Week of November 14th, 2011

Important Reminders - 

Tuesday 11/15- Math Game Night for 3rd-5th grade (6:30p.m.-8:30p.m.)
Thursday 11/17- Culver's Night on 75th and Rt. 59 (4-7)

Reading - In reading this week , we will continue our author study of Chris Van Allsburg. This week we will focus on the story The Stranger. The students will be introduced to making inferences and how inferring helps them understand the author's meaning in a text. When using inference, the student's will use clues from the text and what they already know (their schema or background knowledge) to infer the meaning or make predictions. Students will need to infer who the stranger is and support their prediction using clues from the story. Here are some sites student can use to help them understand making inferences.

Inference Riddles
Inference Practice
Making Inferences

Writing - Teachers will explain the process of writing a reading extended response. An extended response is an in-depth analysis of a particular text. By asking the student to write an extended response, we are asking them to think more deeply about their reading, thus making inferences and drawing conclusions are important reading strategies to know. Writing extended responses is new to third graders and a skill they will continue to develop throughout their education. We start in third grade with an "I" chart graphic organizer and model the organization of the response. It involves answering the question using evidence from the text, along with interpreting that evidence by explaining what the clues mean using what you already know. Finally, the student will have to pull everything together and write an ending sentence summing up the message the author was trying to get across.

Grammar -  We will continue our focus on Plurals and Possessives this week.  Please click on the links to the right to practice these important skills. 

Spelling -  The focus this week is on words that have the /oi/ sound.  We will take the Unit 9 test on Friday, 11/18/11.

Math - 
Third Grade Math-  We will start a new unit in math this week.  Unit 4 focuses on common uses of multiplication and division.  These include using multiples of equal groups, equal sharing and equal grouping.  Students will begin by solving number stories involving equal groups, creating number arrays and connecting multiplication to division.
Accelerated Math-  We will begin Unit 4 this week.  Unit 4 focuses on decimals.  The concepts we will review on decimals are: place value, comparing and ordering, estimating, addition and subtraction, money and units of length.

Social Studies -  The students will be learning how our government was formed and how our government works.  We will talk about the Declaration of Independence, Revolutionary War and Constitution.  We will also looked at the history our our nation's capital, Washington D.C.  We will finish our government study by researching national symbols and landmarks.