February 11th-15th

Dates to remember:

*Remember to return any conference forms (if a conference was scheduled).

Thurs. 2/14 - Valentine's Day Party 2:30-3:15
Please click on the tab above to read Mr. LeCrone's letter regarding Valentines Day.

Fri. 2/15 - Human Society visit!  (Please notify your child’s teacher if your child has a dog allergy.)

Reading: We will be reading a historical fiction story this week called, Boom Town by Sonia Levitin.  This story is about a family's experience when they arrive in the west during the Gold Rush.  Amanda, the daughter, finds herself with free time after they move to California.  She decides to bake a pie that leads her to starting a booming business.  She encourages people she meets along the way to start their own businesses, and eventually, a town develops.

This is a great story to help us transition into our new Social Studies unit (see below), as well.

Strategy - Fact vs. Opinion.  We will be reviewing facts and opinions throughout the story.
Vocabulary - miners, nuggets, skillet, stagecoach, settle, boom town, landmark

Grammar: Figurative Language = a play on words.  We will continue to work on metaphors, similes, idioms, and onomatopoeia.

Spelling: The next test will be on Friday, February 15th. The pattern in each word is double consonants.

Writing: This month we will be working on a variety of writing projects with a winter theme! Here are the highlights...

· Mitten writing (descriptive writing) - Students will design a mitten and then write a description of their mitten. Will their description be good enough for someone to pick their mitten out of a bunch of mittens? Close attention to details and creative use of adjectives will be necessary.

• The Snowman Caper! (point of view writing)- In this assignment, students will practice writing from different points of view. The students will develop a story about a child's missing snowman. They will tell the story from either the snowman's point of view, the child's, a newspaper reporter covering the story of the missing snowman or a detective investigating the crime. It will be tons of fun listening to the various points of view!

· Frosty gets a Makeover! (creative/persuasive writing)- This will be a group effort. Students are given the task of updating Frosty's look. What kind of hat will Frosty don in 2013? Groups will design a new, hip, up-to-date look for Frosty in the form of an advertisement. In addition, the students will compose a new song to go along with Frosty's makeover. Each group will present their proposed look to the class and everyone will vote on which is the best new look and song for Frosty! Creativity at it's best:)

Social Studies: We will begin a new social studies unit this week!  The students will be learning about the Westward Movement in the United States.  We will review where we left off with the 13 colonies becoming free and establishing the USA.  Then we will briefly explain how we acquired the remainder of the land in the USA.  Our focus will be on the Oregon Trail.  The students will learn what migration is and what life was like during the expansion to the west.  We will be play an Oregon Trail game where the students will learn about the real-life situations and hardships that the families experienced.

Math:

Third Grade Math- We are working on Unit 4 which covers multiplication and division. Students will be expected know that multiplication is repeated addition and division is repeated subtraction. In addition, students will be expected to solve word problems in situations involving equal groups, arrays and measurement quantities. Should learn to solve these problems in a variety of ways such as drawing pictures, an equation with a symbol for the unknown number, using math facts and drawing arrays.

Vocabulary - array, associative property, commutative property, distributive property, dividend, divisor, factor, product, quotient.

Accelerated Math - We are beginning Unit 6, which focuses on division and angles.  We will start with division by teaching the traditional long division method and partial quotients method.  Then we will review the relationship between multiplication and division to solve more word problems. 

Vocabulary - dividend, divisor, factor, quotient.