Sunday, September 30, 2007
Week of Oct. 1-5
*Goo, Glob, & Guts Wed. 10/3
*L.1 Reading Quiz Thurs. 10/4
*September Reading Party Thurs. 10/4
*Spelling Test Fri. 10/5
*Hemisphere Quiz Fri. 10/5
*Spirit Day Friday 10/5
Classroom Chatter
We will be having our inschool field trip on Wednesday. A scientist from High-Touch High-Tech will present to the class Goo, Glob & Guts. Ask your child about their experience!
We will have our first reading party at lunch on Thursday with Miss Carlstrom's class. Students who have read for 28 days in the month of September will be able to come to our party. I will do a final folder check Thursday morning. Please send in a Rated G movie if you have one. Maybe even a Halloween video?? Thanks
Spirit day is Friday. This week's spirit day is to wear green for this month's Character Counts pillar, Respsibility.
Spelling
L. 5's words are plurals of vowel + y words. The list is in the spelling folder. Please keep the list in the folder. The test is Friday.
English
This week we will be doing an expository writing essay to learn how to write in paragraph form. Our papers will have an introduction, body, and conclusion. Each paragraph will be indented. Students were asked to bring in 3 favorite things in a brown paper bag that represents them. Students will be using these items to help create ideas for their paper.
Reading
We will continue working in our ISAT reading book. We have been ripping out the completed pages and saving them in our reading folder in our binders. There will be a short quiz on Thursday covering the concepts learned. Please review the pages in the reading folder to prepare for the quiz. We also will begin our first chapter book. Students will be reading the book, Hey, New Kid. We will read together in class. We also will be completing journal responses after each chapter. The first 6 chapter's responses we will do together. The rest of the chapters will be done on their own for a reading grade.
Science
We will begin our next unit in science on Health. Students will be learning about ways to stay healthy and how to make healthy choices. We will begin with lesson one that teaches us about the food guide pyramid and making good food choices.
Social Studies
We will finish up the hemipshere unit. The study guide went home today. It is in the social studies folder. The quiz will be on Friday. We will review the answers to the study guide on Thursday. Please review the sheets and the Map Essentials book to help prepare for the test.
Math
We began chapter 2 at the end of last week. We learned about fact families and estimating numbers by rounding to the nearest ten or hundred. This week students will be doing some problem solving with exact numbers vs. estimated numbers. We also will be adding two and three digit numbers. We will take a checkpoint at the end of the week for a grade. We won't begin mad minutes for multiplication until we begin chapter 3 on multiplication. However, this doesn't mean your child shouldn't start studying flashcards. Multiplication and division flash cards were on the supply list for third grade. They are to be used at home to study. I would begin by pulling all the cards that are multiplied by 2. When those facts have been mastered, pull all the cards that are multiplied by 3. Keep practicing the rest of the facts in this order.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Week of Sept. 24-28
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Week of Sept. 17-21
IMPORTANT DATES:
*Early Dismissal Tues. 9/18
Please start studying for the upcoming tests. Study guides are sent home as a "guide" to help the students. Please review all notes in the folders and the textbook.
We will finish up Unit One, The Sentence this week. Students will learn about run-on sentences. We will be taking an in-class unit review for a grade. They will be allowed to use their textbook and any notes. A study guide went home today. It is in the Language Arts folder. The test is scheduled for next Monday, 9/24.
This week's reading strategies we will focus on are: monitor/clarify, summarize, and question. The monitor/clarify strategy is when we reread, read ahead, and use illustrations to understand the text. Summarizing retells the story by the main, important events. The questioning strategy is when you ask yourself questions about what you are reading and what you want to know about the text. We also began TFK, Time for Kids last Friday. I usually do TFK's on Fridays. Sometimes students will have 10 multiple choice questions to answer for a grade after they read. They will always be allowed to use the TFK to help them with their answers.
We will begin this week by exploring patterns. We will then work on rounding numbers. Finally we will finish up with bar graphs and taking a checkpoint at the end of the week. Students should begin studying for the Chapter 1 test. It is scheduled for next Tuesday, Sept. 25th. Students also will be taking addition mad minutes this week. They took a practice one last Friday. They have to complete 40 addition facts in 2 minutes time. I will be giving a mad minute on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday of this week. All students should pass out of addition mad minutes by Friday. To pass out of a mad minute, means to get a 100%. We will move on to subtraction next week.
ALSO... I have decided to only require a parent signature on graded work that is a C+ and below. Thank you.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Week of Sept 10-14
*Directions Quiz Tues. 9/11
*Spelling Test Fri. 9/14
*Book Orders due Fri. 9/14
CLASSROOM CHATTER
It was a pleasure talking to all the parents last week at Curriculum Night. Thank you for taking the time to come and meet with me.
Book orders went home today. They will be due by Friday. Please send in a check for your order(s). NO CASH, PLEASE. One check will do for multiple orders.
SPELLING
Lesson 2 words are spelled with oa. We took a pretest today. The test is scheduled for Friday. The list is in their spelling folders.
ENGLISH
We will continue with Unit 1 this week. Students will be learning what a subject and predicate is of a sentence. The subject tells us whom or what the sentence is about. The predicate tells us what is happening in the sentence. Please review subjects and predicates at home. This can be difficult for the students.
READING
We will be reading some books as a class to work on reading strategies. The following are some examples of what we'll be reading. My Lucky Day to learn more about predictions and Two Bad Ants to practice inferences. Students will also be make definition cards of each strategy. At the end of this week or early next week, these cards will be brought home for students to use when they read at home. This will reinforce the reading strategies we work on at school.
SCIENCE
We will continue with our study on the human body. Students will be learning more about the muscular and skeletal systems and how they work together.
SOCIAL STUDIES
We will take a short quiz on directions on Tuesday. Then we will begin the next part of our map skills unit by learning about the continents and oceans of our world.
MATH
Here I will be writing about math for my math group. To read about what your child is doing for math, you will have to visit your child's math teacher's blog. You can do this by going to our District website: http://www.ccsd66.org/ , click on Prairieview, click on 3rd Grade, then click on your child's math teacher's name. Their blog will come up. Find the teacher's math section to read about what your child will be doing in math class.
This week, we will continue with chapter one, Place Value. Students will be comparing numbers, exploring exact vs. estimate with problem solving, and millions this week. We will also be taking a checkpoint for our first grade. Each chapter has 2 checkpoints per chapter in the textbook. Students will be allowed to look back in the book to help them if need be.