Mrs. Reynolds' 3rd Grade Newsletter
Week 15 December 9, 2015
Up Coming Events and Stories
December 10th - 3rd Grade Musical 7:00 pm - (Students arrive @ 6:30 pm)
December 11th - 3rd Grade Musical 7:30 am - (Students arrive @ 7:15 am)
December 16th - 3rd Grade Field Trip (send a sack lunch)
December 18th - 11:45 Holiday party and 12:30 Early Release (Send a sack lunch)
The party information on Sign Up Genius is for my homeroom students. Please be sure to sign up to help with the goodies.
Holiday Break - December 19 - January 3rd - Enjoy your holiday!
Up Coming Reading Stories:
Week 16 - Best Christmas Pageant Ever - Novel story
Week 17 - Helen Keller - Novel story
Week 18 - Out of This World - Texas Treasures
Procedural - How to activity
Our unit in Language Arts covers procedural texts, so next week we will be reading about the history of snowmen and then following directions to make our own snowmen. We are in need of some items so that we can all make our own snowman. Students have chosen an item to bring and it is written in their planners. I asked them to bring it by Friday, December 11th, so that if anyone forgets, they can bring it on Monday or I will go and buy what else is missing. If you are out and shopping this weekend, be sure to ask your kiddo what they said they could bring. Your donations are greatly appreciated. The kids are super excited to make their snowman treats. Because this is a procedural assignment, the kids can wait to eat them when they get home. If your child has a food allergy or can not eat our projects, then we can keep them for display for a few days. Just let me know if you don't want them to enjoy the treats.
Here are the items they will bringing: medium or large marshmallows (not jumbo), fudge icing, Karo syrup, pretzel sticks, Oreos,skinny fruit roll ups, black thin gel icing, and Rolo candy. ( I already have orange tic tacks and sticks to make them on.)
Reading and Target Reading
This week we read a fantasy story called Cook-a-Doodle-Doo! in our Texas Treasures book. Our skills focused on compare and contrast, idioms, multiple meaning words, problem and solution, and sequencing. Students worked with the following vocabulary words: tradition, magnificent, masterpiece, ingredient, recipe, and tasty. Unit 4 has us covering How to's and procedural reading and writing. This story is a great story to show how Rooster makes a strawberry shortcake with and without the help of her other barnyard friends.
In Target Reading we read an expository story called United States Mints. Students worked on editing and expanding sentences, adjectives, and proper nouns.
Writing and CUPS
We are continuing to write letters and have begun writing How to's. Students have written how to make a pizza and will create a few more samples this week and next. You may have seen a shift in CUPS practice and testing. Now that students have down what to look for in a sentence, they are creating their own sentences to apply the rules of editing and the skill of the week. Each CUPS test and weekly practice will require that students write their own sentences using the grammar rule of the week. Not only do we focus on the skill within editing sentences, they also complete work in their grammar skills books. Be sure that your child is completing their CUPS practice page so that they are ready for the the quiz on Fridays along with the application of the focus skills.
Social Studies
Spelling unit 15
This week's rule was diagraph blends. You will see an addition of homophones weekly to our spelling test. This week we have the following homophones to work with: hair, hare, to, too, and two. Please make sure to read the directions with your child weekly so that they are including the homophones with their practice and study habits. They will be tested on the meaning and spelling of the homophones each week, along with the words from their list.