Week 21: January 29th-February 2nd

Week 21:  January 29th-February 2nd

Reminders: 
2/2: Spring Group Pictures are this Friday.  These pictures are taken as homerooms.   Time slots are as follows. 10:25 Rozzell/Morphey, 10:35  Badrak/Saint Val, and 10:45 Duncan/Ford.  
2/6 and 2/7:  HCE Book Fair located in library. 
2/8 and 2/9: Noon Dismissal

Reading:  Determining the main idea of a text can be tricky business!  We're going to continue searching for text clues (text evidence) to infer the main idea of an entire or portion of text.  Your readers will see this week that identifying the main idea from several sections of an article will lead to a strong nonfiction summary.  We will conclude the week by introducing cause and effect relationships.  Cause and effect is something we experience in our daily lives.  We will learn tools to identify this relationship within a nonfiction text. 

Writing:  We will celebrate your poet's hard work this week!  Our publishing celebrations are always a wonderful way to unite as a community of writers and "high five" one another on a job well done.  Your children are excited to share their finished anthologies with their peers.  Later in the week we will practice note taking strategies as we read through a nonfiction text and organize our thoughts/reactions and important ideas.  
Social Studies:  We're rounding out our study of maps this week.  Students will apply what they have learned throughout the month to create their own maps.  We're challenging them to include a title, compass rose, legend, map scale, and grid system.  

Math: We will continue to learn many strategies to multiply such as skip counting, number line, area model, and an array model. We will build from easier digits such as 5 and continue to increase the digit to 6 through 9. As it is important to know multiplication facts, we are helping our mathematicians understand and internalize what it truly means to multiply, where they can see it in the real world, and how to apply it in their daily lives. 

Homework: In addition to our Monday-Wednesday regular homework pages, we will begin "Problem of the Week." This assignment will be sent home every Monday and will need to be returned on Friday. This assignment is meant to be a team effort as we would like your student to solve the problem alongside you.  On Friday, we will discuss the many ways your student solved the problem with the support from you all! 
Science: The students will learn and understand how soil is formed and the role of decomposition. Later in the week, the students will explore plate tectonics and its relation to earthquakes and volcanoes. Soil is different in different places because of different rocks in the area and different plants and animals that live there and die and decay. Important concepts to remember:

• Constructive forces build up the Earth
• Destructive forces tear down the Earth
• Earthquake:  A sudden release of energy under the Earth’s surface that makes the ground shake or crack.
• Earthquakes build up the land (constructive) by pushing upward forming mountains and tear down the Earth (destructive) by opening crevices and causing land to fall or slide.
• Weathering: The process that breaks down rocks into tiny pieces over time.
• Erosion:  The carrying away of weathered rock 

 

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  Different types of Soil: Sand, Clay, Humus, Loam

Week 20: January 22nd-26th

Week 20:  January 22nd-26th

Reading:  Last week was cut extra short because of our school holiday and ice days.  We were not able to get to everything we needed to because of this, so we're continuing with last week's plan for a portion of this week.  Your reader will continue to navigate detailed maps, diagrams, tables, photographs, and captions within nonfiction articles.  We will discuss how these features support their understanding of the text topic.  As we move forward in the week, we will introduce main idea.  Main idea is the central idea of a text.  Comprehending the main idea is important in order to understand the purpose for writing.  We will be learning tricks and tools to help aid your reader in identifying what an article is mostly, or mainly, about.  

Writing:  We will officially wrap up our poetry unit this week!  Your writers have been hard at work drafting a variety of poems since returning to school in 2018.  We will choose some of our favorites to revise and edit and then publish an anthology using Google Docs.  Our week will end with a celebration of our published work!  

Social Studies:  We will continue using maps as every day tools.  Utilizing map scales will be our focus for this week.  Students will practice using a map scale to calculate distances between cities.    

Math: We will continue to solve addition and subtraction problems regarding time intervals in minutes using pictorial models and/or tools. It is important to remember the danger zone. This is when the minute hand reaches the 50 and 55 minute mark and the hour hand looks like it has reached the next hour. The students will continue to manipulate clocks to deepen their understanding of time. Later in the week, students will be introduced to multiplication. We will be learning specific multiplication strategies such as the array and number line strategies. An array is a group of objects that shows numbers in equal rows or columns.

                     

Homework: Students will be given homework Monday - Wednesday. Also, please make sure your mathematician is on DreamBox and SumDog at home.

               
Science: We will continue to observe forces such as magnetism, friction, and gravity acting on objects. Also, we will be learning about specific tools that make work easier such as pulleys. We will then have our Force and Motion quiz on Wednesday, January 24th. Later in the week, we will begin investigating how rocks can break down to form soil. Please make sure your scientist is studying the study guide and vocabulary cards every day.

Week 13: November 14-17

Reminders:
We will have an author visit Tuesday, November 15.  Please remember to place your orders for books by Monday, November 14.

Four teachers from HCE's 3rd grade team have been asked to attend a district meeting to discuss PSAs (Priority Standard Assessments).  Ms. Badrak, Mrs. Ford, Ms. Rozzell and Mrs. Scott will be off campus on Tuesday to learn more about these assessments, offer feedback, and help plan how the district will use PSAs to reach each of our learners best.

Reading: Inferences will take center stage in reading this week.  Students should know by now that we infer when we take what's in the text, add what we know (in our brains) and then draw conclusions or infer.  We will continue with our picture of the day warm-up this week.  Students will then get loads of practice in their guided reading groups.  Please make sure book bags that come home are getting back to school each day.

Picture of the day is a great activity to promote language development, conversation and inferring skills at home. Some sentence stems we use in class that can get things going at home are:
I see ________________.  I infer _________ because _______.  I wonder __________ because ____________.  Looking at a picture you can infer location, temperature, season, time of day, sounds, thoughts, actions, reactions, and conditions.  You can find picture of the day resources on Wikipedia (please monitor for appropriateness).  Photos from magazines and books work well too.

Writing: Onomatopoeia, ellipse, and dialogue will be three author's craft elements that we focus our writing eye on this week.  We will read and critique pieces from published and familiar authors to see how these elements help improve the story and experience for the reader.
We have very much enjoyed our last two weeks with Mrs. Cion, our WITS (Writer's in the Schools) partner.  The children have dug deep into their favorites and created portraits in the style of Giuseppe Arcimboldo.  It taught all of us more about each other and reminded us how important details are to help others understand and appreciate our work!

Spelling:  Students will receive an application grade on spelling words this week.  Please continue to help them practice and understand spelling patterns at home.  We will not send home new words until 11/30, due to the Thanksgiving holiday.  Instead, we will be focused on pushing students to apply their spelling patterns in their reading, writing, spelling and social studies assignments.

Social Studies: Our focus on good citizens this week turns to Harriet Tubman and Clara Barton.
Harriet Tubman was a brave woman who used her resources to escape slavery through the Underground Railroad.  She then risked her life to help others do the same.
Clara Barton founded the Red Cross.  We will discuss, in class, how the Red Cross and other non-profit business work for the common good.

Math: In math this week, your child will begin studying multiplication. At the beginning of our unit, we will be learning to create multiplication sentence and drawing pictures of these sentences to get a visual of multiplying. Throughout the week, we will be learning to create equal groups, repeated addition, skip counting on a number line, and arrays. All of these methods will help our gain a foundation of multiplying.

Equal Groups

Skip Counting on a Number Line

"4 jumps of 2"

Repeated Addition

Arrays

For math homework this week, your child will receive a worksheet on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night. Our fast facts quiz will be on Friday. A problem of the week will be given on Monday and it will be due on Friday. 

Science:  During our science time this week we will begin studying Thermal Energy and Light 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. For light energy we will discuss the sources of light, how light is used, what the words transparent, translucent, and opaque mean. We will begin our science project in class which is a foldable which includes examples of the four forms of energy that we study.