Week 33: April 24th-28th

Reminders/Important Dates:  

• Monday, May 8th:  Math STAAR for 3rd (and 4th graders)
• Tuesday, May 9th:  Reading STAAR for 3rd (and 4th graders)
• Monday, May 22nd:  Publishers Picnic
• Thursday, May 25th:  3rd grade Chariot Races
• Friday, May 26th:  Winds of Time school-wide parade 

Reading:  We are diving into cause and effect this week.  While cause/effect is something we experience in our daily lives, identifying cause/effect within a text is tricky.  We will spend the week practicing strategies to identify cause/effect relationships in both fiction and nonfiction texts.  Our readers will gain a better grasp of the importance of identifying causes and effects throughout an informational article and/or a plot.  Doing so will answer questions like "Why did the character react that way?" or "What caused a character to do ___?"    

We will also spend part of our language arts block working with online tools called Quizlet and Epic. These resources can be found under the "Language Arts Website" link on the right side of this blog and can be accessed both during and after school. Please feel free to ask your child about these resources and use them at home as well.  

We are thankful to have the opportunity to work with reliable technology thanks to our HCE PTA!  Our students have been able to log into our Chromebooks and work with these resources daily. We are beyond grateful for these additions to our classrooms! 

Writing:  We will be wrapping up our letter writing unit this week.  We will begin this week with writing a letter to a community worker.  Students will write a letter to a police officer, fireman, or nurse/doctor in our community.  We will practice addressing envelopes as well during this process.  The publishing process will start mid-week with revising and editing. We will celebrate our letters and share with our classroom community on Friday.  

Spelling:  Students will take a test this Thursday, April 27th.  Next week, April 28th- May 4th, teachers will be looking for students to apply these spelling patterns correctly in their reading and writing work. 

Social Studies:  We will continue to learn about Texas cultural celebrations this week.  We have and will continue to use the online component of our Studies Weekly social studies resource to read articles about various celebrations in Texas.  We will dive a little deeper this week in certain cultural celebrations to learn about what types of foods, activities, and dances are celebrated.  The students are very interested in these celebrations! 

Math: We have now entered our STAAR Camp Unit. STAAR Camp is where we will be reviewing all of the skills covered this year in preparation for the May 8th, Math STAAR test. The main focus of this week's review will be on place value, comparing numbers, word problems, and graphing.  Homework this week will include practice problems in a STAAR-like format.  This homework is a great way to review old concepts at home. 

Thanks to PTA, we have been provided with new Chromebooks in 3rd grade. These new computers have allowed us to provide class time to work on Dreambox. This program allows for individualized lessons that are leveled to your child needs. Think Through Math is another program your child can log on and is a great review of past math concepts.  These can be accessed at home.  Your child has been provided with login information.  In addition, their username and password information was sent home on our red spring information/conference form.  Please encourage your mathematician to try these out at home as well as show you what they've been working on at school.    

Science:  We have moved from measuring temperature with a thermometer to other units of measurement. We ended last week by discussing the difference between mass and weight and determining appropriate units to measure mass and weight. We want your child familiar with both customary and metric units since we use both.  We will begin our week by looking at customary and metric units of capacity and volume. We will then transition to measuring on a ruler looking at 1/4 and 1/2 inch. 

Math/Science Week of September 17th

Dear Parents,

Next week is going to be fast and furious!  We have so much going on between a counselor lesson, a field trip, Open House, AND Progress Reports going home!

In Math this coming week we will still be working on Place Value.  Early in the week, we will be reviewing four digit numbers.  We will practice again comparing them (using the < and > signs) and ordering them from Least to Greatest and Greatest to Least.  We will have a short quiz on place value Tuesday before we move on to five and six digit numbers.  We will focus on five and six digit numbers the rest of the week.  I will teach the students several Math Station games to reinforce learning in the classroom on Place Value.  Ask your child to teach you Skeleton or Tri-Digit Roll at home.  If you attend Open House this Thursday, one of their jobs is to teach you one of our Math Station Games!

In Science this week, we will be diving deeper into Matter and focusing on the Three States of Matter.  Our main objective for the week is for each student to observe and evaluate a substance/object, and then determine if it is a solid, liquid, or gas based on the properties/characteristics that it contains.  They will discover that the particles in each state of matter are different and how that affects the properties of that object.  Does it change it shape?  Does it pour?  Etc....

Above are the particles first a solid, then a liquid, and last a gas for visual reference.  

Thank you to all parents who emailed interest in chaperoning this upcoming field trip on Wednesday to the Wortham Center.  Unfortunately we are not allotted any monies to take chaperones along on this field trip, so it will be teachers and students only.  If you are interested in chaperoning the next one though, please email myself or Mrs. Ford so we can get in touch with you for the next one.

Thank you and have a great week!