Week 28: March 20 - 24

Week of March 20-24
Reminders:  Third graders will have a visit from our school counselor, Mrs. Chvatal this week.  Her guidance lesson will focus on helping students think through problem solving conflicts with friends.

Reading: As we transition back to work and off of a break- we will take the week to review what good readers do and reestablish reading workshop expectations.  Some of the areas we will focus our attention this week are:

• A community of readers cares for thier books and shares titles with one another
• Good readers pick books that meet their needs and wants
• Good readers think about what they are reading and stop and jot to note and remember
• Good readers keep track of their reading and read from a variety of genres

Writing: Students have drafted essays.  This week we will focus on craft elements that help make an essay fantastic.  Specifically, we will focus on elements that grab a reader's attention and keep them engaged in a text.  First, we will focus on elements a writer can add to their introduction to hook a reader.  Some authors use quotes, others facts, or even a small moment from their lives.  Then, we will focus on using transition words.   Finally, we will focus on our conclusions and helping one another during writer's workshop think through effective ways to restate the claim.
This is BIG work.  Encourage your writer that writing is a process.  Slow and steady wins the race!

Spelling: New words will come home on Thursday, March 23.  They will be tested on Thursday, March 30.  March 31-April 6, teachers will be looking for students to apply those spelling patterns correctly in their reading and writing work.

Social Studies: As we enter into the last grading cycle, we want to make sure that we end our year as strong as it started.  We will spend this week reviewing our class contract and practicing routines and procedures that help our classroom community be a place that is safe and conducive for learning and risk taking.

Math: On Monday, we will finish up our unit on graphing. Before spring break, our students created a survey and they surveyed another third grade class. They took the data from the survey and created one of the graphs we have been studying in class. Starting on Tuesday, we will be jumping into our geometry unit. We will be working to identify 2D shapes. We will identify sides and vertices on these polygons. On Thursday and Friday, we will begin classifying 3D shapes. We will categorize them by pyramids, prisms, and curved surfaces. This week, we will have our usual homework on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Our fast facts quiz will be on Friday.



Science: During our science time we will start learning about the moon. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we will be discussing the relationship between the sun, moon, and Earth. On Wednesday, we will also make our vocabulary cards and send home a review for the solar system unit. Towards the end of our week, we will learn about the planets. As we are studying the planets, we will learn the order and the important characteristics of each. We will teach the students a fun acronym to help them remember the correct order of the planets from the sun.  It is...."My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nachos!"