Week 14: November 27th - December 1st

Week 14: November 27th - December 1st

Reminders:12/5 - 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.  


December 8- HCE Spelling Bee.  We wish out third grade classroom winners luck as they compete against winners from the 4th and 5th grade classes.

12/15 - Noon Dismissal for Winter Break

READING: We will spend the week reviewing the concepts we have been working on for the past few weeks: fictional story elements, character development, character changes and theme.  We will look at how this type of reading and thinking shows up in selections students will see on STAAR. Knowing how to apply these skills in our guided reading and independent reading is key to developing a love and understanding of literature.  Taking a step back and analyzing how they can be worded and displayed in testing is also important for our smart readers to understand.

WRITING: We will finish up our study on Author's Craft.  Students have looked at a variety of mentor texts and tried their hand at a number of concepts: repetition, onomatopoeia, metaphor, dialogue, font style, punctuation, and using our sense to add descriptive details.  Writer's will use this week to choose a piece to take through publication.  We will then work through our first official revision process.   We are excited for the many stories from our lives that will soon be published and archived for the world to read.

WORD WORK:  Students have been working with their guided reading teacher to tackle words that are developmentally appropriate for where they are writing and reading.  Keep your eye out for emails from you child's guided reading teacher to know when test and application grades are coming.

SOCIAL STUDIES:  Having just finished time off for celebration, we will focus our work this week learning about the many different Cultural Celebrations that Texans observe.  Students will complete their 2nd 9 weeks Social Studies Project by choosing the celebration that they find most interesting and planning an imaginary event to honor the occasion.  Remember that Social Studies Weekly is always available to students at home.  Log in information can be found in your students green binder.  Information can also be found in the Social Studies Website Resources on the right hand side of the blog.

Math: During our math time this week, we will be wrapping up our unit on graphing. We will pair up and spend Monday and Tuesday creating each type of graph that we learned about last week using data that came from a survey given to other third grade students. Each class will get to pair up with another class to get a larger set of data. On Wednesday, we will review each type of graph for the last time during our unit. The rest of the week, we will begin our next unit on geometry. We will be working to identify 2D shapes. We will identify sides and vertices on these polygons. This week, we will have our usual homework on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Our fast facts quiz will be on Friday.

Science: On Monday, your child will create vocabulary cards for the energy unit. The review sheet and vocabulary cards are given in preparation of the energy test. The date of test is undetermined at this time as we have not completed the unit yet. On Tuesday through Thursday, we will learn about light energy. We will learn about the sources and uses of light energy. On Friday, we will move onto sound energy.  We will ask ourselves questions about how sound is made and how it travels. With sound energy, we will also discuss pitch and volume.

Week 13: November 13-17

Week 13: November 13-17

Reminders:
11/20 -11/24 - Thanksgiving Break (No School)

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.  

12/15 - Noon Dismissal for Winter Break


Reading: CHARACTER TRAITS and CHARACTER FEELINGS will be our big work in reading this week.  We will focus on reading carefully and thinking about what a character does, says and thinks to determine how they feel AND what kind of person they are.  This big thinking is called an inference.  

In class, students have worked wordless books to focus on character actions.  Wordless books are a great way to practice inferring character traits and feelings as the reader have to look closely and read the body language and actions of the characters to draw a conclusion.  



Homework:  We looked at this video clip and talked about what the words...
EVERY SINGLE DAY, NO MATTER WHAT would mean for our reading lives.  Volume matters.  Please make sure that reading happens at home, every single day- not matter what.  

Writing: Descriptive details will be one element of craft we will focus on this week.  We will look at how authors use simile, metaphor and beautiful adjectives to describe in great detail the parts of their story that they want a reader to experience.  Then, we will look at how an author might use a comeback line or repetition to drive home an idea in a story.  Friday, we shared America's White Table to talk about Veteran's Day.  We will revisit this text as one of mentor texts next week.  We are thankful to the Veteran's and families who joined us in celebrating and honoring those who have served our country.  They are inspiration to our learning and our writing.

Social Studies: We will wrap up our work on community and citizenship with lessons on DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP.  Students will complete these lesson on itsLearning (the districts digital curriculum platform).The lessons focus on the important BEs of being online..
be kind... be safe... be yourself.

Spelling:  Spelling tests are staggered this year.  If you haven't yet, you will soon receive an email from your child's spelling teacher letting you know about your child's spelling sort and test date.

Math: This week in math we will learn about graphs. We will study and understand the difference between a bar graph, double bar graph, pictograph, dot plot, frequency table, and tally chart. We will work to pull information from the graphs and draw conclusions based on the data. Each day, we will create one or more of these graphs to practice. Below, are pictures of each type of graph we will learn this week:

                  Bar Graph                                                          Double Bar Graph

              Dot Plot                                                                  

                                     




Pictograph









Frequency Table and Tally Chart















For homework this week, we will have a worksheet come home on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night. We will have our usual fast facts on Friday.

Science: In science this week, we will continue discussing potential and kinetic energy. We have been discussing mechanical energy using real world examples. During the later part of the week we will get into thermal energy. The important information that we will learn about Thermal (Heat) Energy are the sources of heat, insulators, and conductors. An insulator is a material that does not allow heat to pass along it easily. A conductor is a material that allows heat to pass along it easily. We will discuss examples of each. 

Week 12: November 6th - 10th

Reminders:
11/10 - Veteran's Day Program in the Cafeteria at 9:00am.  Doors open to get a good seat at 8:50a.m.

11/20 -11/24 - Thanksgiving Break (No School)

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.  

12/15 - Noon Dismissal for Winter Break

Homework:  Remember that we ask that your child read for at least 20 minutes each day (outside of regular school hours).  You can also always check out our grade level weekly planner using the link on the right hand side of the blog.

Reading: Monday students will work to show what they know about inferring theme in fiction texts.  We have had some great conversations about what lessons or messages an author might be trying to share with an audience.  Your children are critical thinkers with big hearts.  Please continue to talk to them at home about what lessons we can learn from the stories we read.

Tuesday through Friday, we will introduce the idea of character traits and character feelings and model how readers use text evidence to infer what a character is feeling.  We will also infer character traits using text evidence.  While this is something that adults have internalized, this is something that third graders need to think through and talk through each time they meet a new character.  Please continue our discussions at home by talking about characters in books you are reading, movies you are watching or television shows you see. Here are some question prompts:
What word would you use to describe the character?
Why is that a word that comes to mind?
What did the character say, do or think that helped you?



Writing: We have started our study on authors as mentors.  Over the next two weeks we will focus on craft elements that effective writers use to help readers understand and experience their story. We will create a class anchor chart to record our learning and serve as a reminder of strategies we can now try out as we write about stories from our lives.
This week we will look at how dialogue moves a story and helps the reader know more about the characters.  We will also learn about ellipse and how they help slow down parts of a story to either build tension or transition from one event to another.  Finally, we will conclude the week learning about how onomatopoeia can be used to add sensory details that help the reader feel like they are in the story. 

Social Studies: This week students will read about resources a community uses to help keep its citizens safe.  Specifically, they will learn about  police departments (and K-9 cops), fire fighters, and paramedics. They will then reflect on ways that these people help in our local community.

Math: On Monday and Tuesday, we will walk through the steps for a two-step problems. Here is an example of a two-step problem that you can expect your child to see: There were a total of 689 fans who came to the first three basketball games. One hundred forty-two came to the first game and 136 came to the second game. How many fans came to the third game?

On Wednesday, we will work to create two step problems to understand the importance of the two parts found in the word problem. On Thursday, we will solve the word problems that we created on Wednesday. On Friday, we will continue working to create word problems when given a number sentence. Reference the video below for more information on how we will teach this in class:

Two-Step Word Problem Video

We will have worksheets come home on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night. We will also have a fast facts quiz on Friday. Thank you for continuing to support your child at home with fast facts and the worksheet. 

Science: In our science time this week, we will begin our study on energy. This week, we are discussing mechanical energy, we will learn about kinetic and potential energy. Below are the terms we will study during this unit:

*energy- what is needed to do work or cause change

*work - when a force moves an object

*force- a push or pull

*mechanical energy- the energy of moving objects

*kinetic energy- the energy of motion

*potential energy- the stored energy or possible energy depending on its position