Third Grade News
January 2015
Important Information
- Please make sure to send your child dressed appropriately for the weather each day. Unless it is below 40 degrees outside, we will have recess.
- Multiplication Mania - Students brought home rules for our third grade multiplication ladder. Help them learn their facts at home by practicing or making flash cards. You could also download the app Math Fact Masters for fun games and activities.
- Please sign your child's report card envelope and send it back to school on Monday. Thanks!
Social Studies Update
Mrs. Donat
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Cesar Chavez
Thurgood Marshall
Lyndon B. Johnson
Eleanor Roosevelt
Mrs. Lee
Eleanor Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Cesar Chavez
Thurgood Marshall
Lyndon B. Johnson
Mrs. Thomason/Mrs. Packard
Lyndon B. Johnson
Eleanor Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Cesar Chavez
Thurgood Marshall
Mrs. Wieseman
Thurgood Marshall
Lyndon B. Johnson
Eleanor Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Cesar Chavez
The students will have a quiz on each hero as they finish learning about them. Then they will have a summative test over all of the heroes toward the end of the 9 weeks. Look for that date to come home in a future newsletter.
Investigating Science
We will complete our Soil unit next week. This week we went back over the Soil unit in our Science books on pages 54-69. Next week we will explore and learn more about the texture, particle size and color in soil, clay, loam and sand, using observational skills. Weathering and erosion will be explored to determine how water and wind can change rocks and soil over time using observations.
**The final Soil test will be on Friday January 16th.
Fossils will be our next unit. We will discuss what fossils are, learn about the kinds of fossils, how fossils change over time and we will make a fossil!
The Fossil Unit Test will be administered at the end of the fossil unit. Look for that date in an upcoming newsletter.
Science Lab Book Pages for Review
Soil Test Pages 24-33
Fossils Pages 34-41
Math Corner
**We will have a test on this unit next Tuesday, January 13
The students are ready for this test. The best way to help them prepare for this test is to remind them to read the question 3 times and to draw a picture to match the problem. If they follow those steps, they will do great!!!!!
Our next unit in math is going to be on Geometry. We will be focusing on the following quadrilaterals: rectangle, square, trapezoid, parallelogram, and rhombus.
The students will be expected to be able to classify these shapes based on their characteristics such as; a rectangle is a shape with 4 straight sides, 4 right angles and two sets of parallel lines. Did you know that a square can be classified as a rectangle? Ask your child how. Look for the date for this test in the February newsletter.
Reading Rocks
During the month of January we will be learning about how to do our two new reading assignments to complete with the homework article. These new assignments are asking questions about specific facts in the article and making inferences about facts in the article. When we ask questions about non-ficiton reading we are checking our understanding while we read by thinking past what the article states. Good questions to ask are questions that the reader does not already know the answer to and questions that are not answered within the text.
Making inferences is another way to say drawing conclusions from a reader reads. Inferences are what the author wants the reader to figure out on their own based on the words and ideas in the text. We call this reading between the lines. An example of an inference from the text, Wilma Unlimited, by Kathleen Krull is as follows.
"By a fraction of a second she was the first to blast across the finish line. " The inference a reader makes might be this: I know that a fraction is a part of whole and the author uses the measurement second. A second is an extremely short amount of a time and a fraction of a second is only a part of a second. Therefore I can infer that Wilma barely won the race because a fraction of a second is a very short amount of time.
We will also be focusing on the main idea of a passage or article. There has been some misconceptions about what a main idea is and is not. A main idea is not a topic, one word that tells about an entire passage. A main idea is not a sentence that starts with, "The article is about...". A main idea is a complete thought or idea that will tell someone who has not read the article enough information to know what the article is about based on evidence throughout the article. An example of an idea vs. a topic
main idea: Wilma Rudolph had strong willpower and discipline to walk again and do things that the doctors told her she would never do. She worked hard over time to overcome the challenges facing her polio diagnosis and not only walked, but became known as the fastest woman in the world.
topic: The article is about Wilma Rudolph.
Main ideas should not be answered by the title, but by the ideas repeated throughout the text.
We will be applying these inferencing, questioning, word-relating, and main idea identifying throughout the studies of our American Heroes biographies.
Writing for Success
Our next unit in writing will begin with a focus on narrative writing. We’ll be working towards telling a complete story, including a beginning, middle, end, and well-developed characters. Although this is something that we are revisiting, this time we’ll be working towards adding dialogue to our writing. Students will begin learning how to place proper punctuation, including quotation marks, in their writing. So, how can you help your child with this? We all love asking our kids about their day, right? Try asking them to write to you about one of the many conversations that happened throughout their day. It can be as simple as this:
The teacher said, “good morning class, how was your break?” My entire class started shouting our about the break, I said, “it was awesome!” After that, she decided to let us all take a turn and share what we liked about our break. When it was my turn, I said, “The best part about my break was playing with my new video games!”
Grammar Fun
Our next unit of study will focus on different types of sentences. Our goal is not only sentence identification, but also to improve our writing. By making students more aware of the types of sentences that they can create we can help them become stronger writers! The students are currently learning about imperative (command sentences), interrogative (asking sentences), declarative (telling sentences), and exclamatory (exciting sentences) sentences. You can have your child give you an example of each type after their reading homework at night to help them practice.
The students will also be working on understanding the difference between simple, compound, and complex sentences. Again, our goal is to have all students using these different types of sentences in their everyday writing. As you have probably noticed, this is part of each of our writing rubrics under the “style” section.
Below you will find clarification on the types of sentences:
A simple sentence, also called an independent clause, contains a subject and a verb, and it expresses a complete thought. Example: The dog barked.
A compound sentence contains two independent clauses joined by a conjunction. The conjunctions are as follows: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. Example: The dog barked, and the duck quacked.
A complex sentence has an independent clause joined by one or more dependent clauses. A complex sentence always has a subordinator such as because, since, after, although, or when (and many others) or a relative pronoun such as that, who, or which. Example: The students are studying because they have a test tomorrow.