Week 3: September 5-9

Reminders:

• Lunch with Heroes is on Friday, September 9th.  Wear red, white, and blue to celebrate eating lunch with our heroic community members!  We invite all heroes to Friday's lunch - military, police, fire department and more! Have a connection with one of these heroes?  Be sure to bring them to HCE to eat lunch with our third graders from 12:00-12:30. 
• Curriculum Night is September 15th. Third grade time slot is from 6:35-7:15. This is following the PTA meeting from 5:50-6:30.
• BEFORE Curriculum Night, please take 10 minutes and watch our third grade video (Will be linked and sent out shortly!).  Information in this video will help you know about the content we will cover this year with your child.  Our meeting on the 15th of September will include: a short and fun quiz on the content in the video, classroom expectations, classroom management, communication, and homework.  We know you are busy and have worked hard to create this video and streamline our presentation in person to get you the best information in the most concise fashion.

Reading - We will learn how to preview a text this week in Reader's Workshop. It is important for young readers, when learning how to pick a good book to read, to know the process of previewing a book.  This will help them determine if the book fits their purpose, interest, and ability.  Students have been sticky note crazy!  We've introduced your child to tracking their thinking while reading using sticky notes and symbols. They have enjoyed this new found way to leave their thinking in their books. This week we will help them learn how to use their notes to create reader's response journal entries in their Reader's Notebooks.  Your child's language arts teacher will continue to administer DRA assessments.

Writing- We will begin our week continuing to brainstorm ideas for writing stories from our interests, memories, and experiences.  We look forward to hearing more stories from our students while utilizing focused storytelling with one another.  We will transfer brainstorming and storytelling into our notebook as we reflect on the question "What do writer's do?"  We will wrap up the week with students creating writing goals for this 9 week period.  

Word Work- This week we will introduce students to a variety of ways that we will attack word work in our classrooms.  They will have a GENERIC list of spelling words.  We WILL NOT be taking a REAL test with these words.  Our words will stay in the classroom and be used to help us understand and practice some components of word study.  

Social Studies- Wow!  What wonderful classroom communities we have built the last two weeks!  We are excited to use our social studies resource this week, Studies Weekly Newspaper.  We will read week 1 of our newspaper and discover how thoughtful citizens of our world have made lasting contributions to our society. 

Math: This week in math, we will be working place value. We will be looking at placing number on number lines as a strategy of comparing numbers. We are then veturing into studying five digit and six digit numbers. When looking at five digit and six digit numbers we will look at the different forms to represent the number through word form, expanded, standard form, and with number lines. 

Also we use place value to compare numbers. We discussed last week about starting with the largest place value when comparing two or more numbers. 

Some vocabulary we are working on is place, value, greater than, less than, compare, ten- thousands place, hundred thousands place. 

   

Science:   In science this week, we will be exploring our observation skills as part are work in the scientific method that will get us prepared for conducting experiments. We will discuss and apply observation skills with our senses and how that will be used as data for experiments. At the end of the week, we will have our first science experiment and go through the scientific method. 

News for the Week of September 7-11

News and Announcements- Curriculum Night is Tuesday, September 15.  Mrs. Ford and Mrs. Duncan's homerooms will meet together in Room 15.  BEFORE Curriculum Night, please take 10 minutes and watch this video from the third grade team.  Information in this video will help you know about the content we will cover this year with your child.  Our meeting on the 15th of September will include: a short and fun quiz on the content in the video, classroom expectations, classroom management, communication and homework.  We know you are busy and have worked hard to create this video and streamline our presentation in person to get you the best information in the most concise fashion.

We had a GREAT first week together getting to know one another and learning new routines and schedules.  This week, we will dive into more third grade content.  This blog is to be used as a conversation starter for you and your child.  Check out what's going on in class this week, and then throw out a informational tidbit or ask questions at home to keep the learning going!  Your help and participation is appreciated.

Reading- We will learn how to preview a text this week.  It is important for young readers, when learning how to pick a good book to read that they know the parts of a book to preview.  This will help them determine if the book fits their purpose, interest and ability.  Students have been sticky note crazy!  We've introduced your child to tracking their thinking using sticky notes. (STOCK TIP-- invest in 3M-wink, wink)!  They have enjoyed this new found way to leave their thinking in their books.  This week we will help them learn how to use their notes to create reader's response journal entries. 

Writing- We spent the week trying out many different types of journal writing and brainstorming.  This week, we will focus more on what we hear when people share their stories.  What makes one person's story more interesting than another? What components need to be in a story for people to understand what you experienced?  We will wrap up the week with students creating writing goals for this 9 week period.  

Word Work- This week we will introduce students to a variety of ways that we will attack word work in our classrooms.  They will have a GENERIC list of spelling words.  We WILL NOT be taking a REAL test with these words.  Our words will stay in the classroom and be used to help us understand and practice some components of word study.  

Social Studies- We spent last week continuing to create classroom community. We began our discussions on what makes someone a good citizen.  This week we will focus on our greater communities and citizens who have served as great role models.  Students will be introduced to Harriet Tubman, Ruby Bridges, Helen Keller and Clara Barton this week.  We will look at what they did to help their community in the past and how that impacts our communities today.  Students will work each day to complete their first Social Studies project on these ladies. You are welcome and encouraged to reference the Social Studies links to learn more about these women at home.  

Math- Last week, we continued working on the place and the value of each number. We spent the remainder of the week discussing how to compare numbers using greater than and less than. We also worked on ordering numbers from greatest to least and least to greatest. This week, we will take an assessment on Wednesday. This will help the teachers discover where are students are in this unit. We will finish the week off learning about five and dix digit numbers. You can expect a math worksheet on Wednesday and Thursday night. Your child will take their first math fast quiz on Friday. Please remember to study addition facts throughout the week. 

Science- Last week in science, we completed a gallery walk that helped us review and learn about science tools that we will use throughout the school year. During science this week, we will learn how to make observations using our senses. We will learn how to observe using our eyes, ears, touch, and nose. We will start our study of the scientific method to help prepare for our experiment that will happen next week. 

Homework-Third graders will have 20 minutes of reading homework each night.  We checked out library books and will return books to the library each week on Wednesdays.  Students should record the book title in their planner each night to show that the required 20minutes of reading was completed.  Scholastic Book orders may be placed online or you may return the paper form to Mrs. Ford.  Orders will be placed Friday, September 11.  It takes a few days for them to mail them to us, but you can generally expect your books to arrive about 5 business days later.