Important Dates:
2.1 Spring Picture Day* This is corrected date from last weeks blog 2.3 Unit Math Assessment - all levels 2.8 3rd Grade Brain Building 2.9 Unit 4 Reading Assessment 2.10 STEAM Day 2.20 President's Day- No School 2.21 Professional Development day for teachers- Remote Learning Day for students Reading This week we read non fiction text focusing on text features. Next week we will read poetry and work on our poetry vocabulary and skills. Students will start a "text features" project where they will research an animal and create a poster with various text features to teach others about the animal that they researched. This project will be a minor grade. Writing This week we continued to develop our informational (expository) essays. Students will begin to type their completed essays, and work towards being finished on 2.3 for a minor grade. The week of 2.6 students will complete an on demand informational writing where they show off all that they know about informational writing independently and it will be scored as a major writing grade. Phonics This week we worked on Predictable Vowel Teams, Simple Multisyllable words and next week we will work on Unpredictable Vowel Teams, Single Syllable words. Math On Level: This week students finished their learning on quadrilaterals and started to partition shapes. Next week we will review and prepare for the Grade 3 Unit 4 Test. Study guides will come home on Monday! -Square: 4 equal sides, 4 right angles, 2 pairs of parallel sides -Rectangle: 4 right angles, 2 pairs of parallel sides -Trapezoid: One pair of parallel sides -Rhombus: 4 equal sides, 2 pairs of parallel sides. -parallelogram: 2 pairs of parallel sides When supporting your child at home, it is important to stick to these attributes to describe shapes and to not say things like : "Rectangles have 2 short sides and 2 long sides", because this causes confusion while students are learning that some shapes can be classified as more than one type of quadrilateral. It is very important that all 3rd grade student work towards memorizing their multiplication facts 0-12 by the end of the year, having these facts mastered is critical for the work they will do in 4th grade. Using flash cards or multiplication games at home are a great way to work on these! Advanced: This week we focused on rounding through multiple pace values and finished our week with a quiz. Next week we will review and prepare for our Grade 4 Unit 1 test on Friday. Study guides will come home on Monday! Accelerated: This week we continued to compare decimals, looked at decimals represented on a number line, and completed word problems involving decimals. Next week we will review and prepare for our Grade 4 Unit 5 test on Friday. Study guides will come home on Monday! Social Studies: This week we started learning about European Exploration to North and South America. We started off by learning about what the age of exploration was. Our focus will be on explorers from: Spain, France, England, and the Netherlands. The Explorers we will study are: Christopher Columbus, John Cabot, Vasco Nunez Balboa, Jaques Cartier, Hernando De Sotto, and Henry Hudson. This week we learned the main reasons for exploration: money/riches, religion, spices, quicker route to Asia, power, and positive and negative trade. Next week we will start to learn about each explorer's voyages one day at a time. We will end our unit with an explorer wax museum that will come to life- stay tuned for the date to come see us! Student Success Skills This week we celebrated our diviserity. We learned it is important to be curious about each others different family values, beliefs, and culture. Next week will learn about perspective and thinking from other's perspective. Young Georgia Authors Information (repeat): Once again, it’s time for the annual Young Georgia Author’s Writing Competition sponsored by the GA Department of Education. The purpose of this competition is to encourage our K-12 students to develop enthusiasm for and expertise in their writing, provide a context to celebrate their writing success, and recognize student achievement in the arts and academics. Encourage your student(s) to participate in this amazing opportunity and showcase their writing talents across our school, district and maybe even state! WHAT TO WRITE YGA does not provide a prompt to which students must respond or provide any other boundaries to their genre choice or creativity beyond a 1900-word limit. (if typed, double-spaced Times New Roman is preferred) Entries may include:
As a school we will select 1 winner to represent each grade level at the district level. If you have specific questions about the contest rules, please feel contact Diana Zarzour at [email protected]
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Important Dates:
1.27 House Day- wear your house colors! 2.2 Spring Picture Day 2.8 3rd Grade Brain Building 2.10 STEAM Day Reading This week we started reading non-fiction text. We are focusing on how text features (captions, pictures, maps, graphs etc.) help us to understand the text more. We will continue with information next week and take a practice (Thursday) and minor grade (Friday) next week. Writing Our Write Score was postponed due a problem with the testing platform. We will take our Opinion Write Score assessment now on Monday! This week we began drafting our informational (expository) essays about how animals can help solve people problems. Students did a great job writing their introduction where they hook their readers and state the central idea of the essay. Next we transitioned on writing our supporting idea paragraphs that include facts and thoughts to teach our readers. This may sound like: "In text 2 it says...." and "This is important because....". "In text 3 it says......" and "This fact shows us that.....". This writing will continue into next week as we work to strengthen essays and write conclusions. Phonics We took a break from phonics due to our short week, and now next week in phonics we will work on predictable vowel teams, simple multisyllable words. Math On Level: This week we focused on geometry vocabulary and reviewed shapes learned in previous grades. With our full week next week we will begin to learn about the different types of quadrilaterals! The definitions/attributes we will use for quadrilaterals: -Square: 4 equal sides, 4 right angles, 2 pairs of parallel sides -Rectangle: 4 right angles, 2 pairs of parallel sides -Trapezoid: One pair of parallel sides -Rhombus: 4 equal sides, 2 pairs of parallel sides. -parallelogram: 2 pairs of parallel sides When supporting your child at home, it is important to stick to these attributes to describe shapes and to not say things like : "Rectangles have 2 short sides and 2 long sides", because this causes confusion while students are learning that some shapes can be classified as more than one type of quadrilateral. It is very important that all 3rd grade student work towards memorizing their multiplication facts 0-12 by the end of the year, having these facts mastered is critical for the work they will do in 4th grade. Using flash cards or multiplication games at home are a great way to work on these! Advanced: This week we worked on place value skills and reviewed addition and subtraction. I decided not to give them another quiz on this skill since we have a short week. We will have a rounding minor grade on Friday next week, and it will include some addition and subtraction as well. Next week we will begin rounding through the millions and students will have a practice grade on only rounding leading up to the quiz on Friday. Accelerated: This week we worked on comparing decimals. I bumped our quiz to Monday next week. We will Science: We finished up pollution this week and started learning about what a fossil is and how they are formed! It is important for students to understand that fossils are not just bones of animals from long ago. Fossils are how plants and animals are preserved over time, and that give us clues to our past. We learned that plants and animals can be fossilized by being frozen, volcanos, sedimentary rocks, imprints, amber, and tar. We will continue this learning next week with a minor and practice grade next week. Student Success Skills This week we learned about fairness. Fairness does not always mean we all get the same thing! It means we all get what we need to succeeded and have fun. Next week we will learn about respect. Young Georgia Authors Information (repeat): Once again, it’s time for the annual Young Georgia Author’s Writing Competition sponsored by the GA Department of Education. The purpose of this competition is to encourage our K-12 students to develop enthusiasm for and expertise in their writing, provide a context to celebrate their writing success, and recognize student achievement in the arts and academics. Encourage your student(s) to participate in this amazing opportunity and showcase their writing talents across our school, district and maybe even state! WHAT TO WRITE YGA does not provide a prompt to which students must respond or provide any other boundaries to their genre choice or creativity beyond a 1900-word limit. (if typed, double-spaced Times New Roman is preferred) Entries may include:
As a school we will select 1 winner to represent each grade level at the district level. If you have specific questions about the contest rules, please feel contact Diana Zarzour at [email protected] Important Dates:
1.16 MLK -NO School 1.17 Teacher Work Day- Remote Learning Day 1.27 House Day- wear your house colors! 2.2 Spring Picture Day 2.8 3rd Grade Brain Building 2.10 STEAM Day Reading This week we read "The Talented Clementine" we focused on Clementine's character traits, how she changed in the text, and how we can learn from characters in our fiction stories. We ended the week with a fiction practice grade. Students will be reading another Clementine story on the remote learning day and seeing how character traits change or stay the same across a series. Next week we will will shift to nonfiction learning! Writing This week we began our research and planning for our informational essay on how animals special abilities can help people. Next week we will begin writing our essays with strong introductions. When we return to school on Wednesday 1.18, students will take the Write Score Assessment. This assessment will be an on demand opinion writing, similar to the one we did in class a few weeks ago. This test will give teachers more information leading up to Milestone's on how to best inform instruction moving forward. Phonics Next week in phonics we will work on predictable vowel teams, simple multisyllable words. Math On Level: This week we started Unit 4: Geometry! This week's focus was area and perimeter. Students took a quiz on Friday. Next week we will begin to learn about the different types of quadrilaterals! The definitions/attributes we will use for quadrilaterals: -Square: 4 equal sides, 4 right angles, 2 pairs of parallel sides -Rectangle: 4 right angles, 2 pairs of parallel sides -Trapezoid: One pair of parallel sides -Rhombus: 4 equal sides, 2 pairs of parallel sides. -parallelogram: 2 pairs of parallel sides When supporting your child at home, it is important to stick to these attributes to describe shapes and to not say things like : "Rectangles have 2 short sides and 2 long sides", because this causes confusion while students are learning that some shapes can be classified as more than one type of quadrilateral. It is very important that all 3rd grade student work towards memorizing their multiplication facts 0-12 by the end of the year, having these facts mastered is critical for the work they will do in 4th grade. Using flash cards or multiplication games at home are a great way to work on these! Advanced: This week we took a practice quiz on addition and subtraction. Students will have another chance to "show what they know" again with a minor grade on this skill next week. We have begun to dive into place value through the millions and will focus on rouding next week. Accelerated: This week started our fractions and decimal unit! We started off the week focusing on hundredths and tens fractions, and showed how these special fractions can be written in decimal form. We talk about how the reason we write these fractions in decimal form is because we use a base 10 system. We connected our decimal learning to money and how decimals can show how many whole dollars something cost as well as part of a dollar (the decimal). We will continue this learning with mixed numbers and comparing decimals next week. We will plan for a decimal quiz next week on Friday 1/20. Science: We finished up pollution this week and started learning about what a fossil is and how they are formed! It is important for students to understand that fossils are not just bones of animals from long ago. Fossils are how plants and animals are preserved over time, and that give us clues to our past. We learned that plants and animals can be fossilized by being frozen, volcanos, sedimentary rocks, imprints, amber, and tar. We will continue this learning next week with a minor and practice grade next week. Student Success Skills This week we learned about fairness. Fairness does not always mean we all get the same thing! It means we all get what we need to succeeded and have fun. Next week we will learn about respect. Young Georgia Authors Information (repeat): Once again, it’s time for the annual Young Georgia Author’s Writing Competition sponsored by the GA Department of Education. The purpose of this competition is to encourage our K-12 students to develop enthusiasm for and expertise in their writing, provide a context to celebrate their writing success, and recognize student achievement in the arts and academics. Encourage your student(s) to participate in this amazing opportunity and showcase their writing talents across our school, district and maybe even state! WHAT TO WRITE YGA does not provide a prompt to which students must respond or provide any other boundaries to their genre choice or creativity beyond a 1900-word limit. (if typed, double-spaced Times New Roman is preferred) Entries may include:
As a school we will select 1 winner to represent each grade level at the district level. If you have specific questions about the contest rules, please feel contact Diana Zarzour at [email protected] Important Dates:
1.9 UGA spirit wear day if you are cheering for the Dawgs :) 9.13 report cards and i-ready diagnostic will come home in addition to remote day work* 1.16 MLK -NO School 1.17 Teacher Work Day- Remote Learning Day *Please note that if your child needed to retake their Math Unit 3, Math Unit 6 (advanced) or ELA Unit 3 assessments, their semester 1 grade will be updated after the retake is given. Reading This week we started Unit 4 for reading! We have started out with fiction reading and we will focus on character's motivations, traits, and the way they change or learn in stories. We will continue this work and have a check in next Friday. Writing This week students did a practice on demand opinion writing (not for grade). On demand writing is structured exactly like the writing assessment for Milestones where students will be given a prompt and 2 passages and they have to write an opinion using text evidence. We practiced this a lot last semester but students have not gotten practice with the time restraints (aprox. 60-75 minutes) so completing this no risk on demand writing helped them get a feel for what that will be like come May. The third grade teachers will use this to guide instruction for your children and they will have more of these on demand writings this semester. Our next focus will be on writing information essays using text evidence to "teach" our audience on a topic. Our goal is for students to know that information essays INFORM or teach our readers, different from opinion writing where we try to CONVINCE or change the minds of our readers. Next week we will look at a model of informational writing, to help us understand what excellent informational writing looks like in 3rd grade. Students will work to write an informational essay explaining how different special abilities and qualities of animals can be used to help people. Phonics Next week in phonics we will work on predictable vowel teams, single syllable.. Math On Level: This week we started Unit 4: Geometry! This weeks focus was on distributive property. Next week students will learn about perimeter, and differentiating measuring area (measurement of the inside space of a shape) from perimeter (measuring the outside edge of a shape). Students will take an aera quiz on Friday 1/13. It is very important that all 3rd grade student work towards memorizing their multiplication facts 0-12 by the end of the year, having these facts mastered is critical for the work they will do in 4th grade. Using flash cards or multiplication games at home are a great way to work on these! Advanced: This week we started Grade 4 Unit 1 which focuses on addition and subtraction with regrouping, rounding, and place value. We started this week reviewing prior addition strategies taught and directly connecting them to the standard algorithm. Their goal for 4th grade is to be able to use the standard algorithm fluently and be able to explain why it works. Next week we will continue to practice addition and subtraction and take a quiz on Wednesday Jan 11th. Then we will work on place value and rounding! Accelerated: This week we reviewed Grade 4 Unit 4 skills (fraction operations) from last semester and took the test today. Next week we will start Grade 4 Unit 5: Fractions and Decimals! Science: Students have done some amazing pollution learning with Mrs. Davis in the STEM lab, so in 3rd grade we will have a mini pollution unit. We started this week learning about the different parts of pollution. Next week we will finish up with an open note test on Wednesday January 11th. Then we will begin a favorite unit, fossils! Student Success Skills This week we learned about character values (think: what is important to your family/family rules). Next week we will talk abut fairness. Young Georgia Authors Information (repeat): Once again, it’s time for the annual Young Georgia Author’s Writing Competition sponsored by the GA Department of Education. The purpose of this competition is to encourage our K-12 students to develop enthusiasm for and expertise in their writing, provide a context to celebrate their writing success, and recognize student achievement in the arts and academics. Encourage your student(s) to participate in this amazing opportunity and showcase their writing talents across our school, district and maybe even state! WHAT TO WRITE YGA does not provide a prompt to which students must respond or provide any other boundaries to their genre choice or creativity beyond a 1900-word limit. (if typed, double-spaced Times New Roman is preferred) Entries may include:
As a school we will select 1 winner to represent each grade level at the district level. If you have specific questions about the contest rules, please feel contact Diana Zarzour at [email protected] |