Third Grade News
October 2015
Mark Your Calendars
Friday, October 9th - Field day! Don't forget to wear tennis shoes.
Monday, October 12th - No School!
Friday, October 16th - Report cards come home
Friday, October 30th - Wear PINK to support breast cancer awareness
**As we shared at the beginning of the year, we are working with flexible grouping to better meet the needs of each individual child. At the end of each quarter we will be reassessing groups and making some changes to better benefit the child. Look for a letter to come home on October 9th to confirm your child's group for the next nine weeks. Remember, all students are learning the same curriculum!
**Pumpkins needed. If you would be interested in donating a pumpkin to us, please contact your child's homeroom teacher.
Reading Rocks
The 25 Books Campaign Folders are filling up. Thank you for being supportive with this new initiative and happy reading to all students! If any student has challenges with finding books, please contact me so that we can discuss and solve the challenge.
Challenges: Log into EClasss- GO to leveled Readers: Locate your reading level and find a book to read. Please remember to encourage your child to complete one book per weekend! I would like to view the folder at the end of each month to make sure students are on track. We will have an ice cream social at the end of the 25 Books Campaign to celebrate meeting our goal to read and document twenty five in different genres!
We are ending the first nine weeks with Paul Revere Silversmith shop, a mini Paul Revere performance, Figurative Language Skit and Asking questions when we read. Please continue to read daily and write about what you read.
Extra, Extra Read All About It!
On Thursday, October 1, 2015, Mountain Park Elementary School and Cults Primary School in Scotland connected with each other to start a pen pal initiative. This experience will be exciting and rewarding. We are excited about sharing what we learned in school and we look forward to learning about the lessons that the students in Scotland are learning.
Please feel free to view the school website: http://cultsprimary.aberdeen.sch.uk/
Writing for Success
Now that we have an understanding of how to organize our thoughts by using paragraphs we have moved into turning that knowledge into narrative writing samples. Students have been working on taking huge “watermelon” ideas and turning them into more manageable “seed” ideas. Ask your child the difference between the two. These seed ideas are what we will be working to turn into our graded narrative samples for this quarter; this graded piece will be the second summative grade in writing this quarter. Students will work on creating a setting, characters, developing a plot, and of course organizing their stories with a clear beginning, middle and end.
Looking for a fun way to practice writing narratives? http://www.readwritethink.org/files/resources/interactives/comic/
This fun “comic creator” is a great way for students to practice prewriting for a narrative piece. You can access this page through the “links” on my teacher page. Just log onto eClass with your child, go to my teacher page, “2016 PACKARD.J THIRD GRADE CORE”, click on the computer to get to the links and look under the “Creative Writing” tab.
Grammar Fun
In grammar we are working on understanding subject and verb agreement, as well as pronoun and antecedent agreement. Following these skills we will begin working on regular and irregular plural nouns. This is not to say that we can abandon our work on nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns, proper nouns, regular and irregular past tense verbs and concrete and abstract nouns. The expectation is that after learning to identify and master these skills they become a part of your child’s writing. I will leave the fun practice links on my website in order for you to continue practicing those skills at home. I will also be adding practice sites to my page for you to practice these new skills.
Subject and verb agreement: Basic Rule. A singular subject (she, Bill, car) takes a singular verb (is, goes, shines), whereas a plural subject takes a plural verb.
Example: The list of items is/are on the desk.
If you know that list is the subject, then you will choose is for the verb.
Pronoun and antecedent agreement: A pronoun is a word used to refer to a noun mentioned earlier in the text. This noun is called the antecedent of the pronoun.
· Sara is a pretty girl. She also sings well. (Pronoun – she; antecedent – Sara)
Note that the pronoun must agree with its antecedent in number and person. That means if the antecedent is a singular noun, then the pronoun used to refer to it, too, should be singular in number.
Regular and irregular plural nouns: An irregular plural noun is an irregular noun in the plural form. An irregular noun is a noun that becomes plural by changing its spelling in other ways than adding an “s” or “es” to the end of the word. This change can happen in a variety of ways. Below you’ll find examples and guidelines to help you.
Math Corner
Commutative Property of Multiplication (It does not matter what order the factors are written in, the product will remain the same) Ex. 7x3=21 3x7=21 therefore, 7x3=3x7
Associative Property of Multiplication (You can group your factors differently and still get the same product) Ex. (3x2)x4=24 is the same as 3x(2x4)=24
Distributive Property of Multiplication (You can break up a factor into two smaller numbers to make the problem easier) Ex. 9x4 is the same as (5+4)x4 Therefore you can do (5x4)+(4x4)
We will also be studying the multiplication table to find patterns in the multiples; such as, a multiple of 2 will always be even, or when you multiply by 10 it is the same as counting by 10's.
Please visit my eclass page starting next week for more help with these concepts.
Investigating Science
In Science, conserving ecosystems is our next unit. The students will learn to explain the effects of pollution and humans on the environment, and the effects of pollution (littering) to the habitats of plants and animals. They will learn ways to protect the environment such as conservation of resources and recycling materials. They will identify various substances that contribute to the pollution of water and air and to the contamination of the environment, and explain how technology has altered the environment.
Rocks and Minerals will be the next unit. We will investigate the physical attributes of rocks and soils, compare and contrast rocks and minerals, determine the physical attributes of rocks and minerals using observations (shape, color, and texture), measurements, and simple tests (hardness). We will also compare and contrast the texture, particle size, and color in top soils (clay, loam, potting soil, sand) using observational skills. The students will classify rocks according to the manner in which they formed (igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic) and determine how water and wind can change rocks and soil over time using observation and research.
Word Study
Social Studies Update
The Roots of our Democracy was our Social Studies unit and we just completed that. The students learned about the political roots of our modern democracy in the United States of America. They identified the influence of Greek architecture such as columns on the Parthenon and the U.S. Supreme Court Building, la, and the Olympic Games on the present. They learned how to explain the ancient Athenians' idea that a community should choose its own leaders and how to compare and contrast Athens as a direct democracy and the United States as a representative democracy.