Week 13: November 13-17

Week 13: November 13-17

Reminders:
11/20 -11/24 - Thanksgiving Break (No School)

12/7 - Toys for Tots Please send a new and unwrapped gift to donate.  Children will get a chance to drop their toy with local firefighters and Santa Claus.  

12/15 - Noon Dismissal for Winter Break


Reading: CHARACTER TRAITS and CHARACTER FEELINGS will be our big work in reading this week.  We will focus on reading carefully and thinking about what a character does, says and thinks to determine how they feel AND what kind of person they are.  This big thinking is called an inference.  

In class, students have worked wordless books to focus on character actions.  Wordless books are a great way to practice inferring character traits and feelings as the reader have to look closely and read the body language and actions of the characters to draw a conclusion.  



Homework:  We looked at this video clip and talked about what the words...
EVERY SINGLE DAY, NO MATTER WHAT would mean for our reading lives.  Volume matters.  Please make sure that reading happens at home, every single day- not matter what.  

Writing: Descriptive details will be one element of craft we will focus on this week.  We will look at how authors use simile, metaphor and beautiful adjectives to describe in great detail the parts of their story that they want a reader to experience.  Then, we will look at how an author might use a comeback line or repetition to drive home an idea in a story.  Friday, we shared America's White Table to talk about Veteran's Day.  We will revisit this text as one of mentor texts next week.  We are thankful to the Veteran's and families who joined us in celebrating and honoring those who have served our country.  They are inspiration to our learning and our writing.

Social Studies: We will wrap up our work on community and citizenship with lessons on DIGITAL CITIZENSHIP.  Students will complete these lesson on itsLearning (the districts digital curriculum platform).The lessons focus on the important BEs of being online..
be kind... be safe... be yourself.

Spelling:  Spelling tests are staggered this year.  If you haven't yet, you will soon receive an email from your child's spelling teacher letting you know about your child's spelling sort and test date.

Math: This week in math we will learn about graphs. We will study and understand the difference between a bar graph, double bar graph, pictograph, dot plot, frequency table, and tally chart. We will work to pull information from the graphs and draw conclusions based on the data. Each day, we will create one or more of these graphs to practice. Below, are pictures of each type of graph we will learn this week:

                  Bar Graph                                                          Double Bar Graph

              Dot Plot                                                                  

                                     




Pictograph









Frequency Table and Tally Chart















For homework this week, we will have a worksheet come home on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night. We will have our usual fast facts on Friday.

Science: In science this week, we will continue discussing potential and kinetic energy. We have been discussing mechanical energy using real world examples. During the later part of the week we will get into thermal 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. 

Week 33: April 24th-28th

Reminders/Important Dates:  

• Monday, May 8th:  Math STAAR for 3rd (and 4th graders)
• Tuesday, May 9th:  Reading STAAR for 3rd (and 4th graders)
• Monday, May 22nd:  Publishers Picnic
• Thursday, May 25th:  3rd grade Chariot Races
• Friday, May 26th:  Winds of Time school-wide parade 

Reading:  We are diving into cause and effect this week.  While cause/effect is something we experience in our daily lives, identifying cause/effect within a text is tricky.  We will spend the week practicing strategies to identify cause/effect relationships in both fiction and nonfiction texts.  Our readers will gain a better grasp of the importance of identifying causes and effects throughout an informational article and/or a plot.  Doing so will answer questions like "Why did the character react that way?" or "What caused a character to do ___?"    

We will also spend part of our language arts block working with online tools called Quizlet and Epic. These resources can be found under the "Language Arts Website" link on the right side of this blog and can be accessed both during and after school. Please feel free to ask your child about these resources and use them at home as well.  

We are thankful to have the opportunity to work with reliable technology thanks to our HCE PTA!  Our students have been able to log into our Chromebooks and work with these resources daily. We are beyond grateful for these additions to our classrooms! 

Writing:  We will be wrapping up our letter writing unit this week.  We will begin this week with writing a letter to a community worker.  Students will write a letter to a police officer, fireman, or nurse/doctor in our community.  We will practice addressing envelopes as well during this process.  The publishing process will start mid-week with revising and editing. We will celebrate our letters and share with our classroom community on Friday.  

Spelling:  Students will take a test this Thursday, April 27th.  Next week, April 28th- May 4th, teachers will be looking for students to apply these spelling patterns correctly in their reading and writing work. 

Social Studies:  We will continue to learn about Texas cultural celebrations this week.  We have and will continue to use the online component of our Studies Weekly social studies resource to read articles about various celebrations in Texas.  We will dive a little deeper this week in certain cultural celebrations to learn about what types of foods, activities, and dances are celebrated.  The students are very interested in these celebrations! 

Math: We have now entered our STAAR Camp Unit. STAAR Camp is where we will be reviewing all of the skills covered this year in preparation for the May 8th, Math STAAR test. The main focus of this week's review will be on place value, comparing numbers, word problems, and graphing.  Homework this week will include practice problems in a STAAR-like format.  This homework is a great way to review old concepts at home. 

Thanks to PTA, we have been provided with new Chromebooks in 3rd grade. These new computers have allowed us to provide class time to work on Dreambox. This program allows for individualized lessons that are leveled to your child needs. Think Through Math is another program your child can log on and is a great review of past math concepts.  These can be accessed at home.  Your child has been provided with login information.  In addition, their username and password information was sent home on our red spring information/conference form.  Please encourage your mathematician to try these out at home as well as show you what they've been working on at school.    

Science:  We have moved from measuring temperature with a thermometer to other units of measurement. We ended last week by discussing the difference between mass and weight and determining appropriate units to measure mass and weight. We want your child familiar with both customary and metric units since we use both.  We will begin our week by looking at customary and metric units of capacity and volume. We will then transition to measuring on a ruler looking at 1/4 and 1/2 inch. 

Week 28: March 20 - 24

Week of March 20-24
Reminders:  Third graders will have a visit from our school counselor, Mrs. Chvatal this week.  Her guidance lesson will focus on helping students think through problem solving conflicts with friends.

Reading: As we transition back to work and off of a break- we will take the week to review what good readers do and reestablish reading workshop expectations.  Some of the areas we will focus our attention this week are:

• A community of readers cares for thier books and shares titles with one another
• Good readers pick books that meet their needs and wants
• Good readers think about what they are reading and stop and jot to note and remember
• Good readers keep track of their reading and read from a variety of genres

Writing: Students have drafted essays.  This week we will focus on craft elements that help make an essay fantastic.  Specifically, we will focus on elements that grab a reader's attention and keep them engaged in a text.  First, we will focus on elements a writer can add to their introduction to hook a reader.  Some authors use quotes, others facts, or even a small moment from their lives.  Then, we will focus on using transition words.   Finally, we will focus on our conclusions and helping one another during writer's workshop think through effective ways to restate the claim.
This is BIG work.  Encourage your writer that writing is a process.  Slow and steady wins the race!

Spelling: New words will come home on Thursday, March 23.  They will be tested on Thursday, March 30.  March 31-April 6, teachers will be looking for students to apply those spelling patterns correctly in their reading and writing work.

Social Studies: As we enter into the last grading cycle, we want to make sure that we end our year as strong as it started.  We will spend this week reviewing our class contract and practicing routines and procedures that help our classroom community be a place that is safe and conducive for learning and risk taking.

Math: On Monday, we will finish up our unit on graphing. Before spring break, our students created a survey and they surveyed another third grade class. They took the data from the survey and created one of the graphs we have been studying in class. Starting on Tuesday, we will be jumping into our geometry unit. We will be working to identify 2D shapes. We will identify sides and vertices on these polygons. On Thursday and Friday, we will begin classifying 3D shapes. We will categorize them by pyramids, prisms, and curved surfaces. This week, we will have our usual homework on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Our fast facts quiz will be on Friday.



Science: During our science time we will start learning about the moon. On Tuesday and Wednesday, we will be discussing the relationship between the sun, moon, and Earth. On Wednesday, we will also make our vocabulary cards and send home a review for the solar system unit. Towards the end of our week, we will learn about the planets. As we are studying the planets, we will learn the order and the important characteristics of each. We will teach the students a fun acronym to help them remember the correct order of the planets from the sun.  It is...."My Very Excellent Mother Just Served Us Nachos!"

The Week 2/22 - 2/26

Hello Parents! We have a very busy and exciting week!

-Tuesday, February 23rd is the Book Fair and PTA Dinner at 5:30-7:30

-Wednesday, February 24th is Breakfast with Buddies - from 7:15-8:00 your child can browse the Book Fair and enjoy a doughnut provided by Dad's Club. This day is also Duncan/Ford time to go to the Book Fair. Our class will be in the library from 9:15 - 9:45. Please send money if you would like your child to purchase any books.

-Thursday, February 25th is a 1:30 Dismissal Day - Please send a handwritten note if your child will have a change of transportation.



Math- In math this week, we will continue learning about graphs. Last week we worked on pictographs, bar graphs, and tally charts. We will finish up our study with dot plots. On Thursday and Friday, we will begin our unit on fractions. We will start our lesson with unit fractions and on Friday we will talk about non unit fractions. On Monday, you child will bring home a POTW that is due on Friday. The homework this week will be a review on perimeter, area, and graphing. The fast facts quiz will be on Friday.

Science- On Thursday, your child will be taking a quiz on the flowchart that was sent home on Tuesday. The quiz will be the exact same flowchart and your child will need to fill in the information using the word bank. Leading up to the quiz, we will continue talking about natural resources (sun, soil, plants, animals, coal, natural gas, minerals, water) and how to conserve our natural resources.

REDUCE, REUSE, RECYCLE VIDEOS

The Three R's

Going Green Song