November 25-27

Reminders:

We have our once a month swim on Monday, November 25. After that the swimsuits will finally be coming home :)

Wednesday is a 1:00 release for the Thanksgiving holiday, and there is no school Thursday and Friday. Enjoy the long weekend!


This week we will be taking our Unit 2 reading test. As with Unit 1, this test will be broken up between multiple days, and the rest of the time will be devoted to writing. This week we will be writing about what we are thankful for, and focusing on correct paragraph structure and strong descriptive examples.

This also means there are no new spelling words for the week. Unit 2 will start after the break, and we will be back to our usual routine.

On Monday we will be taking our Unit 3 math test, and then diving in to Unit 4 which will focus on time and graphing.

In the spirit of Thanksgiving, I am so very thankful that I have such a wonderful, hardworking group of students in my class, and such thoughtful and helpful parents. I really couldn't thank you enough for all you do for your children, and to help our classroom.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Science- Space Research

This week for science we finished up our space unit with a fun research project! The kids were placed into small groups and each given a topic (a planet, constellations, black holes, meteors etc.). Then they had to read a few books on their topic, pull out the most important details, and write each detail on a notecard. I am always so amazed by their ability to work together and delegate tasks!

 

Once the research was done, it was time to make posters! They had a lot of freedom with this, so it was really fun to see how each of them turned out. Each group created a title, wrote down their ten facts, and added some kind of visual aid.

 

They turned out great, learned even more about space, and it was a great way to practice skimming for important details and communicating as a team! We hung each poster in the hallway for the rest of the school to enjoy!

November 18- 22

Announcements:

This week will be our last week of 2 week swim! Remember next Monday is our once a month swim!

Make sure your child is reading at least 20 minutes a night, and if they finish a book you can look up the AR quiz number at home and send it with them so they can get those points!


This week we will be reading William's House. We will be focusing on using context clues to draw conclusions and asking questions to better understand what we are reading.

In grammar we will be learning about plural possessive nouns.

Our spelling words this week are:

father
chapter
other
alphabet
watch
English
weather
catch
fashion
shrink
pitcher
flash
athlete
trophy
nephew
northern
establish
emphasis
hyphen
challenge

In math we will be finishing up Unit 3, working on a practice test, and will be taking our Unit 3 test on Monday, November 25. Your child will need to complete the study problems in their math book that will be sent home on Friday.

Have a great week!

Veteran's Day

Happy Veteran's Day!

Thank you for providing our class with addresses of veterans you know so that we could send them thank you letters! It was so nice for our class to be able to discuss the importance of the military and the many sacrifices that they make for our freedom.

As a third grade we made Veteran's Day posters to show our support for our veterans, check them out at school or at Grumpy's downtown!

Thank you to all of our armed service men and women- presently serving and past!!!

November 11-15

Thank you to everyone who made it to parent/ teacher conferences! It was great to get to talk to all of you about your wonderful children!

Announcements:
This week we begin our two week swim. Make sure your child has their swimsuit and towel! This also means our language arts time in the afternoon will be a little bit shorter, so any extra studying your child can do at home will be very beneficial!

This week in language arts our main story will be Tops and Bottoms.

We will be discussing the genre of fantasy and folk tales, and focusing on determining the author's purpose and predicting.

This week in grammar we will focus on singular possessive nouns (dad's, corn's, tonight's etc.).

Our spelling words this week are words with spl, thr, squ, and str blends.

splash
throw
three
square
throat
strike
street
split
splurge
thrill
strength
squeak
throne
strawberry
squeeze
squid
squander
arthritis
instrument
strategy

Some of these words are pretty tough! Make sure you are studying them nightly, and remember to check out www.spellingcity.com for extra help.

In math we will being finishing up subtraction, and moving into adding and subtracting money and determining when to add or subtract.

Have a wonderful week!

Centers- Singular and Plural Nouns

During our language arts time on Wednesdays I have implemented grammar centers. By this time they have seen me teach the material, and we have had multiple opportunities to practice it together. I also can tell which area each child would benefit the most from having additional instruction in. During this time, they rotate to 4 centers, 3 of which are at an independent level to give them extra practice. Each group also meets once with me to target an aspect of language arts that they need the most support with.

These centers have been very helpful not only in giving me a chance to meet with each student in a small group, but they have also been helping our class with various aspects of teamwork as they all complete the tasks at each center together.

Extra bonus: Most of the kids really look forward to this part of the week!

The past two weeks we have been working on plural nouns. One of the centers we did was concentration, where the students had to match each singular noun to its correct plural form.

 We also did an activity in our groups where I gave them a singular noun on a card, and they had to correctly write the plural form on another card. Once they were matched they could draw one picture of the word on the singular card and more than one on the plural card, to demonstrate they knew the difference between singular and plural. They turned out great, and have been a great reference tool to have hanging in our classroom while we are writing.

November 4-7

First off, a big shout out and thank you to the parents who helped with our Halloween party!! The games and crafts were so fun, and the treats were delicious. I had multiple kids tell me it was the most fun class Halloween party ever, and I couldn't have done it without you! So THANK YOU!!!

Important Reminders:

Parent Teacher Conferences are this week! I have been and will be sending home reminders, so if you haven't heard from me regarding your time, let me know!

This week we will be doing a few projects for Veteran's Day, including painting a large flag to show our support for our troops on Wednesday. This is a good day to wear painting clothes (clothes you don't mind if they get stained).


This week in reading our main story is "Prudy's Problem and How She Solved It".

We are working on determining the main idea and supporting details, and organizing our thoughts into strong paragraphs (with introductions, transitions, and a conclusion).

In grammar we are focusing on irregular plural nouns. These include nouns that change into new words when they become plural (child/ children), nouns that end in -f and change to -ves endings (leaf/ leaves), and nouns that are the same in plural and singular form (sheep/sheep).

Our spelling words are:

sunglasses
homework
haircut
popcorn
railroad
snowstorm
earring
scarecrow
blueberry
butterflies
lawnmower
campground
sandbox
toothbrush
thumbtack
earthquake
scrapbook
courthouse
whirlpool

The focus is on compound words, so it would be really beneficial to help your child notice the individual words that make up the compound word.

In math we will begin subtraction using borrowing, and other models for subtracting 2 and 3 digit numbers.

As always, keep reading 20 minutes a night and filling out those reading calendars!

See you all on Thursday!