Third Grade News
February 2015
Important Information
Conferences are Coming!
Look for an email/or paperwork that will be coming for conference sign up. Remember the slots are first come first serve. Early release days will be February 25th and 26th.
Relay for Life
'Coins for a Cause' February 17 - 20
Social Studies Update
Mrs. Donat
Thurgood Marshall
Lyndon B. Johnson
Eleanor Roosevelt
Mrs. Lee
Cesar Chavez
Thurgood Marshall
Lyndon B. Johnson
Mrs. Thomason/Mrs. Packard
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Cesar Chavez
Thurgood Marshall
Mrs. Wieseman
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 newsl
On a different note, we loved seeing all of the African American Stamp projects. It is always so interesting to see who the students choose and learn about new influential people. Thank you for supporting the students at home as they researched their own hero.
Investigating Science
Our next unit in Science will focus on Heat! The students will categorize ways to produce heat energy such as burning, rubbing (friction), and mixing one thing with another. They will understand how to use thermometers to measure the changes in temperatures of water (hot, cold, warm) over time. Numerical data will be used to describe and compare objects and events. Insulation will be investigated along with the affects of heating and cooling. Students will investigate the transfer of heat energy from the sun to various materials. They will identify and practice safety procedures in manipulating science materials and equipment. Throughout the unit there will be various classwork grades, quizzes and a final test. **The final test date will be announced through email and your child's agenda. As always, you can help your child reread the material in the science textbook or work through the workbook pages together for extra practice.
Math Corner
Fraction Action!
Students are going to be learning to divide a shape into equal parts and identify the fractional pieces. Students will also be learning to identify fractions on a number line and compare fractions with either like numerators or like denominators. Students will be taught how to draw a picture and shade a certain fraction of the shape in order to compare the fractions.
** See if your child can spot fractions in real life situations such as having pizza for dinner. Ex. How many pieces did we eat? How many pieces were there total? What fraction of the pizza was eaten? You could also use sharing as a way to look at fractions. Ex. If your brother has 2 out of your 8 cars, what fraction of the cars does your brother have?
** You could also visit the following site for additional fraction help
http://www.ixl.com/math/grade-3/identify-fractions-on-number-lines
Although we are not explicitly still teaching geometry, we are still working daily with the vocabulary of quadrilaterals. **We will test on fractions and geometry the first week in March. Please look for an email and/or your child's agenda book closer to time for an exact date.
Reading Rocks
We will continue our American Hero Biography rotation as integrated reading and social studies lessons. We will learn about the heroes individually, and then begin comparing and contrasting heroes based on character traits, accomplishments, childhood up-bringing, and causes they fought for. We will be answering constructive response questions comparing the heroes and supporting thinking by pulling evidence directly from the texts. This will help students prepare for the Georgia Milestones as they learn strategies on how to respond by citing text evidence and explaining their thinking. We will be implementing the R.A.C.E. strategy to developing solid constructive responses. The following helps you understand R.A.C.E.
Restate the question in statement form.
Answer the question.
Cite the evidence from the text.
Explain your answer.
This test is new for all of us. We are doing our best to prepare students for a successful testing experience. Lots of modeling will be taking place in class with teacher read alouds, and we will step by step the process and strategies. Mini lessons will include : How to turn a question into a statement, identifying what the question is asking the reader to answer by identifying key words, Using stems to cite evidence (The author states, according to the article, In paragraph 1, etc.), and how to explain your answer straight to the point by staying on the topic of the question.
Writing for Success
In writing we are working on our Informational/Research writing where students will be guided into producing a five paragraph writing sample on one of the American heroes we have studied in class. Although the majority of the work (all of the writing) will be done at school, those that do not finish their research at school may be asked to complete it at home. If so, please feel free to help guide your Online Research Library via their eclass accounts to complete their research. They will also use the online American hero readers. Remember, all you have to do is type the hero’s name into the search bar and you’ll have access to the online book. Some of the databases we’ll be using: Kids Search, Pebble.Go Biographies, Biographies (Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc.), & Freedom Flix.
We will move from that into understanding and creating responses to DBQ’s, document based questions. Our goal is 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 Assessments since each subject/section will require some type of constructed response. We are working this unit into our informational writing unit since the end results are informational writing samples.
Grammar Fun
Our next unit in grammar will be focused on understanding coordinating and subordinating conjunctions and the difference between the two. Understanding the difference between the two types of conjunctions as well as grasping when to use one versus the other will really help develop our 3rd graders writing skills.
Coordinating conjunctions are words that can join words, phrases or sentences. We use the acronym FANBOYS to help us remember the coordinating conjunctions.
For And Nor But Or Yet So
Subordinating conjunctions are words that join a dependent and an independent clause and establishes a relationship between the two. Some of the more common subordinating conjunctions are: since, because, although, though, and until.
Another skill that we will tackle these nine weeks will be to review possessive nouns. As students understand the importance of punctuation they tend to get a little bit “apostrophe happy”. Our goal is have students practice using apostrophe’s correctly and understand that it shows possession and not plurality.
Have your child practice writing words that end in the letter s. Throw in some possessives as well as plural nouns and make sure they are not putting in apostrophes incorrectly. Hopefully you’ll be pleasantly surprised by your child’s grammar knowledge!
Your child will get a lot of practice with all of these skills at school. However, if you feel like they need a bit more try this link for subordinating and coordinating conjunctions:
http://grammar.yourdictionary.com/parts-of-speech/conjunctions/conjunction-exercises.html