Third Grade News
October Curriculum Update
Reading Workshop
We have spent the first weeks of our Reading Workshop leveling the students in the classroom and will now begin our usual conferences. These conferences are essentially conversations with your child about their reading and the skills we are learning in the mini-lesson. The units we are covering this month are “Building a Reading Life” and an introduction to “Following Characters into Meaning.” We are going to make sure we are in “just right” books and building our stamina for longer periods of reading.
Math
We are introducing ourselves to new terms and vocabulary in our addition and subtraction unit. We are going to continue to practice addition and subtraction two ways (the “Left to Right” and “Right to Left”). You will see us do a lot of practicing of these methods in school as well as on our homework. The students are going to be working with bar models to act as a visual for our one and two step word problems. Within the next two weeks we are also going to move into unit 3: "Multiplication and Division.” We will begin with correlations to addition and subtraction and review the multiplication facts of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 10.
Writing Workshop
We are currently in the midst of our first unit “Crafting True Stories.” The students are learning various strategies of personal narratives. Over the next month we will be taking our pieces through the writing process as we learn new skills through mini-lessons. As we build our writing stamina, we are employing strategies to make our stories come to life. Now that we selected a “small moment” we are going to add detail, dialogue, a strong ending and beginning and tell the story step-by-step.
Social Studies
We have introduced ourselves to the world of geography and maps. Using our classroom world map as a guide, we are going to continue to learn about the importance of location and how that affects the culture of people around the world. The students are going to be creating their own countries in which they will identify climate, culture, geography, and flag. They will present these to their classmates. We will continue to travel the world through our geography journal. We have already been to South Africa, Wales, and Israel.