January/February
LITERACY
READING- DETERMINING IMPORTANCE
WE WILL CONTINUE TO MAKE MEANING STRATEGICALLY BY LEARNING HOW TO FIND THE MAIN IDEA OF THE TEXTS WE READ AND THE EVENTS OR IDEAS THAT ARE TRULY SIGNIFICANT TO WHAT WE ARE READING. THE STUDENTS WILL LEARN WHAT IT MEANS TO SUMMARIZE AND HOW DETERMINING IMPORTANCE IS KEY TO WRITING A SUMMARY ABOUT SOMETHING WE HAVE READ OR WATCHED. WE WILL DISCUSS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EVENTS THAT ARE SIGNIFICANT AND EVENTS THAT ARE JUST SOMETHING WE HAPPENED TO ENJOY MOST IN THE STORY.
WRITING- INFORMATIONAL WRITING AND SUMMARIZATION
WE ARE WRAPPING UP OUR UNIT ON INFORMATIVE WRITING. STUDENTS HAVE DONE AN AMAZING JOB WITH THEIR FINAL DRAFTS AND IT IS CLEAR THAT STUDENTS ARE EXPERTS AT MANY THINGS! THEY HAVE DONE A GOOD JOB IMPLEMENTING STRUCTURES OF A NON-FICTION, ORGANIZING, AND ELABORATING ON THEIR WRITTEN PIECES.
WE WILL BE FOCUSING ON RESPONDING TO SUMMARIES THROUGH OUR READING AND ALSO PROMPTS. STUDENTS WILL BE LEARNING HOW TO USE THE STRUCTURE OF NAME IT, VERB IT, BIG IDEA TO HELP WRITE A STRONG TOPIC SENTENCE. THEY WILL ALSO FOCUS ON GREAT WAYS TO CAPTURE BIG IDEAS AND ENSURE THAT OUR SUMMARIES ARE WRITTEN IN THEIR OWN WORDS. ADDITIONALLY, THEY ARE MAKING SURE TO ADD TRANSITIONS SO THEIR THOUGHTS ARE ORGANIZED AND WELL WRITTEN.
MATH-
PERIMETER, ANGLES AND AREA: 2-D GEOMETRY AND MEASUREMENT
THIS UNIT DEVELOPS IDEAS ABOUT THE ATTRIBUTES OF 2-D OBJECTS AND HOW THEY ARE CLASSIFIED (THE DEFINITION OF A TRIANGLE, RECTANGLE, AND SQUARE), LINEAR MEASUREMENT (WHICH INCLUDES PERIMETER), AREA, AND THE MEASUREMENT OF ANGLES. USING THE CONTEXT OF PERIMETER, STUDENTS ARE CONTINUING TO DEVELOP THEIR ABILITY TO USE MEASUREMENT TOOLS AS THEY WORK ON ACCURATE LINEAR MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES. STUDENTS LEARN TO IDENTIFY ANGLES BY THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO A RIGHT ANGLE. (IS THE ANGLE GREATER THAN, LESS THAN, OR EQUAL TO A 90-DEGREE ANGLE?) THEY ARE ALSO DEVELOPING AN UNDERSTANDING OF AREA AS THE AMOUNT OF FLAT SPACE AN OBJECT COVERS AND DETERMINE THE AREA OF 2-D SHAPES IN SQUARE UNITS.
SCIENCE- MATTER
THROUGHOUT EVERY SCIENCE UNIT, ALL THIRD GRADERS ARE USING CRITICAL THINKING TO DEMONSTRATE THE PROCESS OF INQUIRY. BY EXPERIMENTING, READING ARTICLES, DISCUSSING AND REFLECTING. STUDENTS WILL LEARN THE SCIENTIFIC PROCESS AND HOW THAT IS ESSENTIAL WITH THEIR NEW LEARNING WITH IDENTIFYING THE STATES OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF MATTER. THROUGH FOSS INVESTIGATIONS, VIDEOS, LITERATURE AND CLASS ACTIVITIES, STUDENTS WILL DISCUSS DIFFERENT ATTRIBUTES OF SOLIDS, LIQUIDS, GASES AND PLASMA WHILE USING EVIDENCE TO DEVELOP A SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION AROUND HOW HEATING AND COOLING AFFECTS STATES OF MATTER. OUR GRADE-LEVEL SCIENCE DAY LATER IN THE YEAR WILL ALLOW STUDENTS TO PRACTICE ANALYZE, INTERPRET AND WRITE OBSERVATIONS ABOUT MATTER AS IT FREEZES AND MELTS, AND BOILS AND CONDENSES.
DATES TO REMEMBER
SOCK HOP: FEBRUARY 3
SCIENCE DAY: FEBRUARY 10
VALENTINE PARTY: FEBRUARY 14
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DAY/NO SCHOOL FOR KIDDOS: FEBRUARY 17
PRESIDENT’S DAY/NO SCHOOL: FEBRUARY 20
November/December Newsletter
Reading
“Questioning is the strategy that keeps students engaged. When students ask questions, they clarify understanding and forge ahead to make meaning. Asking questions is at the heart of thoughtful reading.” Harvey and Goudvis
In class our emphasis will be deciding what is the difference between thin (factual) and thick (inferential) questions. Students will compose questions by thinking aloud while reading. Students observe how to gather information about the topic and add it their writing, then form answers or additional questions. Students will practice composing thin and thick questions and monitor their comprehension in large and small-group reading.
Writing- Informational Writing
What makes writing worth reading?
Each day we think about what we could include in our writing to make it worth reading. Our class is always trying to create meaning strategically with structure and craft. Through the study of mentor texts, we continually jot down inspirational words or phrases and are trying to figure out how to add our own unique craft to our informational pieces.
We will focus on elaboration, understanding how to include more than just facts, and how to make writing even better by continuing to add various structures, text features and paragraphs that link ideas together to make sense. We’re making sure to check our work every day to see what specific areas we need to focus on, and what weekly goals we can set to improve in those areas. The students know that strong writing does not happen overnight, and it’s important to continue to analyze different parts of our writing (leads, transitions, spelling, etc.) to improve along the way.
Math: Addition, Subtraction, and the Number System
Students will practice and refine their strategies for solving addition problems with three-digit numbers to 400 and subtraction problems with two- and three-digit numbers to 300. In addition to solving removal problems, they expand their understanding of subtraction as they solve comparison problems and problems in which they find the missing part of a whole. They will increase their understanding of place-value as they extend their work into three-digit numbers up to 1,000 and study the structure of 1,000.
Social Studies: Geography
Our geography unit will include learning activities that help students use various types of geographic tools to develop spatial thinking, and global awareness. We will focus on being able to read and interpret information from geographic tools. Our attention will be finding oceans and continents, major countries, bodies of water, mountains, urban areas, the state of Colorado and neighboring states on a map.
October Newsletter
READING
We are wrapping up our unit on activating and connecting. Our last area of focus was to connect, extend and challenge our new thinking with articles and stories we read. After fall break we will be focusing on the strategy of questioning. Your reader will understand that good readers ask questions before, during, and after they are reading and that some questions will not have answers provided within the text.
WRITING
For Writer’s Workshop we are continuing to work on personal narratives. Students have done a fantastic job elaborating on their writing through “shows not tells” and learning how to implement various ending types. We will be finishing up our personal narratives in the next couple of weeks. Students will finalize and publish their favorite story for this unit as a wrap up. We will also work on the structure of writing and how that helps the reader better understand, retain information, and gain meaning from our writing.
MATH
What can data tell you about your class or school? How does data displays help us understand information? These are a few guiding questions that are helping our student think about why data collection and data representation are important mathematical strategies. In our current unit, students have started to collect, represent, describe, categorize, and interpret both categorical and numerical data. They are using the 21stcentury skill of Problem Solving by reasoning abstractly and quantitatively to analyze data and generate solutions. Students will begin the important work of seeing a data set as a whole as they design and carry out their own data investigations, create representations of the data collected, and compare and discuss these representations. By the end of this unit, students will be able to draw scaled picture graphs and scaled bar graphs to represent a data set with several categories. Additionally, students will solve one- and two-step “how many more” and “how many less” problems using information presented in scaled bar graphs. Later in this unit students will work on students’ collections of numerical data that includes measuring length in inches and feet. Students will review the basic units of inches, feet, and yards and their relationships by measuring lengths longer than one foot.
SCIENCE
For our rock unit students will be exploring solid materials from the earth, rocks and minerals. The focus is taking materials apart to find what they are made of and putting materials together to better understand rock and their properties of the rock cycle. Students will:
· Use measuring tools to gather data about rocks.
· Collect and organize data about rocks.
· Use evaporation to investigate rock composition.
· Learn that rocks are composed of minerals and that minerals cannot be physically separated into other materials.
· Compare their activities to the work of a geologist.
· Acquire vocabulary used in earth science.
· Exercise language and math skills in the context of science
· Use scientific thinking processes to conduct investigations and build explanations; observing, communicating, comparing and organizing.
DATES TO REMEMBER
Parent Teacher Conferences- October 5th
Digger Dash-October 6th
Fall Break-October 7-16th
Halloween Party/Parade-October 31st-More details to come after Fall Break!
September News Letter
MATH
In math our first unit is understanding equal groups. This unit focuses on students’ understanding of multiplication as combining equal groups. Students will be writing, representing, and solving multiplication problems in context. They will be identifying the number of groups and the number in each group (the factors), and the total number (the product). Students will also understand the relationship among skip counting, repeated addition and multiplication. Lastly, we will build on the inverse relationship between multiplication and division.
LITERACY
Reading comprehension refers to the ability to acquire meaning from written text. When students enter third grade, they are no longer learning to read; they are now reading to learn. Our reading curriculum relies heavily on comprehension strategies instruction. That is, students are taught a variety of strategies to apply before reading, during reading, and after reading in order to make the most meaning from a text. In reading our first strategy we will be working on is, activating our schema with building our knowledge through different types of connections and making sure that we are choosing books that are at their level.
For Writer’s Workshop we have been focusing on Personal Narratives. Students are learning to take everyday events of their lives and stretch them out into a well-structured story. Students are learning that in order to do their very best to communicate these stories they need to create a plan, then apply that to their writing.
SOCIAL STUDIES
For our social studies unit we started our learning with comparing communities from the past to the present. Students now have an understanding of what makes a community. We will be exploring local history that will allow students to grasp how communities change overtime. We are so excited to be going to the Plains Conservation Center in September. We will be getting a hands on experience of a modified homestead, one room school house and daily chores that happened in the “good old days”.
DATES TO REMEMBER
September 5th: Labor Day-No School
September 6th: Castro, Russell, Merideth, and Shepperd’s Field Trip to the Plains Conservation Center (9:30-2:00 Students need to bring a sack lunch and be prepared to be outside for most of the day).
September 9th: Western Night
September 12-14: CogAT Testing
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