A few updates...

Here is a brief overview of what has been going on in third grade and some important upcoming dates to keep in mind...

In both reading and writing, we have been focusing on biographies and learning how to write a first person narrative essay. We based our essays on the information we gathered from reading our Who Was biography. Our next step is to create a timeline of our person's life.

In math we completed our units of study on perimeter, area, and fractions. We have just begun Geometry. There is a lot of vocabulary associated with geometry, so we are learning many new terms and trying to use these terms in our math conversations and how we classify plane figures.

Upcoming Dates:

Thursday, March 27 at 2:30 is our Wax Museum! We have been working really hard to prepare for this in class. The only responsibilities at home are to practice their speech (they will bring it home today) and to gather a costume that represents their person to wear for the museum. These costumes do not need to be elaborate! We have been discussing various ways each person could be represented with items found in your home.

Friday, March 28 : Visiting author Matt McElligott

NYS ELA Exam Tuesday, April 1, Wednesday, April 2, and Thursday, April 3
We have been discussing and preparing for this upcoming exam. My hope is to alleviate any anxiety about this exam by answering all of their questions and giving them practice samples to take in class. The format and length is something they're not familiar with, and I am working on increasing their stamina and teaching them test taking strategies. The best way to prepare at home is to continue reading and to get a good nights sleep the night before and eat a healthy breakfast the morning of.

Some of our mystery readers....

 Logan's mom on Hat Day!

 

Matteo's dad

Izzy's mom

Happy March!

I've changed the background on my blog to green...with my fingers crossed that we will actually begin to see some green outside some day soon!

We welcome the month of March with preparations for our ELA exam the first week of April. We are learning how to take a reading and writing test and how to utilize various strategies that are helpful when taking a test like this. The emphasis in the classroom isn't on how this is an important test...I'm just trying to prepare them for the length and rigor. They have never experienced anything like this before.

We continue in reading workshop with our biographies. We are learning so many interesting facts about our person and the time period in which they lived! Please save the date!!! We will be inviting families in on Thursday, March 27th from 2:30 - 3:15 for our Wax Museum. (Detailed information will be sent home soon).

In writing workshop, our non-fiction writing has been put on hold to learn essay writing and using textual evidence to support our written responses. We will continue with non-fiction here and there throughout this month.

In math, our focus continues to be on fractions and we are now investigating area. Please be sure you continue to practice math facts at home. Encourage your child to go on xtramath.org. If you lost the login information please let me know. I'd be happy to send it home again.

Solar system research is off and running in our room. We have begun researching the planets and learning how you spend most of your time reading information when researching and how researching really means to "search" for information. :-) Many of us want the answers to pop out in big, bold letters, but we are finding that we must read to find our information.

We are also continuing our discussion on prefixes and suffixes, with an emphasis on suffixes this week. We are learning to dissect words and their meanings and how we can put various prefixes and suffixes to different words and their meanings change.

Last week's mystery reader was Catherine's mom!