Week of October 17-21

Parent/Teacher Conferences are this week: October 19-21.  Use the links below to secure your spot.  We can't wait to celebrate the successes of your child and discuss their goals moving forward. Please remember that Thursday, October 20th and Friday, October 21st are early dismissal days. Students will be let out at 12:00 pm so please plan accordingly! 

• Rozzell/Scott               
• Badrak/Jackson
• Duncan/Ford

Please consider supporting Ms. Jackson’s flexible seating Donors Choose fund: Jackson

Reading: Readers will continue exploring theme in both familiar and non-familiar texts. Each day, we will focus on a new theme and brainstorm books that model each lesson. Themes/lessons we will focus on next week:

• Believing in yourself
• Being happy with what you have
• Accepting others' differences 
• Always acting kind to others

We will also spend time discussing and writing about the differences between plot and theme. We want our learners to be able to not only identify them, but to support it with text evidence. 

Writing: Writers will be introduced to new Stories From My Life (or SFML for short) this week to focus on our core questions with unfamiliar texts. We will work on concise retelling through Q1 (What is happening in this story?) and identifying theme/lesson through Q2 (What does this story mean?). Finally, we will map the story on the narrative arc to identify all of the important elements. Writers will continue exploring SFML narratives in their own writing.

Example Story Arc   

Spelling: Students will get new sorts/words on Wednesday, October 19th. The assessment on those words will be the following Wednesday, October 26th. Remember to utilize the at-home spelling practice if your child could benefit from additional practice at home.

Social Studies: We will continue our unit on famous explorers! We will finish our pop-up book with important facts about Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone, Lewis & Clark, and Christopher Columbus. Our students have loved learning the details of how these explorers have contributed to our nation and our world. 

Math: Last week we began our study of subtraction with simple subtraction without any regrouping and regrouping in the hundreds and thousands places. This week we will review and then begin to subtract over zeros where multiple regrouping is necessary. As they progress right to left from the ones place, to the tens, to the hundreds and then to the thousands, students have to continually ask themselves "Can I do that?" in order to assure that the top number take away the bottom number actually works. If not, then regrouping or borrowing has to be done. Many are familiar with the rhyme "More on the floor, go next door" as a way to help determine if regrouping is needed. In applying subtraction to everyday life, students will examine word problems and differentiate among the three types of subtraction. "Take away" subtraction is the one with which kids are most familiar. Given a total number of items, a part is taken away leaving a remaining part. "Compare" subtraction presents students with two numbers where they are to find the difference between them. Words such as "how many more", "how much longer", and "how many fewer" are our key to this kind of subtraction. Often times, the comparative or "er" form of an adjective is used, such as taller, heavier, shorter, and farther. The third kind, "Missing Part" subtraction, gives the student the total number of items and describes a part and then asks what the other part might be. Here are some examples:

Take away:  643 students attend Hunters Creek Elementary. If 97 students transfer to another school, how many students will remain at the school?   643 - 97 = _____

Compare:  HCE has 643 student and MDE only has 477. How many  more students does Hunters Creek have than Memorial Drive?   643 - 477 = _____

Missing Part:  Ms. Rozzell has 41 students in both Math classes. 17 of them are girls. How many boys are in her classes?     41 - 17 = _____ 

Whether your child is on addition, subtraction, or multiplication facts, always study daily for FFW and/or FFF. Addition and subtraction have an extra opportunity for success on Wednesday and will not have to study for a Friday quiz if they make a 90% or above mid week. There is a POW that is due on Friday. Please take this opportunity to work with your child and discuss strategies for finding a solution.

Science:  We wrap up our study of Matter this week with a review of vocabulary and concepts and a unit test on Wednesday. Students have had vocabulary cards and a study guide for almost two weeks and we hope they have reviewed them nightly. After parent conferences, we will take a look at mixtures and then it is on to an extensive study of the different kinds of energy around us.

3/28 - 4/1

Parent Reminders and Information:  
We encourage parents and families to save the date and join the third grade team from 6-7p.m. on Wednesday, March 30^th for our STAAR Night in the HCE Library.  During this time, we will discuss:

·         The purpose of the test and its results

·         Level of Expectation on each test using sample questions

·         Strategies being taught in the classroom

·         How to support your child at home

·         General Information about the test itself including:

a.    Schedule: Dates/Times

b.    Format of the test

c.    Timeline for results

  

We will close the time together with a Q&A session for parents and families. We appreciate your support at home as, together, we continue to build strong mathematicians and readers.


Math: During our math time this week, we will be wrapping up our unit on fractions. We will spend Monday reviewing equivalent fractions, comparing fractions, and fractions on a number line. On Tuesday, we will be taking a fraction assessment as we finish out 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. We will continue to practice with money and fractions. Our fast facts quiz will be on Friday and we will have a problem of the week due on Friday. 

Science: In science this week, we will continue working on weather and begin discussing types of clouds. This past week, we discussed the water cycle and reviewed the weather tools that help our meteorologist give us information on the weather. Your child has been tracking the temperature, wind speed, and humidity in various cities. They will continue to track the weather this week. A review and vocabulary cards went home on Thursday for our upcoming weather quiz. We will take our quiz on Friday. 

Reading We transition this week from Informational nonfiction to Narrative nonfiction.  These selections are written like a story, but are about a true topic. Please look for homework coming home this week about Jessica The Hippo.  This is an excellent example of narrative nonfiction and a fun story for you to discuss with your child.

Writing- We have worked this year to implement a new framework to our writing curriculum called CCP (Consume, Critique, Produce). This week we will focus on the critiquing part of the writing process.   Students will read good and poor examples of narratives and create their own criteria for what makes a good story from your life.

Spelling Last week we used our spelling time to start work on parts of speech.  We will work the beginning of this week on parts of speech and finish the week with new spelling words.  New words come home 3/30.  Test on 4/6.

Social Studies We've launched our study on economics.  Last week we had some great discussion on needs vs. wants.  We also talked about how important it is to make a plan for how you will spend and save your money using a budget.  This week, we will focus more on how our society is a free enterprise.  Students will discuss good and poor choices they have made as consumers.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!
Thank you for offering your children life experiences and a chance to read over the break!

Please make sure to reference the email from Mrs. Ford about upcoming assessments.  We will be giving a NRT assessment and CoGAT over the next two weeks.  Testing will require us to move schedules around, so our blocks of learning will be modified over the next few weeks.  The information below will catch you up on the learning that we will cover from 1/11-1/22.

Language Arts
Reading- We have entered the second C in the CCP process.  Students have consumed (read) many great examples of narrative.  We will spend the next few days reading like critiques to determine if an author uses various craft elements to enhance their story.  The next few days we will look at ways to use dialogue to move a story rather than just using dialogue for the fun of making commas and quotation marks!
Writing- Students will begin using the narrative arc to help them plan out a story before writing. This pre-writing tool is helpful for writer's to use to see if a story is worthy of taking to publication.  If the parts of a narrative aren't clear, it might be a story simply worth remembering but not taking through the writing process to publication.
Spelling-Your children completed a midyear inventory last week in Word Study.  I was so pleased to see how they have progressed in their knowledge of spelling concepts.  We will reorganize ourselves into new spelling groups this week.  New spelling words will come home on 1/13.  Our test will be on 1/20 and an application grade will be taken between 1/21 and 1/26.  Your support at home with spelling concepts is appreciated.

Social Studies
The third 9 weeks brings us to our unit called, Story of America.  You may remember it as history! :)  Last week we discussed the terms; past, present, future, year, decade, century and millennium.  We will use the next few weeks to think about the time and life of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  Students will work to complete a learning menu.  Activities on the menu will challenge them to think about their dreams for our country, how MLK Jr.'s life and death impacted the way we do things today and ways we can honor those who have made a difference in the history of our country and world.

Math
In math this week, we will continue working on multiplication and division. On Monday, we will play the game kahoot which will review the vocabulary and skills from multiplying and dividing. On Wednesday, we will review for our test on Thursday. We will prepare in class for our test so no review will be sent home. On Thursday we will take our multiplication and division test. Due to testing this week, we will not have a problem of the week. On Monday, your child will come home with an addition and subtraction review worksheet. We will have our normal Mangahigh homework on Tuesday and Wednesday night. We will still have our fast facts quiz on Friday. It will not be a grade this week.

Science
In science this week, we will begin keyboarding. We will spend the three days that we are not testing learning how to keyboard. We will work on the proper keyboarding posture and we will work on using the home row keys. We will spend these days doing lessons and practice building keyboarding skills.

an update from Mrs. Ford

Reading
In Reading this week we will be look at genre and theme.  We will review some of the books we have shared aloud to determine what text evidence can help us determine a book's theme.  Students will then read fables in partners and independently to find evidence and determine theme.  We will use this same text evidence strategy to determine the genre of a book.  Students should be able to notice and name features of various genres (Mystery, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Realistic Fiction, Historical Fiction, Autobiography, Biography, Informational, Traditional and Poetry).  

WRITING
As we continue to work in the genre of personal narrative, we will continue to consume examples (text and student work).  We will also look this week at critiquing personal narratives.  What things make a personal narrative EXCELLENT or not so great.  We will work as a class to create a criteria chart of the things we think EXCELLENT narratives need.

SPELLING

Please remember that they are responsible for completing 8 points and turning in their homework on Thursday mornings.  

SOCIAL STUDIES

In class, we will begin talking about how the United States government is set up.  Be ready... this week we will talk about how we have a local, state and federal government.  Please continue at home talking with your kids about the three branches of government, elections, and leaders at each level of our government.  There is a RED review sheet coming home today.  Our first Social Studies test on Community and Government will be on October 16.