Word Study: Next week's words are please, desk, dress, next, send, cheese, west, these, eve, chest, even, seem. We have three long e patterns: vowel-consonant-silent e (v-c-e) as in "eve," ee as in "cheese," and ea as in "please." The rest of our words are short vowel e sounds. Additional words you may want to use at home that follow these patterns are: went, spell, left, them, seat, sleep, week, team, knee, squeeze, really, stream, cent, restful, helpful, ending, guess, lead, deaf, fence, cream, peaked, feast, and speeding. Rhyming dictionaries are a great resource four building on patterns. I will begin grammar and parts of speech next week. Please visit earlier posts (Parent Information Highlights) to see suggested spelling activities for home. This week's spelling tests will come home on Monday. They will have scores for spelling, patterns, neatness, and convention. I've also asked students to title the passage to support their understanding of main idea (see below).
Reading: An important third grade benchmark is the ability to read a passage or selection and summarize the main idea (essential theme). I have been presenting short passages to the class and we've been looking for topic sentences, which usually summarize the passage. I've also been busy collecting data on your student as a reader, identifying strategies they use and those that will be most helpful to them. Many students have been instructed in the past not to read with their finger. Research is very clear that students SHOULD read with their finger and I will model this strategy. The practice of reading aloud and tracking with a finger develops fine motor and auditory neural pathways that support comprehension and reinforces multiple pathways for decoding. Please reinforce reading with a finger at home as your student reads their homework or favorite books. Students are working on their passports to explore genre and provide accountability during sustained silent reading. We have approximately six weeks in the grading period to read at least five different "just right books" across at least five different genres. We also discussed "fake reading" and the importance of developing the ability to read for sustained periods without unnecessary restroom, drink and buddy breaks. The class is doing a great job with this. We continued with our read aloud, The Secret of Zoom. We're exploring elements of character, setting, and plot.
Writing: Reading's emphasis on main idea and topic sentences links to our writing focus. We are continuing to practice our kinesthetic writing process (planning, drafting, revising, editing and publishing). Please see if your student can demonstrate this to you (and better yet, see if they can explain each step - revising and editing are likely still confusing). We are working on our Writing Essentials:
- Indent each paragraph.
- Skip lines. (This allows room to revise our work.)
- Capitalize the beginnings of sentences and proper nouns.
- End all sentences with punctuation.
These can take a long time to master. The sooner we can make the Writing Essentials automatic, the sooner we can get into more challenging and interesting writing. We have also talked about how a "good" paragraph does not have a set number of sentences. I will work hard to develop an understanding of a good paragraph as a passage that focuses on a single idea and includes the five W's (who, what, where, when, why) and relevant five senses (taste, touch, smell, sound, sight), rather than a prescribed number of sentences. We will use each other's work to "go from good to great," adding in missing details (5 W's and senses). I'm excited to share we will have pen pals at Tremont this year. I find friendly letters to be a great way to teach the concept of paragraphs as a single idea and they are very motivating. I hope to plan an end of year event for students to meet their pen pals.
Math: We have been reviewing second grade math concepts to build on, including specific addition strategies. We have covered zero more (e.g., 4 + 0), one More (e.g., 7 + 1), two more (e.g. 3 + 2), and doubles (e.g., 6 + 6). Some facts have More than one strategy: 2 + 2 is both two more and a double. We have been identifying patterns (rules) in number lines (e.g., 2, 4, __, 6; 16, 26, __, 46; 345, __, 545, 645) by focusing on place and value changes. We have been reviewing place and value as separate but related concepts and place value up to 100,000's place. Our strategy for reading "big" numbers, numbers up to 100, 000's place, is to read the three (or fewer) numbers to the left of the thousand's comma, give it a last name (thousand) and then isolate the remaining three numbers. Isolating the numbers between commas is extremely helpful as many third graders are overwhelmed by big numbers, but can easily read numbers up to the 100's place. We have also been looking at number grids. Our rules are:
- Left to Right: Add one
- Right to Left: Take away one
- Top to Bottom: Add ten
- Bottom to Top: Take away ten
Student should be able to apply the above rules to complete a number grid.
We have also been working on time. We've introduced clockwise, quarter-past, half-past, quarter-til, and o'clock. We've learned that the minute hand always goes to the 3, 6, 9, and 12 o'clock positions respectively and that the hour hand moves to four different positions as the minute hand moves. Many students still (this is anticipated) struggle with moving the hour hand. We isolate the hour hand and students tell time just with the hour hand. I've found this is very helpful. I'm also introducing math vocabulary (addend, sum, difference) to prepare students for the future.
We've learned three different games that support number sense, addition and subtraction and place value.
Buzz: This is a game I picked up from educator extraordinaire, Rafe Esquith, that has lots of variations. In the simplest game, students start with one single digit whole number (e.g., 4) and begin counting from one. Any number with the buzz number in it is replaced with the word "buzz." Example: 1, 2, 3, buzz, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, buzz. Variations include addition, subtraction, multiplication, and even division. Addition and subtraction with a buzz number of 4 would play out as follows: 1, 2, 3, buzz, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 10, 11, 12, buzz (1 + 3 = 4), buzz, buzz (5 -1 = 4), 16, 17, etc.
Biggest/Smallest: Students draw blank places up to 100,000's place and take turns rolling a ten sided die. They record the number rolled according to its value in a high or low place. 9's, 8's, and 7's are usually recorded in the 100,000's, 10,000's and 1,000's places. At the end of the game, each student reads their number. Watching students play this game tells a lot about their understanding of number (number sense) and it supports our strategies for reading big numbers. Switching the game to smallest number keeps them on their toes and helps them to contrast values.
Knock Out: Students record the numbers 0 through 10 on their board and roll two dice. They can add or subrtract the two values to "knock out" one of the numbers on their board. For example, if a student rolled a 5 and a 3 they could knock out 2 (5 - 3 = 2) or 8 (5 + 3 = 8).
Heat = igneous rock (ignite)
Erosion = sedimentary rock
Lots of Pressure = metamorphic rock
A few students brought rocks and minerals in this week. Rocks rock!!! If you have some interesting (but not valuable) samples, please feel free to send them in. We also looked at how sand becomes soil by adding decomposing plant and animal matter.
Small Sugar Pumpkins
Fossilized Horn Coral
Amethyst and Quartz Crystal
September 14th: Early Dismissal, students depart at 1:15
October 3rd - 7th: Box top collection
October 4th: Ohio Reading Achievement Assessment (Please do not schedule any appointments for this date)
October 5th: Walk to School Day
October 7th: Fall Family Night 6:00-8:00pm
October 20th: School Picture Retakes
October 26th: Field Trip to Highbanks Metropark
October 28th: End of first grading period
October 28th: Halloween Party (Long lunch, 11:05 - 1:30, most students go home and change into costumes)
October 31st: No School for Students (Teacher Grading Day)
Please send your student's new ukulele in and I will tune it. it will take several days of retuning to stretch the nylon strings before it will hold its tuning.
Please send your student's field trip permission slip to school next week and indicate if you are interested in chaperoning. More information will follow as we near the field trip date.
Please sign up for conferences. If you have not, send me an email and I will let you know what time slots remain.
From PTO... "Please send in your classroom party committee form by Monday, September 12th. We need everyone's form, even if you cannot come to the parties. Also there are several classrooms that do not have parents volunteering to coordinate the parties, so please consider as you would only be in charge of coordinating 1 party (with committee help). Thank you!"
