December 8th

We have two very busy weeks coming up 

before our Winter Break!

Monday: ART
Tuesday: BSE Winter Music Presentation
Wednesday: Early Release
Thursday: MUSIC and Circus of the Kids Program
BSE Winter Musical 6:15
Friday: 3rd grade IMAX field trip

On Wednesday, December 17th, our class will visit the PTA Holiday Shop in the Media Center. This will be an opportunity for students to shop for gifts for their loved ones.  All items will be priced between $1.00- $5.00 and we will wrap and tag the gift.

Our class winter celebration will be Thursday, December 18th. We are still working on our plans for this!

Thank you for continuing to support our reading and math curriculum by working with i-Ready math and Achieve 3000 at home! 
This Tuesday, students will be completing an Achieve mid-year level set assessment which is an opportunity to see growth and progress after using the program for several months.

READING: We will have spelling and vocabulary this week. See the tabs above for the specific words...
We have read the first 4 chapters of Charlotte's Web. At the end of chapter 4, Wilbur hears from Charlotte for the first time. Before continuing, we will change gears and do an in-depth study of arachnids... We will be reading several informational articles to develop our schema about spiders. Students will be asking and answering questions to demonstrate understanding of the text and will refer to the text (locate evidence) as the basis for the answers. We will continue an activity we started last week. Partners have located evidence and taken notes in response to the question: Describe the body of a spider. Based on the text they will write a response and create a labeled diagram of the body of a spider. We have learned some interesting information about spiders...
       
Our next activity will involve assigning groups to read different sections of the article and then presenting what they learned about their specific topic to the class.

WRITING: Students have been working through the writing process to develop the drafts of their opinion pieces. They are required to support their point of view with reasons and then elaborate using examples. This week, we will revise our introductions and conclusions before moving on to revision and editing.

MATH: This week in Math the students will identify fractional parts and mixed numbers on a number line.  The students will use benchmark fractions, a commonly used fraction that is easy to identify such as ½, to estimate fractional parts.  We will continue working on “sharing brownies” or problems in which we partition a group into equal parts and name the parts with fractions.  For example:  I have 5 brownies and 3 people.  How many brownies will each person get?  Each person will get 1 2/3.

Homework:

Monday – Unit 7 page 27

Tuesday – Practice 9.5

Wednesday – Practice 9.6

Thursday – Practice 9.7 

To help your child improve his math skills, please make sure that he/she is working on i-Ready math lessons at least twice a week.  Thank You!

SCIENCE: This week in Science we will investigate and explain that things that give off light often also give off heat.  We will discuss thermal energy and heat and explore how texture affect the heat produced by rubbing objects.