Third Grade News
March 2015
Important Information
March 20th - Report Cards Come Home
March 20th - Third Grade Program at 9:00
March 23-27 - Relay for Life Week
**Look for news to come home explaining the theme for each day
Social Studies Update
Our next Social Studies unit will focus around economics. Students will be learning lessons on importing and exporting as well as buying and selling. They will learn about being a consumer and a producer and figuring out the benefits of spending and saving. This is always a fun unit as the children are very enticed by the conversations about money!
Investigating Science
The Heat unit is complete. We will take the heat test at the beginning of 4th quarter. Be on the lookout for a test date. There will be some review prior to the test. In the meantime, here are some additional practice test websites to use to review Heat! Remember to continue to use the Science Books, the Lab Books and the Science vocabulary cards. If for any reason the book does not pull up online, your child is more than welcome to bring it home.
http://www.proprofs.com/quiz-school/story.php?title=science-heat-test
http://www.softschools.com/quizzes/science/heat/quiz765.html
Our final Science unit will be Magnets! Investigations will be conducted to find common objects that are attracted to magnets and how magnets attract and repel each other. We will distinguish between magnetic and nonmagnetic metals. A temporary magnet will be constructed and the students will describe the process of constructing a magnet. Students will identify and explain ways in which representations or models do and do not match the original object. Magnet vocabulary words are attract, magnet, magnetism, magnetic poles, permanent magnets, temporary magnets, compass, lodestone, magnetic field and repel.
Math Corner
The last nine weeks of school is devoted to all things related to measurement; including, time, length, weight, volume and perimeter.
The students already have some understanding of perimeter, the distance around a shape, from our conversations on area and through our daily calendar pieces. Students will be working with all types of shapes to find the perimeter by adding together the length of all sides. Students will also have to find the missing length of sides when given the total perimeter of a shape. Through exploration students will see that shapes with the same area can have different perimeters, and shapes with the same perimeters could have different areas.
Following perimeter we will be moving on to elapsed time. Please help your child get ready for this unit by refreshing them on how to tell time on an analog clock. The following websites are a great place to refresh this skill.
Reading Rocks
Ready, Set, Read!!!! We are working on comparing and contrasting texts, documents, and charts this quarter. We will focus on using key vocabulary while comparing (like, similar, same as, in relation to, both, etc.) and contrasting (unlike, different, difference, however, more than, on the other hand, etc.). Students will be explicitly taught how to organize the information from a text or chart to answer comparison and contrast questions, and then take that information and apply proper vocabulary to completely answer the questions. Much of our reading will be focused on twin texts, a paired (two) combination of fiction and non-fiction related to the same topic. An example may be a passage on the formation and description of the Rocky Mountains, and then a passage about a child's vacation sight-seeing through the Rocky Mountains. By pairing texts, students will be able to identify these comparisons and differences. This will also be great practice for the Georgia Milestones test, as much of the practice will focus on twin texts and pulling information from both passages to answer questions.
Once we have established the key vocabulary, organization strategies and structures to compare and contrast, we will apply that knowledge to practicing constructive and extended response questions using the R.A.C.E. strategy (Restate the question, Answer the question, Cite evidence from the text, Explain your answer). Both constructive and extended response questions will be part of the reading Milestones test.
What can you do at home to help your child master these strategies? The one best thing we can encourage all of our kids to do is read. It is important that they are building stamina to get through texts, both of interest, and not of interest to the student. On top of making sure your child is reading at home, have your child practice using vocabulary to compare and contrast objects, magazine articles, headlines, nutrition labels, etc. Below is an example, along with a complete list of vocabulary to practice using.
Key Words to Compare- like, same, both, the same as, similar, in the same way, most important, similarly, as, too, have in common, as well as
Key Words to Contrast- although, however, differ, unlike, even though, yet, but, instead, on the other hand, whereas, while, unless, the opposite of
Example: Show your child a grapefruit and an orange. Have your child use vocabulary in complete sentences to compare and contrast the two fruits.
Show your child the movie listings from the newspaper. Have your child compare and contrast the movies, show times, or locations of movies showing at different theaters in the area.
Show your child a nutrition label for two different types of soup. Have your child read the labels and compare and contrast the ingredients, daily intake values, etc. of the two soups.
This can be fun!!!! Hands' on experiences will definitely be more memorable to your child.
Below are some websites that will help your child practice comparing and contrasting passages and use the correct language.
http://www.studyzone.org/testprep/ela4/m/comparecontrastl2.cfm
http://www.fcatexplorer.com/media/parent/tiplister/flash/tip114a.swf
Writing for Success
In writing we will continue to work on understanding and answering DBQ’s. Since our writing sample took a bit longer than we had planned, we have many lessons that we have not yet had an opportunity to teach. As we shared in our February newsletter, we’d like to focus on understanding and creating responses to DBQ’s, document based questions, in order to better prepare them to create written responses to questions based on some form of document. The documents can be images, graphs, historical document samples, etc. The questions require students to pull from their knowledge as well as the document to produce a constructed response. This type of question and answer not only demands a higher level of thinking but it also better prepares students for what they might see on the Georgia Milestone Assessment.
We will also continue to better prepare our students for the upcoming Georgia Milestones Assessment by exposing the students to constructed response type questions. Revisiting informational writing allows us to easily work this test prep into our lessons. We’ll work our way through these questions by analyzing the questions and then teaching students how to write to a prompt. To find out more about this new assessment please visit:
Grammar Fun
Conjunctions
Types of Sentences
http://www.quia.com/pop/35934.html?AP_rand=1902970360
http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/clubhouse/index_pre.html
Simple, Compound or Complex Sentences
http://www.quia.com/quiz/2922118.html
At the beginning of this month we completed the summative writing assessment for this grading period. If your child did not score as well as they are capable of scoring, your opportunity for a retest will be this next week, between Monday and Wednesday (the end of the grading period is Friday, March13th). If you are requesting a retake, please ask your child’s teacher for a specific date. Feel free to use the links above as a fun way to review these skills. In class we will continue to review these skills, specifically throughout our weekly Mountain Language assignments.
The skill that we will focus on in class is using comparative and superlative adjectives and adverbs. Hopefully you’ve seen a preview of these skills in our word study lessons, using the suffixes er and est. Basically making sure that students know when to correct form and making sure they spell them correctly.
For example: My doll is pretty. Angel's doll is prettier. Jessie's doll is the prettiest of all.
Our Spelling City link is a great way to practice these skills.
Word Study
The test for the suffixes unit will be on Thursday March 12th. Please review the suffixes:
-less= "without", -ful="full of", -er ="more", -est, "most", -ly="in a ____ way or manner"
The next unit is the Latin Number Prefix unit. We will focus on:
uni-, unit- = "one" examples: uniform, unify, unique, unison
bi- = "two". Some examples are: bicycle, bilingual, bifocal, biweekly
tri- = "three". Some examples are: tripod, trio, triplets, triatholon
We will review and test on those three