LA and SS for the week of 10/24

Parents and Friends,

Below you will find a brief summary of what's to come in LA and SS during the week of 10/24-10/28.  I have also included some activities that would support our learning in SS this 9 weeks.  Thank you for supporting learning at home!

Omi Ford 

Reading

We will continue working with non-fiction features.  Students will learn how to use a FQR (Facts, Questions and Responses) chart this week as a note taking tool and helpful tool to solidify comprehension.

We will finish our guided reading groups and discover "who-dun-it" in the mysteries we've been reading the last month.  

Students will be bringing home a BAT poem later in the week.  We introduced the poem on 10/19.  We have used the poem to practice reading with expression, think about context clues and learn all about alliteration.

Writing

Students have been learning about the structure of a narrative.  They have learned about the parts of a narrative arc and even reconstructed a narrative noticing and discussing narrative arc features.  We will spend the next week looking at different ways authors start their stories (we call these leads).

We've discussed verbs and will learn about nouns and adjectives in the weeks to follow.

Spelling

Students will have spelling words this week.  Please make sure that they bring home their spelling spirals and complete 10 points of spelling homework by Thursday.  Tests will be given on 10/28.

Social Studies

We are starting a new unit of study, economics.  For the first half of the 9 weeks we will learn about personal economics.  Students will learn to differentiate between wants and needs.  We will also learn to use the vocabulary words producers and consumers to talk about people who contribute to our economic system.  

Over the last few years, I've noticed that some third graders are lacking in background knowledge when it comes to economics.  It would benefit our classroom discussions and learning if you could talk to your child about how your family chooses to spend money.  Talk to them about the NEEDS that you pay for (shelter, clothing, utilities, food, ect.) and then talk about how you decide when to spend money on WANTS (toys, trips, electronics, candy, etc).  

In November we will start talking about how to create a budget.  If you can allow your child an opportunity to create a budget or spending plan, this real world application will benefit them greatly.  Maybe the next time you go out to dinner you can tell your student how much you would like to spend for dinner and have him or her help you make menu selections that fit within this budget? Maybe give your student a proposed amount of money to spend on a birthday gift for a friend?  Have him or her think about choices needed to either choose a more expensive gift and less expensive gift wrap or maybe a less expensive gift and more expensive card.    Anytime you can talk to your child about how you are choosing to spend your money and how you cam to that decision the more CONCRETE this very abstract concept will become.