Happy 2016! I hope that your new year is off to a great start. We were able to have a great start to the new year as we eased our way back into school routines and rules. We looked at New Year's resolutions and goals and wrote about some ways that we could reach our goals for third grade.
In Math we are finishing up Unit 4 and we will be taking a Unit test next Wed and Thurs. This will be about polygons and differences in quadrilaterals. As well as a focus on Area and perimeter. We will also begin to take weekly timed multiplication tests so students should practice at home as we do practice at school too! Please encourage your student to practice their multiplication facts.
In Writing we have begun to work on our non-fiction books! The students are very excited to start this and we are working on a variety of ways to create a Table of Contents and organize the information we know on our particular subject as well as organize our paragraphs. We spent much of December working on Stoplight or Accordian paragraphs to prepare to write this book. We have a variety of subjects that students will be "teaching" us about including horseback riding, soccer and race skiing. We are all excited to learn more about these things. Next week we will be learning about other ways to organize our writing including compare and contrast and cause and effect.
In Reading we are also focusing on Non-fiction. This ties in nicely as reading and writing are so closely linked. We have been working on finding the Main idea in non fiction as well as turning the heading into a question to help us answer the question in what we are reading. We also had some practice in trying to find a "pop out" sentence if there was a text with few or no headings. This is all good practice to help with note taking skills and determining the most important details in a text. This will come in handy as we will be starting our Maine Animal project in the next week or so.
We just completed our Science Unit on Force and Electromagnetic force this past Friday. We had several science experiment stations dealing with static electricity and we made a "magnet" out of a D battery, some wire and a nail. We also worked with some balloons. Ask your kids about this!
Students will work on their Maine Animal project in groups of 4 or 5 and the work will be done in school. We will, however, be sending home a do it at home project. A Maine Animal Diorama. More on that to come so be on the lookout in the next few weeks for a flyer with all the details!
In Math we are finishing up Unit 4 and we will be taking a Unit test next Wed and Thurs. This will be about polygons and differences in quadrilaterals. As well as a focus on Area and perimeter. We will also begin to take weekly timed multiplication tests so students should practice at home as we do practice at school too! Please encourage your student to practice their multiplication facts.
In Writing we have begun to work on our non-fiction books! The students are very excited to start this and we are working on a variety of ways to create a Table of Contents and organize the information we know on our particular subject as well as organize our paragraphs. We spent much of December working on Stoplight or Accordian paragraphs to prepare to write this book. We have a variety of subjects that students will be "teaching" us about including horseback riding, soccer and race skiing. We are all excited to learn more about these things. Next week we will be learning about other ways to organize our writing including compare and contrast and cause and effect.
In Reading we are also focusing on Non-fiction. This ties in nicely as reading and writing are so closely linked. We have been working on finding the Main idea in non fiction as well as turning the heading into a question to help us answer the question in what we are reading. We also had some practice in trying to find a "pop out" sentence if there was a text with few or no headings. This is all good practice to help with note taking skills and determining the most important details in a text. This will come in handy as we will be starting our Maine Animal project in the next week or so.
We just completed our Science Unit on Force and Electromagnetic force this past Friday. We had several science experiment stations dealing with static electricity and we made a "magnet" out of a D battery, some wire and a nail. We also worked with some balloons. Ask your kids about this!
Students will work on their Maine Animal project in groups of 4 or 5 and the work will be done in school. We will, however, be sending home a do it at home project. A Maine Animal Diorama. More on that to come so be on the lookout in the next few weeks for a flyer with all the details!