Week 26: February 27-March 3

Important Dates and Reminders:

Family Fair Raffle: Raffle items are displayed in the cafeteria this Monday through Thursday. Students will have an opportunity to put their tickets in prize buckets at lunch only. To buy tickets, students may bring money to their homeroom teacher first thing each morning, in a labeled envelope or baggie. Tickets will be delivered to them at lunch. Tickets are .50 each. Please send exact amounts of money; no change will be made. Raffle winners will be announced Friday morning just after the announcements.

HCE Family Fair Dismissal: No student will be allowed to go directly to the fair on their own. Please be sure you have filled out the Family Fair Dismissal form and given it to your child's homeroom  teacher. Students without this form will be sent home their usual way on Friday afternoon. Parents...arrive early (2:30ish) to get a parking space. Front doors and the gate between the gym and 5th grade hall will be open. Wait outside your child's classroom until 2:40 when children will be dismissed to the person listed on the dismissal form. There will be a sign-out sheet. Please clear the hallway by 2:55 so teachers can take the remaining children to their regular way home.

February

27- 3rd Grade Practice Math STAAR

27- PTA RALLY DAY in Austin 

27-  Family Fair Raffle begins in cafeteria during lunch times

March

February 27- March 2- Family Fair Raffle in cafeteria during lunch times

3- HCE Family Fair

This week in third grade:

Reading: Readers will be working on their biography project this week! Students chose a person last week that they are interested in learning more about and started taking notes on that person's life and accomplishments. We will revisit the features of a biography while readers turn their research into a project to display their new learning.  

Writing: Writers will continue our persuasive/argumentation essays unit. This week, we will focus on writing in essay form using our graphic organizer for support. Since this unit is new, we will spend more time on structure and format of an essay. 

Essential writing questions this week:

What purpose does the introduction have?
How can we transform our organizer into sentences?

What makes a strong paragraph? 

What purpose does the conclusion have? 

Spelling: Students will receive new words on Thursday, March 2nd, and their test will be on Thursday, March 9th. 

White group: Students will receive new words on Wednesday, March 1st, and their test will be on Wednesday, March 8th. 

Social Studies: We will continue our economics unit with our Econ and Me Videos!  ECON AND ME revolves around four children and their invisible friend, Econ, who applies economic principles to individuals, families, and communities. This week, we will study interdependence. This week, Tom and Sean arrive late for rehearsal and say their small jobs don't matter. Econ shows them a real-life example – the amusement park, where Sean and Tom depend on all the people who work there.

Math: On Monday, students will take the Math Practice STAAR test. The results will help us better plan for instruction the rest of the year. Tuesday and Wednesday we will review and assess all that we have studied about fractions. On Thursday, we begin a fun unit on graphing data. Tally charts, frequency tables, dot plots, pictographs and bar graphs are the kinds of representations we will explore for showing data from a survey. The following is a combination of a tally chart, complete with the typical tally marks, and a frequency table that shows in numbers how often a color was chosen.

A bar graph has many important parts. It can be horizontal or vertical and always has a scale that allows you to figure out the value of each bar. Students must discover that scale and then write the value of the bar at its end. On the following graph, the scale is 2 (counting by 2 from line to line).

Pictographs use symbols to represent a certain number of items. That number is defined in the key. Without a key, there would be no way to determine the value of each category. At times only half a symbol is shown. Students must use a value half of the number given in the key. 

Students will have written homework Tuesday and Wednesday nights and the usual FFF quiz on Friday. Please monitor that your child is studying facts every night. The district expectation for third grade is for students to master their multiplication facts through 12. Many students still have a long way to go. 

We hope you will encourage your child to take advantage of our Dreambox resource. Use this link to access the program: Dreambox. It can also be accessed on the blog page entitled Math Websites.  Ms. Moore has added Dreambox to the Symbaloo homepage. Students just need to click on their homeroom teacher's name and they are ready to go. Thank you PTA!

Science:  Students will examine everyday objects and determine the natural resources used to make them, stating whether they are renewable or nonrenewable. And as the week progresses, we will try to justify why certain resources are used to make certain products. What properties make them best suited for the job? Students will be tested on the Natural Resources flowchart that we all filled out last week. Each teacher will make the date known to her classes. Conservation is the final focus for the week. We will discuss the importance of using our resources wisely and, if possible, finding alternative fuels for the world.