to start and Mrs. Durkin gave us directions and... well you guessed it, we started! The computer told us to put our fingers on ASDF and JKL; keys. We learned to type fast and slow. We also got to play games! It was so, so, so, so, so, so, so much FUN! I can't wait to go to the computer lab again! 
 

What Are Parent Letters? 
By Lucy
      Parent letters are what third graders in Mrs. Durkin's class are doing this year. What they are is something we do at the end of each month. We write a letter to our parents telling them our favorite experience in school and why we liked it the best. We started it in October, not September. We did that because September was our first month of school and we were already doing many new things.
If we have time we also draw things where there is room. We have a lot of fun doing them. That is what parent letters are! 
 

Book Buddies 
By Michaela
      Our class started book buddies on Wednesday, November 7, 2007. A book buddy is a kindergarten student that is paired up with a third grade student. The third grader teaches the kindergartner different things and reads books to him or her. The third grader will also sometimes ask the kindergartner questions to know more about what the kindergartner likes. That way you know what kind of books you should pick out for them. Some kids have two book buddies because there aren't that many kids in the kindergarten class. They're kind of lucky! The books we read aloud are usually short picture books because we don't have that much time to read and we want enough time to read the whole book. It's very fun for the third graders to have book buddies. 
 

What is TFK? 
By Ian
      Hi, my name is Ian. I am writing about TFK which stands for "Time For Kids". We get "Time For Kids" every Friday. TFK is a magazine that talks about things being reported in the news. It is very interesting. It has a section called "Who's News" which is about people and new movies or other interesting things. We took a class vote and our favorite edition so far was called "The Deep". It was about new fish that scientists have discovered deep in the ocean. I hope you have enjoyed learning about TFK. 

Music Class 
By Soyoon
     Yahoo! We have a new music teacher, Mr. Abrams! In music class third graders are learning how to read notes. We must learn how to read notes because we will play the recorder in the future. Music class is important to us because we want to learn more about music and be good at reading notes. Mr. Abrams is a very good teacher and he tries his best to teach us and it works! Estabrook School is lucky to have Mr. Abrams as our new music teacher.  

Water and Surface Tension 
By Marcus
      In Mrs. Durkin's class we are learning about the surface tension of water. The surface tension of water is caused by the attraction of water molecules to each other. The class conducted experiments to see how water reacts to different things. For example, when water is on a flat surface it starts to form a dome shape because there is nothing to pull the water molecules apart. When soap and water mix the surface tension of the water breaks and suds form. Soap weakens the surface tension of water. 
The class also conducted experiments to determine how many drops of water could fit onto different surfaces before exceeding the surface boundary and causing the water to overflow. For example, if you drop water onto a penny it forms a dome. If there's too much water then the dome will break. Also the size of the drop makes a difference. If the drops are too big then you won't have much room for more drops. If the drops are tiny then you will have room for more drops. By conducting these experiments the class learned a lot more about water than what we already knew. 

Flytraps 
By Josiah
      Did you know there are five different kinds of flytraps? Venus flytraps are the most likely carnivorous plants to find and that is what I will mostly be talking about. The Venus flytrap is a small herb forming a rosette of four to seven leaves which arise from a short subterranean stem that is actually a bulb-like rhizome. Each leaf reaches a maximum size of about three to seven centimeters, depending on the time of year. Longer leaves with robust traps are generally formed after flowering. Flytraps that appear to have more leaves are generally formed by rosettes that have more divided under the ground.