Red Ribbon Week Activities and Housekeeping:
Monday: Pajama Day
Tuesday: Crazy Hair Day
Wednesday: Wear Red Day
Thursday: Inside Out Day
Friday: Extreme Ellis Colors Day
Monday, October 29, 2012: PLC Early Release
Wednesday, October 31, 2012: Classroom Halloween Party from 12:50 to 1:50...games and healthy spooky snacks
Friday, November 2, 2012: Pinch Pots from Native American Unit in the gym from 10 am to 11 am
Friday, November 2, 2012: Pride Day and Playground Clean-up
LANGUAGE ARTS:
Writing: We have two writing projects in working progress. The first is our planet report. The planet report is being completely written, edited, and polished in the classroom. On November 12, 2012, the Ellis third grade teachers will take the written planet reports to a meeting. Other teachers will look at the reports and provide a grade from a required rubric. The students know what needs to be included in their report in order to do well. The reports are looking awesome!!
Also, our personal narrative book is almost completed. All of the pictures are finished and we are in the process of writing our stories on the special "page" paper provided for the class book. A notice was sent home last week for any parents interested in ordering a class treasure book. The payment is due on this Friday so we can get all of the pages shipped off to the publishing company.
MATH:
Nice job on the measuring lines and Quadrilateral Unit. We have moved on to word problems using addition and subtraction. Some strategies we use to help us with word problems are comparison bars and math mountains. All problems will involve adding or subtracting larger numbers.
SOCIAL STUDIES:
This week we will wrap up Communities...why people move there and why people move to a place with resources. Next week we will begin our Native American Unit. We learn about four different Native American groups in the United States. The students always enjoy this Unit. We will kick off the Unit by making pinch pots in the gym on Friday morning and culminate the Unit with a weaving project.
QUESTIONS OF THE WEEK....
List 5 facts (something you could prove) about the Solar System.
List the planets in order.
Housekeeping:
Monday, October 22, 2012: Early Release PLC
Monday, October 29, 2012: Start of Red Ribbon Week-PJ Day
Tuesday, October 30, 2012: Crazy Hair Day
Wednesday, October 31, 2012: Wear Red Day
Thursday, November 1, 2012: Inside-Out Day
Friday, November 2, 2012: Extreme Ellis Day
Wednesday, November 21, 2012: End of Six Weeks/AR Goal deadline
Language Arts:
The story of the week is The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco. This story is a personal narrative, non-fiction story about a woman and her ancestors and the quilt they all grew up with.
Writing: The students have completed paragraph one of their 3 paragraph informative report on planets. This week we are
pre-writing paragraph 2 and then editing it and polishing it.
Spelling words for the week:
- paint
- clay
- feel
- leave
- neighbor
- eight
- seem
- speak
- paid
- lay
- need
- weigh
Math:
We will complete a quick unit on measuring lengths, parallel and perpendicular lines, and types of quadrilaterals. After the Unit Test on Tuesday, we will jump in to comparing numbers and rounding.
Social Studies:
All the third grade classes are busy studying communities, why they start and where they start. We will be learning about Native Americans and their customs and places to settle.
Questions of the Week:
Put the commas in the correct places.
1. The small girl visited her Grandma in Mesa Arizona on July 30 2012.
2. When I go camping I like to eat pancakes sausage eggs and bacon for breakfast.
What is a quadrilateral in math?? Is a square a quadrilateral?
Our entire class reached their AR reading goal and were able to attend the BFG party on Friday. We had special visitors for the party (The BFG, aka Mrs. Graham, and Sophie, aka Mrs. Shore).
The new AR reading period will extend over the next 6 weeks. The goals will of course be higher than the original goal because we are becoming more excellent readers.
Congratulations to our Order of the Phoenix Readers (The first boy and girl to reach 100% of their AR goal):
Marissa Gallup and Jaxson Briscoe
Housekeeping:
Monday, October 15, 2012: PLC Early Release
Tuesday, October 16, 2012: Grandparents and Granola A-M 8:30-9:00
Wednesday, October 17, 2012: Grandparents and Granola N-Z 8:30-9:00
Thursday, October 18, 2012: Report Cards Available on Infinite Campus
Monday-Friday: The Entire Week: Ellis Book Fair
Reading:
This week in Literature we are studying 2 selections:
The Midnight Ride of Sybil Ludington and Radio Rescue. Both stories are about brave youths who used their courage to help save lives of people of people during trying times.
The spelling list for the week is a review list of the past 4 weeks:
- drum
- huge
- last
- drop
- class
- left
- wide
- mix
- send
- save
- smell
- stick
- note
- thick
- hunt
- thin
- grade
- lot
- cube
- pond
- life
- sock
- luck
- shut
- smile
Science:
We will continue our planet study and begin to write the beginning paragraph of our informative paper. We are looking for a great opening sentence and some details about the solar system for paragraph one. We will edit and review in class.
Social Studies:
Last week we learned about maps and started to create a map of our community. This week we will be studying why people move to different places.
Math:
Hooray!! The unit on addition, subtraction, and place value is complete. We will begin rounding and graphing for our next unit of study.
Question of the Week:
Brenna's Grandparents bought a total of 576 books at the Book Fair. Her Grandma bought 217. How many books did her Grandpa buy?? Use a Math Mountain to figure out the problem.
Write an addition word problem using the same numbers as above.
Welcome to Fall!! Glad to be back at school and we hope you enjoyed your two days off!!
Housekeeping:
Monday, October 8, 2012: PLC Early Release
Thursday, October 11, 2012: End of first 6-week grading period
Thursday, October 11, 2012: AR reading goal deadline
Monday, October 15, 2012: Book Fair begins
Tuesday, October 16, 2012: Grandparents' Day last name A-M
Wednesday, October 17, 2012: Grandparents' Day last name N-Z
Thursday, October 18, 2012: Report Cards posted on Infinite Campus
Language Arts:
Last week there was a bit of a mix-up with the spelling list. We gave the correct test for the words which the students took home. But I posted the wrong test on the BLOG....silly me. So for this week, the spelling words are the same words that were on the BLOG last week. The spelling pattern focuses on long vowel with a silent e.
- smoke
- huge
- save
- life
- wide
- come
- mine
- grade
- smile
- note
- cube
- love
- escape
- slope
Our story this week is Lost and Found by Mark Teague. The students will love this story with a bit of a twist at the end.
Our third grade class is also participating in a writing pilot. Our students will be required to write and publish an informative piece on the solar system and the planets. The students have already chosen the planet they were interested in last Wednesday. The teachers will do a series of about 20 mini lessons as we go through the writing process. Each student is required to write about a planet of their choice from our solar system. This is our next big project. Thank you again for helping your students edit and polish their personal narrative stories.
Math:
I think we finally have subtraction strategies figured out. We had a quiz last Wednesday, and everybody did a great job!! We have about 5 more lessons to teach in this Unit as we will next tackle word problems with addition and subtraction.
Science:
As mentioned above, the students will begin to write an informative piece on our solar system and the planet of their choice. This entire process will be completed by November 12, 2012.
Social Studies:
Last week we started our study on communities and will continue to learn why communities begin and why people move to various locations.
Question of the Week:
What is the proper abbreviation for the word missus?
Also, We had a mini-lesson on plural possessives from our Daily Language. We were applying the correct punctuation to this sentence:
Several students notebooks in the classroom had lovely pictures in them.
In the above sentence, what is the correct way to punctuate students and show the proper possessive form?
Then a little girl in the class asked how to show the plural possessive form of fish. That is a tricky one because the plural form of fish is fish (within a species). When we are talking about fish from several species, the proper plural form is fishes ( I looked this up because I wasn't sure). Because fish has two plural forms, it also has two forms for the plural possessive. The possessive of fish is fish's; and the possessive of fishes is fishes'. So....we all learned something new today...at least I did!!!
