April 8-12

Language Arts
Reading
Students will continue to prep for the upcoming STAAR exam.  We will review various reading strategies (context clues, summary, predictions, author's purpose, etc.) and genres (fiction, non-fiction and poetry).  We will complete a STAAR reading practice this week during class.  

Students should be reading 20 minutes each night and completing the class blog.  

The reading homework passage will come home on Monday and should be completed and returned on Friday.

Writing
Students will complete a poetry menu.  They have working hard and written some AWESOME poems over the last week. 

Spelling
Word sorts will come home on Monday.  Homework will be due on Thursday.  We will test on Friday.  

Social Studies
We will finish TALL TALES on Monday and begin learning about scientists and inventors who changed the story of America.  We will review the life of Henry Ford and his assembly line that made automobiles more accessible and affordable.  Then, we will discuss the life of Louis Daguerre who invented the daguerreotype--  one of the first ways people were able to quickly get a picture.  We will finish up the week learning about Cyrus McCormick who invented the reaper and forever changed the way American farmers do business!

LA and SS for the week of 1/23/12

LANGUAGE ARTS

Spelling- Words will come home on Monday of this week.  Spelling homework menu items are due on Thursday.  Test on Friday.


Reading-  Your kids are getting the hang of QAR.  They wrote some pretty tough questions last week about an article on Full-Body Boarding.  
This week, we will continue to think about question answer relationships.
We also practiced this concept and applied our reading strategies on a reading passage.  Look for a passage to come home on Mondays and be due on Fridays.  I'm sending home the class example with homework on Monday so that you can see what kind of work needs to be done when answering questions.  I will also send home a READING CHECKLIST for your student to use as he or she reads the passage and completes the questions.


Writing- We will continue to read and critiquing book reviews. Our hope is to learn enough from what we consume (read) to produce some of our own!


Don't forget to check out the class blog, THIRD GRADE THOUGHTS. They will update this every Wednesday for your reading pleasure.

SOCIAL STUDIES

We will read and discuss the book, I am the Ocean.  Then, students will work to use personification and landform characteristics to create LANDFORM POETRY!