Finally Catching Up

Hi Families & Friends,
Sorry it has been so long since I last posted!  I am finally caught up and ready to post weekly now.  The past few weeks your 3rd graders have been working on so much in the classroom.

Math:  In math we are working on addition and subtraction with regrouping.  The students are working with whole numbers and numbers with decimals.  They are also finding patterns within the problems they are solving.  I have noticed that many students forgot about the regrouping rule.  Please work with them on that at home for extra practice.

In this math problem the students found the "rule" and then came up with different stories that would go along with the rule.

 

 In math centers the students are having fun using geometric figure blocks.

Luis's creation

Reading:  The class is focusing on non-fiction text this month.  We have read many books and articles about the government, weather, and our solar system.  The class is working on answering questions from the text as well as determining main idea and supporting details.  When reading at home with your students it is always a good idea to ask them questions directly from the text to determine their comprehension.  If they cannot answer a question try reading the passage again.

Writing:  We are in the beginning stages of writing Memoirs.  The students have listened to many memoirs by authors such as Patricia Polacco and Eve Bunting to help inspire them.  We are currently choosing meaningful memories about which we will write the memoirs.
To help make our writing exciting the class is learning figurative language such as personification and onomatopoeia.  This week the students wrote personification poetry.

"A Leaf in a Pond" by Javhi & Broc
The leaf swam in a pond.
It spins in the pond because the wind pushes it.
The waves push and pull the leaf
and it swims a little bit more. 

"The Pencil & Sharpener" by Belle & Arianna
The sharpener forced the pencil to go
around, around, around and around.
The pencil got dizzy and...
Fell right down!!!!

The students are also using dialogue to make their writing more exciting.  Here the students are working together in table groups to put together a sentence with dialogue.  They had to know where the punctuation, dialogue tags, and quotation marks went...

Social Studies:  The class has been learning about landforms and geographic features for the past month.  The students learned about landforms present in San Diego and created maps which highlighted these, such as: Cowles Mountain, San Diego Bay, Mission Bay, Mission Valley, Tecolote Canyon, and the San Diego River.  This unit's culminating project will be an atlas and a land they created out of dough that features at least 5 land forms.  Pictures coming soon!

 

Don't Forget!

Field trip to the San Diego Zoo:  Thursday, Oct. 20th

we will leave school at 9:00am and return at 2:00pm