Academic Updates: We’ve had another busy week full of learning! This week, we focused on reviewing a couple skills from the last trimester including Main Idea, conjunctions, and most recently capitalization. It is important to occasionally spiral back to make sure we have all mastered specific reading and writing skills. During Literacy we also continued our Guided Reading books about various Nonfiction topics. In the near future, we will switch to reading Fiction stories again during our book group time, as our full class focus is on how characters develop and change over time. We are continuing our first Amber Brown book, and have learned some new strategies for understanding someone’s character traits. For instance, we spoke about how you can really get to know a person by the way he or she react to big events in life. During Social Studies, we continued to learn about inventors, and had discussions around the fact that you don’t have to have “white hair and wrinkles” to be an inventor. In Benjamin Franklin’s case, he was only twelve years old when he created hand and foot paddles for swimming! We had the opportunity to watch a video on how chocolate was made, and were able to find many examples of inventions, (most, we had no idea existed before). Finally, at the end of the week, we made Dream Catchers, to help encourage positive dreams and ideas to come our way! Upcoming events & Reminders:
The students have had opportunities to pick our Morning Meeting Greetings this week, and they chose a couple fun interactive ones! Above are pictures of our "Snowball (or flower- now that we're into Spring) Greeting" and our "Shoe Greeting!"
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Academic Updates:
Wow, what a wintery week we’ve had! The students have done a nice job working to get caught up from Tuesday’s snow day and Wednesday’s delayed opening. I hope you all enjoyed the extra time together and had a chance to enjoy the snow! During ELA this week, we had our first official opinion writing assignment. The question was: If you had the choice, would you rather have April break, or a longer Summer vacation. We had some fantastic discussions around this, and the third graders practiced using their new type of graphic organizer the “OREO” where the students state their Opinion, Reason, and give an Example, before concluding with an Opinion statement again. We actually took it to the next level, and used a “double stuffed OREO” where the students were expected to write two reasons with examples to support their opinions. Their writing is coming along well. We also started a new read aloud to go along with our next Reading unit where we will be studying book series and noticing how the characters develop and change. We are reading Amber Brown is Not a Crayon by Paula Danziger. This week we also did some Saint Patrick’s day reading comprehension practice, to help us get ready for SBAC at the end of the year. We are starting to practice a few test taking strategies. Inventions are something we continue to learn about as well. This week we created “Leprechaun traps” to catch those pesky little guys! Upcoming events & Reminders:
Academic Updates: This week we started our next Social Studies Unit on Inventors and inventions. The students saw a video clip about examples of students around the country who have noticed a problem in their life and decided to invent something to fix it, including “sun muffs,” a “hamster helmet,” and even a “trash can catapult.” We read about inventors who, had they not made the choices they did or try to problem solve, we would not have had some delicious and fun inventions in our lives like popsicles and trampolines. We will continue this unit with review of grammar skills, including capitalization, punctuation, and paragraph spacing. We will also use our new fluency skills and practice “chunking” phrases while we read our new nonfiction books during Guided Reading time. The students are very excited to read their chapter books to you during our Parent- Teacher- Student conferences,. They had some practice this week reading to a few teacher visitors that the students requested. We ended this week with a Dr. Seuss day celebration including reading with our upper grade friends, a book scavenger hunt in the Media Center, and a few visitors! Next week will be the start of our next trimester. We have had some discussions around what our goals will be for the final trimester of the 3rd grade year. 3M also gets to start off the trimester with a privilege. On Monday, March 5th, the students have a stuffed animal day and a choice time! Keep up the great work everyone! Upcoming events & Reminders:
Dr. seuss day activities and visitors!INFORMATION CHAPTER BOOK PRESENTATIONS!Academic Updates: The third graders did it! They finished their chapter books! They’ve worked so hard the past couple weeks, and they should be very proud of themselves. Our next writing unit will be Opinion and Persuasive writing. We continued to work on our fluency during Literacy Centers as well, with a focus on Reading Comprehension and “chunking” phrases and words with purpose. Making sure to emphasize words, and pause in the correct places in order to get the right point across. We also created our ELA/Social Studies and Math/Science goals for the next trimester, and have practiced using the CAFÉ (Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency, and Expand Vocabulary) Reading board to our advantage so that we can progress towards our ELA goal, by thinking about what to do while independent reading each day in order to get to where we want to be by the end of the trimester. We had a very eventful Friday before Winter Break. The K- 8th graders of H.E.S. partnered up with a buddy grade, and joined in a sled making/ racing competition. There was a lot of great teamwork and creative design that went into the making of these fantastic sleds. The judges gave points for creativity, durability, and distance. Altogether it was a great way for the kids to work with the older grades for a common purpose, and to get outside and support each other in their races. Upcoming events & Reminders:
*Please have your child bring in gloves, boots, a winter coat, and snow pants each day. *Please have your child bring their recorders to school the Tuesday after break! native american village presentations! They did an excellent job :)Full school february privilege- sled creations and races!Academic Updates:
Wow it’s been a busy week! I hope you all enjoyed the snow day! Luckily even with the snow day, delayed opening, and half day this week, we were still able to get our learning in. This week the students learned about a new Language Skill called Subordinating Conjunctions, a fancy phrase meaning something that combines two parts of a sentence, by using words like “after,” “although.” and “then.” The students worked hard to understand this complicated topic. We will continue to practice this. During Writing, we went over our Rough Drafts with our “Third Grade Checklists” focusing on the organization and structure of our writing. Soon we will get into illustrating and adding text features to our chapter books. The third graders are working so hard! They should be very proud of themselves! Reading time has been spent focusing on using our own books to find examples of ways the author uses text features to add more information to their books, so that in turn the students can do the same in their own writing. Upcoming events & Reminders:
*Please have your child bring in gloves, boots, a winter coat, and snow pants each day. Academic Updates:
The third graders should be very proud of themselves for all of the hard work they did this week. Most of them have completed their rough drafts of their Information Writing chapter books! A lot of work went into these, learning how to research, take notes, elaborate on the information given, and most recently, creating a book using all of the elements of an Information writing piece, (like interesting title, captivating introduction, text features, etc.) This week was full of new learning and a lot of writing. During Social Studies, we focused on our Native American villages, using what the students have learned about the Cherokee, Iroquois, Hopi, and Sioux tribes to create their own version of life as a Native American. The students need to create a visual, by using a variety of materials to express what the Native Americans wore, what their homes were like, the food they ate, and much more. They have been very helpful with each other and have been working on their group skills. We will be completing these projects in the near future, and will begin to delve more into learning about notable people and inventors during Social Studies. Both third grade homerooms also made it to the top of their token jars this week! Upcoming events & Reminders:
Academic Updates: We’ve had a week full of Reading and Writing Workshops. During Writing, we focused on our Information Chapter books. We’ve continued to practice using our elaboration skills, by either adding more details or including transition words like “also, because, and for example” into our writing. Many of the students have already started to type up their writing pieces. Reading centers have been filled with conversations about the Civil Rights Movement and activists like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr. We read the books Boycott Blues: How Rosa Parks Inspired a Nation by Andrea Davis Pinkney and If a Bus Could Talk: A Story of Rosa Parks by Faith Ringgold. Both third grade classes had fantastic questions and in-depth conversations about this time period. We then compared/ contrasted the two books, talking about the theme, characters, and setting. During centers, we also started practicing our next spelling patterns, and are continuing to work on our fluency by thinking about the way we read out loud. Attached is a calendar for the months of January and February. As a grade, we do not give any required homework, but it is expected that the students try to read a little each night. These calendars can give you some fun ideas to incorporate literacy in your day! Upcoming events & Reminders:
*(you can also see their "Power of Yet" t-shirts we made) Academic Updates:
Happy New Year Everyone! We’ve had a busy two weeks back, and have already accomplished a lot, in spite of the many half days, snow days, and extra activities going on. During Centers, the students have completed their first information writing pieces about “How to build a snowman.” The students focused on picturing each step and talking it out as a way to brainstorm before writing their draft. This helped a lot! Fluency was recently our new addition to the Literacy Centers, where the students read a variety of passages, while thinking about not only WHAT they are reading, but HOW they should read it, with expression, pausing at punctuation, etc. During Writing, we are continuing through the Writing Process for our Information Writing pieces on their topic of choice. We’ve worked on separating each question they have about the topic onto a separate page, and making sure to take notes as we read. Social Studies is filled with information reading as well. The students are in the process of brainstorming ways to create their Native American villages based on their tribe and the information they’ve learned about each culture. Upcoming events & Reminders:
Thank you family and friends for joining us on our maker space/ literacy gallery day! The third graders worked so hard and were very happy with the turnout!
Academic Updates: We’re officially done with our Winter Track My Progress! I know that must be a relief for the students. They did a nice job trying their best to stay on track during academic times. This week we’ve learned about Verb tenses during language. The students had the opportunity to show the class “actions” as we practiced explaining things like “he jumped” or “she clapped.” At Reading time, we worked on pulling evidence from the text to support a statement. We’ve been using this information that we know about the characters to create our own journals from the perspective of either Anna or Caleb in Sarah, Plain and Tall. The students have been very enthusiastic about making these, especially because we will get the chance to make the pages look “old” as our book takes place over 100 years ago. Our “Family Totem Poles” are coming along great! The third graders have really worked hard to create them. Both third grade classes filled up their token jar, and were able to celebrate in their own way. Upcoming events & Reminders:
*Please make sure your child brings a jacket to school. They do not have to wear their jacket for the entire recess, but they do need to bring it outside in case they get cold. The third graders got their morning workout in with Mrs. White showing us how to use Tabata in the classroom. This is a series of 20 second exercises with a break in between each interval. The students got really into it!
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June 2018
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