Connections, Character Traits, Narratives and Elections

We've had a great first month of school.  Your children are thinking while they are reading and sharing their thoughts with others!

READING

We will finish up our work on connections early this week.  Last week, we reviewed and practiced making text to self and text to text connections.  This week we will finish by discussing text to world connections.  This type of reading connection can be the most challenging for 3rd graders since it requires background knowledge in world events and history.  I will scaffold our learning by connecting our text to Ruby Bridges story we learned about a few weeks ago in Social Studies.

Students need to continue to read for 20 minutes each night and record the title in their planner.  This is part of their study habits and daily routine which are assessed and reported on the progress report each grading cycle.

WRITING

This week we will introduce our first writing genre study, personal narrative. We will spend the next few weeks sharing examples of personal narratives and noticing and naming the parts of a narrative.  This week we will focus on learning the vocabulary for those parts of a narrative (setting the stage, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution).

WORD WORK

Spelling words came home last Wednesday.  This Tuesday, 9/23, spelling spirals are due.  They should hold your child's spelling homework.  They have had a week to complete 8pts of spelling assignment choices on the spelling menu. On Wednesday, 9/24 students will have their first spelling test.  Since this is our first week to test, there will not be a spelling grade on the progress report.  New spelling words will be introduced and go home on Wednesday, October 1.

SOCIAL STUDIES

This week we will learn about HCE's Leadership Council.  Students will have a chance to notice and nominate classmates whom demonstrate the COUGAR CODE.  We will combine those nominations and then elect a representative for our homeroom class.  We will use this real world example to guide our study and learning about voting.  We will close up the week by learning about our local government and comparing our mayor and city council to the roles of our school principal and leadership council!