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 

 

• 

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

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.