What's Going on in Mrs. Ford's Room?

Friends and Family,
I apologize for my late start to keeping you updated for the week, so I'll let you know what has been going on this week and what's to come next week.
Thanks for your patience!  Mrs. Ford

LANGUAGE ARTS

Spelling
We're still working hard to sort and spell our words. Please remember that spelling homework is due on Thursdays and our tests are in class on Fridays.


Writing
We had a fun lesson this week thinking about book reviews.  In most of the book reviews read, the writer offers up his or her opinion of the book.  We noticed that their opinions are supported with evidence from the text.  We used a dictionary and some markers to see how important support can be when making your opinions stick!  We will continue consuming reviews, and later this month, we will publish some reviews for your reading enjoyment.


Reading
We're finishing up QAR this week.  Students have been posting on the homework blog and really perfecting this skill!
Remember that passages will come home on Mondays and be due on Fridays.  These will help us build reading comprehension and exercise some of our newly acquired reading skills.
Next week we will start our work on synthesizing.  Synthesizing isn't easy, but man is it important!  We will look at various ways to monitor our thinking while reading as well as ways to sum up what we've read and learned from a story.

SOCIAL STUDIES

We've started our work on maps.  This week we worked on some of our map skills vocabulary:

• map title
• map key or legend
• compass rose
• cardinal directions (N< S< E< W)
• intermediate directions (NW< NE< SW< SE)

Next week we will start looking at different types of maps.  First we will look at state maps and notice what towns, cities, bodies of water and other important information these types of maps include.  Then, we will see how the landforms that we just learned about can be shown on a map with different colors and patterns.


Fun times in third grade.  I love the Spring Semester when the discussions become more meaning-filled and the sharing of ideas is second nature!

Don't forget to check out the THIRD GRADE THOUGHTS blog.  

It's written by your students and fills you in on what things they 

think are important about third grade!