Week 26: March 5 - 9

Week 26: March 5 - 9

Reminders:
9 - Report Cards go home
12-16 Spring Break (No School)
20 - Third Nine Weeks Recognition Ceremony at 9:00 in the cafeteria
23 - Solar System Test
30 - Good Friday (No School)

Reading: Our students worked hard last week and showed amazing effort and skill on the READING practice STAAR test.  Please look for an email from your child's reading teacher by Friday, March 9th to tell you more about your child's reading strengths and areas for growth.  Mostly, know we are PROUD of their reading accomplishments thus far and it is only MARCH!

Narrative NonFiction will continue to be our genre focus for this week. Above you can see some of the titles we have been reading and discussing in class.  Specifically, this week, we will teach students a silly song that can serve as an EXCELLENT strategy for writing summaries or answering STAAR like questions about summary with narrative.  For a sneak peak, or simply to keep the fun going at home, check out this clip.



Writing: Essays will continue to be our genre of focus.  This week we will look at how to write a strong lead.  We will look at many styles and try them out with our first drafts to see which style might be most effective.  Below is a sample anchor chart.  Something like this will be built together in our classroom this week as we write.


Social Studies: Students will finish up their work with map skills.  We hope that maybe a few students have gotten excited and talked to you about how we learned to play BATTLESHIP using our grid map skills.  This week, we will also look the cultural traditions associated with St. Patrick's Day.

Math: During our math block this week, we will continue to look at division strategies and how we can apply these strategies to word problems. Your child will work to create division word problems to help with their understanding of the parts of  division word problems. On Wednesday and Friday, we will learn about area (Area Video). We have taught area models during our multiplication unit and we will make the connection between area and the area models we have already studied. On Thursday, we plan to complete a reflection paper from the practice STAAR that was taken last Monday. This tool helps your child zone in on the concepts they really understand and helps us to identify areas of need. We will send this paper home with your child so that you can use this as a discussion tool at home.

For homework this week, we will have a worksheet come home on Monday - Wednesday. We will not have a problem of the week this week. We will take a fast facts quiz on Friday. If you plan to be out of school on Friday, please let your child's teacher know so that they can take their fast facts quiz before the break.

Science: This week during science, we will continue talking about the relationship between the sun, moon, and Earth and our other planets. On Monday, we will work on the next set of vocabulary cards for the solar system unit. We will send home these cards and review sheet so that your child will be able to study nightly for our test. The date of the test Friday, March 23rd.  During the rest of the week, we will be studying the planets.

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. 

Week 19: January 9-13

Upcoming dates to put on your calendar:

1/9 - Parent Education Meeting  9:30am - 10:15am       Math Facts With Your Child: Learn how to help your child master the basic facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) with some easy games you can play at home.

1/10 - STAARY STAARY NIGHT - Informational Parent Meeting about the third grade STAAR test. We will meet in the library from 6:00 - 7:00 p.m.

1/16 - School Holiday for Students and Staff 

1/17 - School Store Open 7:30am - 7:50am for 3rd, 4th and 5th graders, near the library

1/19 - 9:30am PTA General Meeting

This week in third grade....

Reading: Readers will wrap up our unit in poetry on Monday and Tuesday. We will look at a familiar poem, answer questions about the piece, and discuss how the text evidence helped us draw conclusions. 

Next, we will start thinking deeply about summarizing texts. We will read familiar passages and decide how to best summarize the events in the story. We will use a fun method called CPR, which stands for Characters, Problem, and Solution, to find the best answer choice. The best summaries include all three components. 

Writing: Writers will begin writing poetry this week! After spending time consuming poetry in reading, our learners are anxious to start looking at poetry through the eyes of a writer. We will write about ordinary things and ideas that create extraordinary feelings within us. We'll be looking at 4 elements to help guide our poetry writing: central ideas (theme), purpose (who is your audience and why are you writing this piece?), mood, and form (which poetic form best conveys your theme and purpose?). 

Spelling: Mid-year spelling inventories are complete. We have formed spelling groups based on the most current spelling data from our learners. New spelling groups will start this Wednesday, January 11th, and the test will be the following Wednesday, January 18th. 

Social Studies: We will begin our unit on markets, business, and budgets. This week, we will discuss in detail what a free market is and why it’s important to the US economy.

Math: This week we continue the study of division, striving for students to develop an "ear" for how a division situation sounds and then choosing an appropriate strategy. As explained in last week's blog post, our two main strategies are the "octopus" and "cookie" methods. We are also viewing division as "repeated subtraction", just the opposite of multiplication. Similar to the "cookie" method, this subtraction tells us how many groups you will end up with in the end. For example... If Chef Jones bakes 12 cookies and packages them into bags of 3, how many bags will he be able to fill? The equation is 12÷3=___. How many threes are in 12?

Yet another strategy is to "skip count" to find the answer. For 12÷3=___, skip count by 3 up to 12 and see how many numbers that is. 3,6,9,12 will give you 4. The final strategy, and the one we hope all third graders will eventually be able to use, is to know their multiplication facts well enough to come up with the "related multiplication" in that same fact family that will give them an immediate answer. Again, for 12÷3=___, if the student knows that 3x4=12 or 4x3=12, they will know that 12÷3=4. As the week progresses, our students will try their hand at writing division word problems that reflect real life situations. They will have an opportunity to solve each others' problems posted around the room. By Friday, we will revisit multiplication along with division and give students practice knowing when to use which operation. A new Problem of the Week goes home on Monday. Please work with your child to discuss and solve it. It is due on Friday. We will also have our regular Fast Fact Friday quiz on whichever facts your child has reached. As usual, there is written math homework Monday through Wednesday nights.

Science: In Science, we wrap up gravity then spend a few days playing with magnets and feeling how they repel and attract. Then we'll explore the benefits of using a pulley to lift heavy loads. On Friday, we will review force and motion and take a quick 15 question quiz.
Enjoy this quick video on pulleys.

Update for 3/9-3/13 from Mrs. Ford

READING
This week we will finish up our review of inferring with fiction texts and move into thinking about how to create a summary of a fiction text.  We will introduce a strategy called CPR.  Students will learn that there are some necessary elements to include in a summary- characters, problem, resolution.
 
WRITING
Your children have written some FABULOUS expository essays.  This week we will finish up revising and editing these pieces so we can publish them to share with you at Publisher's Picnic.
Mrs. Bolton, our WITS instructor, will be back with us this week.  We all love the fresh new ideas she brings to our instruction and learning.  

SPELLING
The spelling homework menu is due on the following Tuesday (3/10) and the test will be on that Wednesday (3/11).  If you need support with spelling, please email me.  If you child looses his or her spelling words, please look at the spelling spiral as we write them down as part of our lesson on Wednesdays.

SOCIAL STUDIES
All third graders will take a quiz on 3/10 on the inventors, scientists and founding fathers we have covered over the last few weeks.  Please encourage your child to bring home his or her social studies journal.  They have been working hard to complete guided notes on each historical figure.  You can also reference the Social Studies Links page on this blog for more information.

HOMEWORK
Thank you for supporting good study and reading habits at home.