Week 17: December 12 - 16

December 12-16: Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

Reminders--
Friday, December 16th is a Noon Dismissal day. Please plan accordingly and send a handwritten note with any change of transportation.

Reading, Writing and Social Studies: Holidays around the World will be our focus this week through read aloud, shared reading, and writing.  We will share fiction, nonfiction and poetry from various traditions to teach students about the many ways people around the world celebrate during the winter.  By the week's end students will have heard how some people in and from Israel, Mexico, America, Greenland, Sweden, Australia, Italy, and India celebrate various winter holidays.  At home, please share with your child the origins of your family's traditions and celebrations.  .
Mrs. Cion, our WITS partner, will be with students on Wednesday morning and Thursday afternoon for creative writing workshop.  Last week she shared some poetry and discussed personification with our third grade writers.  It was fun to collaborate with them and use our imaginations as we pretended to be various objects and write poems from that object's perspective.

Spelling:  This week we will take an application grade.  We will look to see how your child applies his or her spelling patterns in daily work.
Students will also take the Elementary Spelling Inventory this week.  Teachers will use the data from this inventory to see how your child is progressing in his or her knowledge and application of spelling concepts.  We will readjust spelling groups based on this data for the spring semester.

Math: On Monday, the third grade math teachers will flexibly group our students and review skills for comparing and ordering numbers from our last PSA. On Tuesday, the students will rotate through each third grade teacher to learn about various Holidays Around the World. On Wednesday and Thursday, we will introduce your child to division. We will spend these two days learning about the octopus method for division. This method is used when we know the number of groups. We are looking for the number in each group. On Friday, we will complete our last rotation for Christmas Around the World.

We will have multiplication homework on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. We will not have fast facts or problem of the week. 

Science: On Monday in science we will discuss force and the how work is being done on when an object is moved. We will spend time on these vocabulary words:

Motion-is a change in position  

Position-where an object is located

Work-happens when a force moves an object over a distance

Force-is a push or pull that causes an object to move, stop, or change direction

On Wednesday and Thursday, we will discuss friction. This is a term that we have discussed when we studied thermal energy. We will be reminded that friction is the force between an object and the surface it moves over. Friction creates heat and slows an object. We will look at different surfaces to understand the amount of friction that ice, tile, wood, carpet, concrete, sand, pebbles, dirt, grass, metal, playground rubber surface give off.

Week 16: December 5-9

Upcoming dates to put on your calendars:

12/7 - Toys for Tots- Please send a new and unwrapped gift to donate.  Children will get a chance to drop their toy with local firefighters and Santa Claus.  

12/9 - Fun Run at Woodview.  Permissions slips are required for students to ride the bus for this event.  All donations will help support the SPARK PARK at our sister school, Woodview Elementary.

12/16 - Noon Dismissal- Please make arrangements for this different dismissal time.  Teachers will need hand written notes if you are making  a change in your child's transportation schedule.

1/6 - Third Grade Recognition Ceremony for the Second Nine Weeks, 9:00-9:30a.m. in the HCE Cafe

1/10 - STAARY STAARY NIGHT - Informational Parent Meeting covering information on the STAAR test. We will meet in the library from 6:00 - 7:00p.m.

Reading: Readers will continue to read poetry this week.  We will focus our attention on what information in the poem pulls at the reader's sense of hearing, smelling, seeing, feeling, and tasting.  Descriptive details that pull at our senses help the reader visualize while reading.  Later in the week, we will use these sensory details to also help us infer more about the character and situations we read about in poems.

Writing: This is PUBLICATION WEEK.  Writer's will focus on fine tuning their stories to help the reader.  Developmentally, this is a hard skill for third graders.  It's hard to admit that our first attempts are perfect.  Encourage your child at home, by sharing times that you changed your thinking after your first impression or effort.

Spelling: Spelling tests are this Wednesday, December 7.  An application grade of words in daily work will take place between 12/8-12/14.  We will also give the spelling inventory again between 12/8-12/16.  The information gathered will help us readjust spelling groups based on learner's needs.  

Social Studies: Jane Addams will be added to our bank of Good Citizens.  Her work in Chicago made a difference for so many men, women and children as she founded and worked at the Hull House.  We will discuss the many reasons she was a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize.  Students will also learn about various ways that people are honored and remembered.  Pointing our monuments, plaques, road markers, and awards that are created in memory and honor of those who make a difference will help our students understand ways we remember and recognize good citizens.

Math:In math this week, we will continue practicing our strategies for multiplication. We will decode word problems to pick out the important parts. We will identify what number in a multiplication sentence tells us the groups and which number shows how many in each group. We will use word problems to reiterate these skills.

For example: There are 4 groups with 3 strawberries in each group

 On Thursday, we will practice creating our own multiplication word problems to help us understand multiplication even more. On Friday, we will get to solve the multiplication word problems we created the day before. We will have our normal math homework on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Our fast facts quiz will be on Friday. We will not have a problem of the week this week. 

Science: On Monday and Tuesday during science time, we will participate in an energy lab. We will apply the information we know about mechanical, thermal, light, and sound energy. On Wednesday, the third graders will take the Science PSA (Priority Standard Assessment). This assessment is created by the district and gives us information on how your child is progressing through the concepts that we have taught so far in science. On Thursday, we will take the Energy Test. We will review in class before the test is given.