Mrs. Reynolds' 3rd Grade Newsletter
January 15, 2015
Week 18
The kiddos are back and their brains have been working super hard, this second week back since our break. Tomorrow will end our 2nd nine weeks and our first semester this year. Boy how fast has this year has gone! It's amazing how much they have grown in this short time. Just a quick reminder that this Monday is Martin Luther King holiday and students will be off for the holiday. Enjoy your three day weekend.
Up Coming Events @ Dodd
Monday January 19th - Martin Luther King Holiday - no school
Tuesday January 20th - Wylie Way - "A Day of Grit" activity
Friday January 23rd - Dino Beat 9 week recognition's
Reading and Writing
This week students have worked super hard using their P.I.R.A.T.E strategies to become super reading detectives. They are learning, rather quickly, how to search within their reading stories to find text evidence to support their answers to very challenging questions. They have read about hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods to support their social studies unit and to help prepare for their unit test.
We are also using the next few weeks to learn about poetry. This week students have started to learn the language that goes along with reading, analyzing, and creating poems. Some of the terms we are discussing in class are: rhyme, sensory language, imagery, stanza, personification, metaphor, simile, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, and alliteration.
Students will read a variety of types of poems and learn how to answer questions based on their knowledge and understanding of poems. They will create their own poetry books, with a variety of poems, that they will write and illustrate.
Social Studies
Students have completed unit 1 and 3 on maps skills, natural disasters, and land-forms. They did a super job on their unit tests! We will begin unit 5 next week which will cover Cultural Characteristics of Communities. Tuesday, students will have an introduction to the 3rd nine weeks Wylie Way topic of "Grit and Preparation." Grit is trying your best and never giving up and preparation is setting up goals and doing things early that will help you in the future. One video link is on Kid President which happens to be a great hit with all the kids! Another is a study that proves that speaking positive will give positive results just because of a change in your mindset. Very interesting study that you have to check out. Check out the videos below!!
Spelling
This week was a review week for our spelling words. The students picked 10 of their spelling words to create expanded sentences that created imagery. Instead of writing: The dog ran. An expanded sentence with imagery would sound more like this: The fluffy brown dog ran quickly down the street chasing his master's car. Most of them did a nice job with this. Some are still working on using adjectives to describe their topics and give a much better mental image.