February 3 7, 2014

Lifeskill or Life-long Guideline of the week: Cooperation

Math rd 3 - This week in math we are studying money. In third grade, our goal is to be able to identify coins, from pennies to quarters, as well as bills by their characteristics. Students will use plastic money as well as picture models to practice identifying the coins, and then counting the collection of bills and coins. *Ask your child how they can tell the difference between a quarter and a nickel. *What strategies do they use to count coins? Have your child help you count out spare change around the house, or help you count change at the store. 4 - Students are exploring division this week. We are looking at different division situations, some of which allow for remainders (leftovers). We will be applying several ideas that we learned during our multiplication unit to division, for example the Magic Zero. Students will work with remainders this week, and think about whether situations require you to round up, drop or share the remainder of division situations. *Ask your child to share their thinking about remainders. STAAR Writing Boot Camp Students are prepping for the STAAR Writing Assessment th coming up in April. Only 4 graders will be taking the assessment, but third grade will learn the basics of writing with a specific structure. This is a genre of writing that we find in many jobs in the real world and we find applicable to teach for a short time each year. We will spend three weeks teaching narrative and expository compositions each. You probably have noticed that we have not had spelling words the past two weeks. For the next several weeks, our study will take a different focus. This week and last week the words are homophones, words that sound the same and have different meaning. We will continue having a daily homework associated with our weekly focus. This Friday, students will be assessed on their knowledge of the homophones included in their journal. Please make sure to review these words with your child this week. Finally, the last part of Boot Camp focuses on Revising & Editing previously written passages. Three mornings a week students are reading a short 8-10 sentence paragraph and answering revising and editing questions associated with the reading. Topics touched are transition words, spelling patterns, capitalization and comma rules, apostrophes, and the list goes on. Each day we meet to review the Revising and Editing passage. Students will begin to be assessed each Friday to monitor their progress and identify areas we need to readdress. *Ask your child to share what has been happening in STAAR Boot Camp. Super Wonderful Words abstinence [!abst!n!ns] the fact or practice of restraining oneself from indulging in something, i.e. a favorite food lesion [!l"ZH!n] an area in an organ or tissue that has suffered damage through injury or disease epidemic [epi!demik] a widespread occurrence of an infections disease in a community at a particular time
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The Moral of the Story is! We are reading fables this week. Each day the students are reading a fable and identifying and reflecting on the moral of the story. Students are also writing a summary of each fable, which includes the big ideas from the beginning, middle and end excluding all the tiny details. The last skill we are visiting is using context clues to identify the meaning of pre-selected words from the text. Students are using the text in and around pre-selected words to help him or her identify the true meaning. Texas Missions Our unit of study on the Texas missions will conclude this week. Students took their mission characters through several critical incidents that happened during the time of the Texas missions. The three events that we discussed were: Runaway Native Americans, the Smallpox Epidemic and the Pueblo Revolt. Students met with other Native Americans or Spaniards characters and discussed their perspectives on the situation. The whole class then met to share their opinions from the perspective of their character for each situation. Finally, students recorded ideas they heard through the discussion on each incident. *Ask your child to tell you about their mission character and his or her opinion on each critical incident. New Tribes! Students received new tribes this week. Talk to your child about the new people they are sitting with and what they have learned about their new tribe mates so far. Also, ask discuss the positive qualities that your child can contribute to a group. Important Notes and Events! Valentines Day: Note included in the Wednesday Folder today. Please read for all the details. Field Trip to San Antonio -Thursday, 2/13: San Antonio Missions & Institute of Texan Cultures *Reminders: -Class tie-dye shirt -PE shoes -Bring a lunch with you (no lunches from caf available) -Arrive at school at 7am; we depart at 7:15am -Pick up at 4pm *Used Book Sale will take place on March 3 to 7. Bring in donations of books (childrens or adult), DVDs, videos, CDs, magazines, puzzles and new or gently used school supplies to the donation boxes are located next to the office and right inside the library. *Please visit our wiki page for information about our class: http://mahlstadtsvrcek2-3class.wikispaces.com/ * Please check the calendar online every week as dates do change. http://mahlstadtsvrcek2-3class.wikispaces.com/Calendar