Week 18: January 4-6, 2017

Happy New Year and welcome back! We hope you had a wonderful holiday break. We are looking forward to another incredible semester in third grade! 

Upcoming dates to put on your calendar:

1/3- Student holiday

1/4-Students return to school

1/6 - Third Grade Recognition Ceremony for the Second Nine Weeks, 9:00-9:30a.m. in the HCE Cafe

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 

Reading: Readers will continue to read poetry! Before the break, we focused on information in the poem that  pulls at the reader's sense of hearing, smelling, seeing, feeling, and tasting. This week, we will spend more time studying how these sensory details also help us infer more about the character (feelings and emotions), situations, and moods we read about in poems. For example, what words in a poem suggest that a speaker is happy? or frustrated? We will use text evidence to support our thinking. 

Writing: Writers will review what good writers do to help them plan and organize a small moment to share in writing or in conversation. 

Spelling: New spelling groups will start Wednesday, January 11th, and the test will be the following Wednesday, January 18th. 

Social Studies: Our focus on good citizens turns to Dr. Hector P. Garcia this week. We will learn about how he worked to make life better for Latino and Hispanic Americans. 

Math: We continue our study of division this week. As an operation, division begins with a total (whole) and divides it into equal groups (parts). The octopus strategy is used when we know the total and the number of groups it is divided into. We are solving for the number in each group. This is how a problem like this sounds. A one pound bag of Snickers contains 24 candy bars. If 4 children share them equally, how many Snickers will each child get? 
The octopus strategy looks like this:

Wednesday we will review what we have already learned about octopus division and practice the strategy in class. On Thursday and Friday, students will be introduced to the other division strategy, the cookie method. This one is used when we know the total (whole) and how many will be in each group. We are solving for the number of groups that will be formed. A problem like this is: A one pound bag of Snickers contains 24 candy bars. If each child gets 4 Snickers, how many children will get candy bars? Using dots, the 24 candy bars are circled in groups of 4. We end up with 6 groups representing the 6 children who will get Snickers. The cookie method looks like this:

Math homework for Wednesday and Thursday will be to study for our weekly Fast Fact Friday quiz. There is no written homework.

Science:  On Wednesday we will be reviewing friction as the force between an object and the surface it moves over. Surfaces with much friction will slow an object quickly, whereas surfaces with little friction will not. Students will participate in a "Toy Car Race" to explore surfaces and friction in our room. On Thursday and Friday we will explore gravity and its effect on Earth and falling objects. Gravity is the force that pulls objects toward each other. Larger objects have stronger gravity than smaller objects. The Sun's gravity holds the planets in their orbits and the moon's gravity causes Earth's tides to rise and fall. The rate an object falls here on Earth is controlled by its shape and the amount of air resistance it experiences, not its weight or mass. Astronauts on the Moon performed an experiment that helps to show us that. 

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.