Week 17: December 12 - 16

December 12-16: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Reminders--
Friday, December 16th is a Noon Dismissal day. Please plan accordingly and send a handwritten note with any change of transportation.

Reading, Writing and Social Studies: Holidays around the World will be our focus this week through read aloud, shared reading, and writing.  We will share fiction, nonfiction and poetry from various traditions to teach students about the many ways people around the world celebrate during the winter.  By the week's end students will have heard how some people in and from Israel, Mexico, America, Greenland, Sweden, Australia, Italy, and India celebrate various winter holidays.  At home, please share with your child the origins of your family's traditions and celebrations.  .
Mrs. Cion, our WITS partner, will be with students on Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon for creative writing workshop.  Last week she shared some poetry and discussed personification with our third grade writers.  It was fun to collaborate with them and use our imaginations as we pretended to be various objects and write poems from that object's perspective.

Spelling:  This week we will take an application grade.  We will look to see how your child applies his or her spelling patterns in daily work.
Students will also take the Elementary Spelling Inventory this week.  Teachers will use the data from this inventory to see how your child is progressing in his or her knowledge and application of spelling concepts.  We will readjust spelling groups based on this data for the spring semester.

Math: On Monday, the third grade math teachers will flexibly group our students and review skills for comparing and ordering numbers from our last PSA. On Tuesday, the students will rotate through each third grade teacher to learn about various Holidays Around the World. On Wednesday and Thursday, we will introduce your child to division. We will spend these two days learning about the octopus method for division. This method is used when we know the number of groups. We are looking for the number in each group. On Friday, we will complete our last rotation for Christmas Around the World.

We will have multiplication homework on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. We will not have fast facts or problem of the week. 

Science: On Monday in science we will discuss force and the how work is being done on when an object is moved. We will spend time on these vocabulary words:

Motion-is a change in position  

Position-where an object is located

Work-happens when a force moves an object over a distance

Force-is a push or pull that causes an object to move, stop, or change direction

On Wednesday and Thursday, we will discuss friction. This is a term that we have discussed when we studied thermal energy. We will be reminded that friction is the force between an object and the surface it moves over. Friction creates heat and slows an object. We will look at different surfaces to understand the amount of friction that ice, tile, wood, carpet, concrete, sand, pebbles, dirt, grass, metal, playground rubber surface give off.

Week 14: November 21-22

Happy Thanksgiving Week!

Reminders for this week:
- Please turn in permission slips for our Galveston Field Trip on Friday, December 2nd
-Tuesday, November 22nd - Dress the School Day - Wear Camo!
- No School on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday for Thanksgiving Break

Reading: The genre of drama will be introduced this week.  Students will note and notice similarities and differences between the genre of realistic fiction (we've spent a few weeks with this) and our partner plays.  Reviewing terms like character, narrator, actor, setting, and stage will help us prepare as students work in groups to read through, analyze and perform plays based on the topic of Thanksgiving.

Writing: Forget the Houston Escape Room, the turkey needs our help!  Writers will apply author's craft to imaginative stories.  They will focus on creating scenarios that might help the turkey escape becoming our Thursday dinner!

Spelling: We will continue to look for spelling patterns to be applied within the context writing in all content areas.

Social Studies: With help from some primary sources, we will look for elements of historical truths about Thanksgiving in our plays.

Math: During class on Monday, we will review the strategies for multiplying that we've learned so far: repeated addition, equal groups picture, jumping number lines, and arrays. On Tuesday, we will learn about the associative property which states that changing the order that the factors are multiplied does not change the product. We will not have a Problem of the Week or Fast Facts on our short week. Your child will have a subtraction review worksheet that will come home on Monday as homework.

Science: In science this week, we will continue talking about light energy. Light energy is a form of energy that helps us see and comes from the sun. During class, we will discuss the difference between natural and artificial light.

Update for the week of 12/7

Week of December 7th - 11th 

LANGUAGE ARTS

READING- Students will apply what they know about the structure of a narrative to reproduce unfamiliar stories this week.  This exercise helps students apply what they know about narrative structure to make sense out of pieces of a story.  It's kind of like putting together a puzzle with out looking at the picture.  You know where the edges, corners and center pieces go and this helps you create the entire picture. 

This week and next I will be pulling students to administer their middle of the year reading assessment.  Please make sure that students are getting a good nights rest and a good breakfast so they will have everything working in their favor to do well.  

WRITING-Your kids have done an EXCELLENT job with descriptive writing!  This week we will focus on a project for our work that we will save and share with you at publisher's picnic.  Students will take one emotion.  They will illustrate the emotion and then create a descriptive writing piece about that emotion without using the word and only using language that helps you understand the emotion.  After our work last week, I can't wait to see what descriptive and creative ideas they will use in their writing.

WORD WORK-New spelling words came home 12/2.  We will assess on 12/9.  Students will then have from 12/10-12/16 to apply their spelling words to their writing and work for an application grade.  We work for 10-15 minutes each day to practice our word sorts.  A white copy of your child's words should have also come home for you to spend time working on at your convenience.

SOCIAL STUDIES- Literacy dominated last week and we have some catch up to do in Social Studies.  This week we will finish our discussion on parts of a map and globe and focus on the compass rose.  The compass allows us time to review cardinal directions (north, south, east and west) and introduce intermediate directions (northwest, southwest, northeast and southeast).  This is a great time to play some Simon Says at home using cardinal and intermediate directions. Always remember that you have access to our online resource www.studiesweekly.com to help your child review what we have learned in class. 

MATH- In math this week, we will review all of the strategies of multiplication that we have learned so far. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we will be creating multiplication word problems. On Thursday and Friday, we will begin working on division. We will be learning two methods for division. Your child will have Mangahigh homework on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night. The assignments can be found on the Weekly Planner page. The problem of the week will be due on Friday and the Fast Facts Quiz will be on Friday as well. 

Octopus Method - You know the total and you know the number of groups

Cookie Method - You know the total and you know how many in each group

SCIENCE - This week we will be discussing force, friction, and motion. As we are learning, we will be discussing these words and definitions:

Motion-is a change in position  

Position-where an object is located.

Work-happens when a force moves an object over a distance. 

Force-is a push or pull that causes an object to move, stop, or change direction