Week #9 in Review!

CLASSROOM NEWS

Conferences are on Tuesday, November 8^th.  I know how busy everyone is and I appreciate you taking the time to come and visit with me that day.  I do have a very tight schedule to keep so please know I will be doing my best stay on time. Don’t forget to VOTE!

The students were given their new jobs and all last week was a “training” week.  Beginning this week, fines will begin and the bonus money will continue. The economy system is in full swing beginning Monday!

Congratulations to Noah for earning the typing award for being our fastest typist.

Thank you to everyone that helped with the Halloween celebration especially Mrs. Kogut for volunteering to be our room parent this year!  The kids had a blast!

READING

We are almost finished reading the book Frindle by Andrew Clements.  The students love this book and he has many other books if your child is interested in reading more fun stories! The third graders are using the TAGD (Title, Author, Genre, and Date) method to answer questions pertaining to the story in order to be sure they are understanding the text.

Also, our students are working on finding evidence when they read informational texts.  This is very important when reading articles etc. for science and MI Studies.  There is a lot of information to learn and understand!

WRITING

Our writers have been organizing their personal narratives into beginning, middle, and end.   We are on week #2 of this writing genre.  Again, the writers have to think about their audience while creating any piece of writing.  They want to be able to connect with their readers.

MATH

In math we have been focusing on problem solving, number stories, and fact extensions.  We are just about finished with unit 2.  I am going to try and give the unit 2 math test late this week.

Homework is given every Tuesday and Thursday.  Each home-link is a review of a concept the students have learned in class.  We encourage parents to help with the home-links as well as ask the students questions.

Don’t forget, each student received a login card in order to access the EDM4 games, home-links, and helpful videos.  This card is stapled into the front cover of the assignment notebook that is inside of the binder.  Please click HERE to access this site.

SCIENCE

We read our last article pertaining about minerals and their properties on Friday.  We will be reviewing the material all week and giving a review guide.  This test is the most difficult out of the 4 topics we explore.  Unfortunately, our school always gets this kit first whereas some schools get it in April giving them much more time to mature as readers and as test takers.

The geologists learned that there are 3 main rock groups: igneous, sedimentary, & metamorphic.  Mock rocks were investigated as well as weathering, mineral hardness (the Moh’s Scale) using scratch tests, and categorizing properties of minerals. This is a vocabulary rich unit. Articles, vocab. cards, and other materials to help your child review should be in his/her science notebook and/or their science folder in the binder.

MI STUDIES

Unit 2 covers Michigan’s history!  More to come…