A Short Week

We have a short week!
Housekeeping:

• Monday, October 1, 2012: PLC Early Release
• Thursday and Friday, October 4-5th: No school
• Thursday, October 11, 2012: AR Goal Deadline
• Thursday, October 11, 2012: End of first 6 weeks

Language Arts:
The spelling list for the week focuses on the short and long vowel sounds:

• stand
• rest
• plate
• clock
• white
• stuff
• spoke
• bend
• frame
• twist
• June
• mile

Since this is a shortened week, we are doing a genre study on poetry. The students will create several different types of poems and listen to a variety of poetry. Nice job on your personal narratives for our Family Adventure Book. They were very enjoyable to read, I had a great time reading through each one. Thank you parents for all your hard work in helping your students write their stories. We will recopy in our neatest penmanship and add a picture for the class book.

Math:
All of the third grade classes are getting to be experts at addition with higher numbers. Now we are working on subtraction with regrouping and subtraction over zero. This is always a complicated  twist in mathematical procedures. Please continue to work at home with addition and subtraction facts. We will continue to work on subtraction this week.

Science and Social Studies:
The third grade students are finalizing their study of space,  the earth and the moon. We just recently learned about the different types of eclipses. There are two kinds: the solar eclipse and the lunar eclipse.

Solar Eclipse: When the moon moves between the earth and the sun and casts a shadow on the sun.

Lunar Eclipse: When the earth moves between the moon and the sun and blocks the sun's rays. These occur more frequently and are safe to look at.

Question of the week:

1) BRAINSTORM:
Name 5 things you can do in the water.

2) What is the difference between a  sentence that is a statement and a sentence that is a command?

Carnival Fun!!

Ellis Fall Carnival 2012






Housekeeping:

• Monday, September 24, 2012: Early Release/PLC
• Monday, September 24, 2012: Ellis Fall Carnival begins at 5:00 pm
• Friday, September 28, 2012: Personal Narrative Stories are due. Remember, they need to be neatly edited on ONE PAGE with your most beautiful penmanship.

Reading/Language Arts:


The Legend of Mulan


 

This week our story of focus is The Legend of Mulan. A legend is a story that has been passed down from generation to generation until the story we have at present. This story is about a courageous young woman who represents her family at a time of need. As we read the story think about the character Mulan and what she does that makes her so brave.












Math:
I believe we almost have it. Room #1 has been working on addition with larger numbers. We have learned three strategies to figure out the correct sum. These strategies are:
*New Groups Above
*New Groups Below
*Show All Totals
We will work on addition one more day, and then we will start subtraction of larger numbers. Again, there are strategies we will teach to ensure the students can subtract with success.

Science/Social Studies:
This week we will wrap up our unit of study on space. For the next 4-5 weeks after the conclusion of Science, we will begin our study of communities.

Questions of the Week:
1) Read the following statement. Is it a fact or an opinion?
** Mrs. Graham is the tallest teacher in the third grade.
2) How many syllables does this work have? STRAWBERRY
3) How would you divide this word into syllables using slashes or dots. For example
SANDWICH would be divided like this: sand/wich



We have been sorted!!

On Monday, September 10, 2012, the students in Room #1 at Hogwart's School of Learning were sorted into houses.

Each student was placed into the following houses for the year:

Ravenclaw: Blue

Hufflepuff: Yellow

Gryffindor: Red

Slytherin: Green

Each student can help their house earn points by following classroom rules, participating in class, bringing their reading logs, staying on task, and getting all of their work done. This is just another positive activity we use in class to encourage the students to always do their best.

Housekeeping:

Monday, September 17th: Start writing Personal Narrative for classroom "Treasure" book.

September 19th and 20th: Hearing Screening

Thursday, September 20th: Guest author to visit Ellis Elementary

Friday, September 21: Bring bags of suckers for Carnival contributions if possible

Monday September 24th: Ellis Elementary Fall Carnival

Language Arts/Reading

This week we are going to start writing our Personal Narratives for our class "Treasure" Book. The narrative will be sent home this Friday after we work on it all week. The students will bring their narratives home to polish and then bring back for a final grade. When re-writing the narrative for our classroom book, the students will only be able to use two pages. One page will be for their illustration, and the second page will be for their story. Their story cannot be longer than one page.

Here is the writing schedule:

Monday: Brainstorming for ideas and then creating a 4-W chart (who, what, when, where)

Tuesday: Adding an attention getting beginning/begin writing process

Wednesday: Adding colorful adjectives and juicy details to my writing

Thursday: Continue writing personal narrative using details and organization.

Friday: Adding a summary to my story/Take story home to be polished and beautified

Spelling List: Frequently Misspelled Words

have

haven't

found

around

one

than

then

them

because

other

mother

before

Mountain Language:

Each week we learn 5 new Mountain Language skills. Last week we reviewed the following:

• Putting words in ABC order
• Finding two words that have the same meaning (Synonyms)
• Sentences with subjects and predicates
• Prefixes, suffixes, and base words
• Correcting sentences using correct grammar and punctuation

Math:

Ask your students about the three ways we have learned to add numbers with more than 2 digits (larger numbers).

*New Groups Above

*New Groups Below

*Show All Totals

When adding money amounts, please REMEMBER to use a dollar sign and a decimal point!!

We will practice adding money amounts for the next 3 days and then we will start subtracting with smaller numbers. Keep practicing those math facts!!

Science:

Last week we learned about the sun and how big it is compared to the earth. We visited about the power of the sun and the different layers of the atmosphere. This week we will learn about how the earth rotates and moves throughout the year and also how the earth moves around the sun.

We sure love teaching your students. This week we begin switch groups for about 50 minutes on Monday-Thursday. Don't forget to bring your homework back by Friday and bring your reading log everyday.

THE AR GOAL DEADLINE IS THURSDAY OCTOBER 11, 2012!!

Questions for the Week.....Thank you for commenting last week.

#1 What is another word or synonym for soft?

#2 Put these words in ABC order: salt, sick, sandwich, swipe, silly

#3 Write a complete sentence about yourself with a subject (you) and a predicate.

HAVE A GREAT WEEK AT ELLIS!!

WELCOME BACK TO SCHOOL!!!

Welcome Back to School Room #1. We are so excited to have you in our class this year and we look forward to getting to know you better as we learn and have a ton of fun together!

Housekeeping:

• Monday, September, 10, 2012: Sorting Hat in the classroom following lunch. Make sure you come to school and see what House at Hogwarts you will be in for the year!!
• The AR Goals are set!! We only have 4 weeks to reach the goals. I am going to have to make a few adjustments on some of the goals because we have amazing readers in our class and they need a good challenge!!
• Wednesday/Thursday, September 19th and 20th: Hearing Screening to be done at school.
• Thursday, September 20th: Visiting Author Assembly in the Cafeteria.
• Monday, September 24th: Second Annual Fall Carnival. Come with your family and friends and be prepared to have a BLAST!!!!

Reading and Language Arts:
This week our story is called Cliff Hanger, by Jean Craighead George. We will be working on the concept of Cause and Effect and will have some reading activities centered around this skill. Each morning the students come into class they will work for about 7 minutes on Daily Language Review. They are given this worksheet on Monday morning and they complete it every morning for 4 days. It is a great Language Skill builder.

The Spelling List should have gone home in their Friday Folders with any corrected work and their new homework for the week. Homework is due next week on any day, but must be completed and handed in by Friday. Following are the spelling words for the story Cliff Hanger.

mix
milk
smell
last
head
friend
class
left
thick
send
thin
slick

Math:

The last week we worked on Place Value and also addition strategies to help the students with simple math facts. A cheap set of flashcards are an excellent resource to help your kids build speed at instantly knowing their addition and subtraction basic math facts. A great website for math skills is located at www.math-drills.com. Their are worksheets for addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. We use it quite a bit for drill and practice.

Science:

All of the Third Grade at Ellis work on Science for about six weeks and then switch to Social Studies. Currently we are studying about the moon and the earth and how they are the same and how they are different. Mrs. Shore did a really great moon phase activity on Friday. Ask your kids about it.

Question of the Week from Mountain Language:

What is the abbreviation for the word Friday?

Is the word Statue of Liberty a proper noun?

Make a list of 5 proper nouns.

If the students post their answers in the comment section, we will give them a blue token in the classroom. HAVE A GREAT WEEK!!