Week 34: May 1st -May 5th

Reminders/Announcements:

• Monday, May 8th:  Math STAAR for 3rd (and 4th graders
• Tuesday, May 9th:  Reading STAAR for 3rd (and 4th graders)

Your child will be taking their first STAAR test next Monday and Tuesday, May 8th and 9th.  Here a few reminders and helpful hints to support your child at home:
- We will have an altered schedule on testing days due to beginning the test at 8:00am.  We will take our lunch after the completion of the test at 12:40pm and have specials and recess after.      
- Reassure your child that they have learned all the skills they need for the test.  Encourage and praise them for their success this school year.  Continue to build their confidence this week leading to Monday and Tuesday.  
- Please make sure your child gets plenty of sleep! 
- Eat a healthy breakfast.

• May 19 - Bike to School Day-  Important -If your child is going to participate in this event after school he or she will need a change of transportation note. 
• Monday, May 22nd:  Publishers Picnic
• Thursday, May 25th:  3rd grade Chariot Races
• Friday, May 26th:  Winds of Time school-wide parade 

Reading:
We will start our week reviewing vocabulary skills and context clues strategies.  We will practice how to identify the meaning of unknown words using context clues.  Your reader  will identify synonyms and antonyms of common words in their vocabulary using context clues as well.  

Later in the week, we will work on test taking confidence!  We will complete one final STAAR selection to review test taking strategies as well as celebrate all of the wonderful preparation they've done to be ready for next Tuesday (Reading STAAR test).  We will also learn and practice brain breaks that they can use during testing that do not distract their peers.

Writing:
We are going to revisit some of our favorite entries in our Writer's Notebook this week!  Your writer will reread their past work in their notebooks in order to revise and edit.  We will  specifically work on revising and editing for capitalization.  We will see where we can add capitalization for emphasis (e.g. WOAH!! or I TOLD her I wasn't feeling well.), proper nouns (e.g. Hunters Creek Elementary), and titles and headings (e.g. book titles, SFML titles).  We have added some capitalization online practice to our Language Arts websites.  We want to make sure we send our writers to fourth grade consistently capitalizing! 

Spelling:  We will be looking for how your child applies their spelling patterns this week.  We will take an application grade May 1st- May 4th. 

Social Studies:  Your child will finish their Texas festival project this week.  We can't wait to celebrate our final products this Friday.   

Math: We are entering our second and final week of STAAR Camp. Each class will be reviewing different concepts, as we do our last prep before the test. One concept that each class will cover is perimeter and area. It is important for your child to be able calculate both. They will also need to use the background knowledge of quadrilaterals when finding perimeter. Especially the rule about rectangles and squares when finding perimeter of a figure. 

Fractions will be another topic we will review this week, more specifically equivalent fraction using a pictorial model. The last two days of this week, we will have a circuit that will have different problem covering a variety of topics. This circuit will help prepare your child to how transition to different math concepts between questions. 

Homework this week will have review STAAR-like questions that will give you a chance to discuss past concepts at home. As always keep practicing those math facts. 

Science: This week in Science we are diverting our attention to the math concept of Personal Financial Literacy. We will discuss topics that include human capital, scarcity, credit and interest, and saving. Students will review some of what they learned in their Social Studies unit on Economics. Word problems will show them the connection between economics and math. A series of Kahoots will test their knowledge of various money issues. (And they love Kahoots!)

Week 33: April 24th-28th

Reminders/Important Dates:  

• Monday, May 8th:  Math STAAR for 3rd (and 4th graders)
• Tuesday, May 9th:  Reading STAAR for 3rd (and 4th graders)
• Monday, May 22nd:  Publishers Picnic
• Thursday, May 25th:  3rd grade Chariot Races
• Friday, May 26th:  Winds of Time school-wide parade 

Reading:  We are diving into cause and effect this week.  While cause/effect is something we experience in our daily lives, identifying cause/effect within a text is tricky.  We will spend the week practicing strategies to identify cause/effect relationships in both fiction and nonfiction texts.  Our readers will gain a better grasp of the importance of identifying causes and effects throughout an informational article and/or a plot.  Doing so will answer questions like "Why did the character react that way?" or "What caused a character to do ___?"    

We will also spend part of our language arts block working with online tools called Quizlet and Epic. These resources can be found under the "Language Arts Website" link on the right side of this blog and can be accessed both during and after school. Please feel free to ask your child about these resources and use them at home as well.  

We are thankful to have the opportunity to work with reliable technology thanks to our HCE PTA!  Our students have been able to log into our Chromebooks and work with these resources daily. We are beyond grateful for these additions to our classrooms! 

Writing:  We will be wrapping up our letter writing unit this week.  We will begin this week with writing a letter to a community worker.  Students will write a letter to a police officer, fireman, or nurse/doctor in our community.  We will practice addressing envelopes as well during this process.  The publishing process will start mid-week with revising and editing. We will celebrate our letters and share with our classroom community on Friday.  

Spelling:  Students will take a test this Thursday, April 27th.  Next week, April 28th- May 4th, teachers will be looking for students to apply these spelling patterns correctly in their reading and writing work. 

Social Studies:  We will continue to learn about Texas cultural celebrations this week.  We have and will continue to use the online component of our Studies Weekly social studies resource to read articles about various celebrations in Texas.  We will dive a little deeper this week in certain cultural celebrations to learn about what types of foods, activities, and dances are celebrated.  The students are very interested in these celebrations! 

Math: We have now entered our STAAR Camp Unit. STAAR Camp is where we will be reviewing all of the skills covered this year in preparation for the May 8th, Math STAAR test. The main focus of this week's review will be on place value, comparing numbers, word problems, and graphing.  Homework this week will include practice problems in a STAAR-like format.  This homework is a great way to review old concepts at home. 

Thanks to PTA, we have been provided with new Chromebooks in 3rd grade. These new computers have allowed us to provide class time to work on Dreambox. This program allows for individualized lessons that are leveled to your child needs. Think Through Math is another program your child can log on and is a great review of past math concepts.  These can be accessed at home.  Your child has been provided with login information.  In addition, their username and password information was sent home on our red spring information/conference form.  Please encourage your mathematician to try these out at home as well as show you what they've been working on at school.    

Science:  We have moved from measuring temperature with a thermometer to other units of measurement. We ended last week by discussing the difference between mass and weight and determining appropriate units to measure mass and weight. We want your child familiar with both customary and metric units since we use both.  We will begin our week by looking at customary and metric units of capacity and volume. We will then transition to measuring on a ruler looking at 1/4 and 1/2 inch. 

Week 32: April 17th- April 21st

Reminders/Important Dates:  

• Monday, May 8th:  Math STAAR for 3rd (and 4th graders)
• Tuesday, May 9th:  Reading STAAR for 3rd (and 4th graders)
• Monday, May 22nd:  Publishers Picnic
• Thursday, May 25th:  3rd grade Chariot Races
• Friday, May 26th:  Winds of Time school-wide parade 

• Mrs. Scott will begin her maternity leave starting on Wednesday, 4/19/17.  Please help us welcome her long-term substitute, Sylvia Tramuto.  Mrs. Tramuto is a familiar face at HCE.  We feel lucky to have her join our team while Mrs. Scott welcomes baby Landry!  

Reading:  This week will be our second week of reviewing inferring strategies.  Inferring requires higher order thinking skills, which is naturally a more challenging task for a reader. Last week we reviewed that inferences are made when a reader combines text clues and their own background knowledge.  We practiced using text evidence to support our inferences. Utilizing text evidence to support an inference is crucial during a test-taking scenario.  This week, we will continue to infer and support our inferences with text evidence. We will spend a lof of our time this week thinking through texts in pairs in order to draw conclusions about the story or article we read in order to correctly answer a STAAR-like question.  A lot of the time, there may be more than one reasonable answer.  It is important to revisit the text in order to choose the best answer that relates to the text evidence.    

Writing:  We can't wait for you to hear your writer's persuasive essay at our HCE Publisher's Picnic later in May (see date above).  We will shift genres this week in Writer's Workshop as we begin our letter writing unit.  We will begin the week identifying the parts of a letter (e.g. date, greeting, body, closing).  As the week progresses, we will study and write three types of letters:  friendly, informative, and thank you.      

Spelling:  Students will receive new spelling words on Thursday, April 20th.  They will take a test on these words on Thursday, April 27th.   April 28th-May 5th, teachers will be looking for students to apply those spelling patterns correctly in their reading and writing work.

Social Studies:  It is all about Texas festivals this week in social studies!  When immigrants came to our state, they brought certain customs and cultures from their homelands with them.  A way we respect and celebrate the various cultures in Texas is through cultural celebrations.  We can learn about all of the different cultural traditions (e.g. food, music) at festivals.  This week, we will read, reflect, and respond about various Texas festivals.  Be sure to ask your child what festival they found most interesting.       

Math: In math this week, we will be working on finding a relationship between numbers presented in a table. This can often be called input-output tables. We will discuss the importance to find the rule or pattern between the numbers and that the pattern must be continuous. 

We will end the week discussing financial literacy. Topics we will cover will be the difference between planned and unplanned spending decisions, opportunity cost,  and credit. This unit will connect with your child's economic unit they had during social studies. Some good vocabulary to review for this unit would be credit, borrower, and interest. 

Science:  This week, we will finish discussing temperature and how to read thermometers. We will also have your child research a city and record temperatures over the week. Your child can see how temperature can change over time. They can also see differing spring season temperatures. 

Week 31: April 10-14

Reminders:

• There will be no school this Friday April 14th.
• Scholastic Book orders due Tuesday, April 11th. 

Reading:  This week will launch a two week study of conclusions and inferences.  Inferring is something we do ALL the time.  We have learned and practiced what it means to "infer." 

When we infer, we use our schema (background knowledge), plus text clues to help us make an inference about characters, settings and events in the texts we read.  We will practice reading strategies this week to prepare our students to answer inference/drawing conclusions questions in a test-taking scenario.  We will be reading fiction and nonfiction texts in groups, partners, and independent settings to practice this very important reading skill.    

Writing:  It is PUBLICATION WEEK!  Our writers have been hard at work developing their persuasive pieces.   We will fine tune them this week as we prepare to share them with classmates on Thursday.  Your writer has worked diligently to craft their essays.  We can't wait to see the final products of their persuasive efforts!   

Spelling:  Students will take a test this Thursday, April 13th.   Next week, April 14th- April 21st, teachers will be looking for students to apply these spelling patterns correctly in their reading and writing work.

Social Studies:  This week we will focus on how one artist, Kadir Nelson, made a lasting impact on a community’s culture.  We will be reading at least one book by Kadir Nelson. Nelson was dedicated to sharing the African American’s influence on our country’s culture. We will study his books and images to understand more about the stories he writes and the culture he shares with his audience.

Math: This week we will be looking at both time and money. It would be a great opportunity to have your child read clocks at home at different times as well as practice counting different coin and dollar combinations.  In addition to having your child read a analog clock, we will also be looking at elapsed time by adding time intervals of 30 minutes and 15 minutes. 

Here is an example of a type of clock problem-solving question we will be working on strategies for:

A group of students will enter the gym at 11:15. The group will then play basketball for 15 minutes. At what time will the group stop playing basketball? 

We will work on two strategies to solve this type of word problem. Each strategy will use a visual. One visual we will use is a analog clock and have students count by 5 minutes or 10 minutes to calculate the end time. Another strategy is using a number line that is labeled with the start time and then count up by hours,10 or 5 minutes to find the end time.


Please encourage your child to spend some time this week on Dreambox. This is a great program and can allow your child a great opportunity to strengthen their math skills. Here is the link https://play.dreambox.com/login/yf4j/c78d

School code for Ipad use is yf4j/c78d

Science : This week we will transition from the study of our Sun to its effect on weather here on earth. We will begin by examining thermometers and the different scales they can have. Most have a scale of 2 per line, but they can also count by 1, 5, and 10. Students will practice reading thermometers and then research the temperature in 5 different cities and display them on thermometers of different scales. 

Week 30: April 3- 7

Week of April 3rd-7th

Reminders: 

OPTIONAL SPRING CONFERENCES: Thursday and Friday we will have early dismissal for spring parent teacher conference. These conferences are optional. Please note that these conferences our optional and its only the second week of the last nine weeks. But if you would like to meet with your child's teacher to discuss your child's progress, we would be more than happy to meet with you. 

Ms. Badrak

Mrs. Duncan

Mrs. Ford

Ms. Jackson

Ms. Rozzell

Mrs. Scott

Here is our half day schedule for Thursday and Friday. 
    Thursday:                                                               Friday
7:50- 8:00 Focus Poetry                                 7: 50- 8:00 Focus Poetry
8:10- 9:25 Block One                                      8:10 - 9:00 Specials
9:25 Switch                                                     9:00- 9:50 Block one
9:30- 10:45 Block two                                     9:55- 10:45 Block two
10:45- 11:15 Lunch                                        10: 45-11: 15 Lunch
11:15- 11: 45 Recess                                     11:15- 11: 45 Recess
12:00 Dismissal                                              12:00 Dismissal                    

Language Arts teachers will send home a Scholastic book order this week in Tuesday Newsday.  This order will be due next Tuesday, April 11th. 

Reading 
Last week, we ended our week utilizing useful reading strategies.  We will use what we learned about nonfiction summaries last week to compare and analyze the characteristics of fiction and nonfiction summaries this week.  For instance, great nonfiction summaries include the main idea, or most important ideas, from the beginning, middle, and end of a text.  Great fiction summaries, on the other hand, include CPR (C=Characters, P=Problem, R=Resolution).  We will compare various summaries in order to continue practicing reading strategies across these two genres. Towards the end of the week, our readers will write a fiction summary of their own using what they know about CPR.  

Writing
We have worked very hard during Writer's Workshop to craft our essays.  We will use this week as an opportunity to prepare our essays for publishing week.  We will enter into the process of publishing week next week in order to celebrate and share our final products. We are also going to take some time this week to prepare for National Library Week (April 9th-15th)  where we thank our wonderful librarian, Mrs. Moore, for everything she does for our school!  Students will either write a poem, letter, comic, or persuasive essay that pays tribute to Mrs. Moore.  We are going to deliver these to her on Monday!   

Spelling
Students will receive new spelling words on Thursday, April 6th.  They will take a test on these words on Thursday, April 13th.   April 14th- April 21st, teachers will be looking for students to apply those spelling patterns correctly in their reading and writing work.

Social Studies
We will continue our study of arts and culture this week.  We will learn information about arts within a community.  We will reflect and respond to this material using graphic organizers.  

Math 

We finished off last week discussing area of figures. This next week, we will introduce perimeter of a figure. Area and perimeter can often get mixed up, so please take time to discuss both of these vocabulary words. Please take some time this week and get on Dreambox. Please use this link to get the login page. https://play.dreambox.com/login/yf4j/c78d

In this perimeter unit, we will also look at problem solving for missing side length of figures. We will be working on using good strategies when trying to solve these type problems. One of these strategies will be to add up all the side lengths and then subtract from the perimeter.  We studied in our geometry unit about how rectangles have opposite sides that are equal to the other. This knowledge of rectangles will help students find the missing side length when perimeter is unknown.




Science
We will start this week with the solar system assessment. Tuesday - Friday we will explore the fourth planet from the Sun... Mars. We will look at what attributes this planet has and how it differs from other planets in our solar system. After we discuss Mars and review solar system  characteristics, we will have a short quiz on Thursday.  Please keep practicing with your child the order of the planets and have your child share their learning about Mars this week.