This week in Melissa’s third grade is going to be a
skel-a-ton of fun! Just a reminder, conferences are on Tuesday and Wednesday. There will be a half day of school both days. Students are released at noon and no lunchtime will be provided at school. Also, Celebrate the Beat will be starting the week of November 4th. Please come out and support this amazing program at the Pasta Project on Sunday November 3rd at Maxwell's starting at 5:00 pm. Make reservations by calling Julie Reid at 970.275.7490. The cost for dinner is $20 for adults and $10 for kids. I'll be bar tending!
Here is what we’ve
been up to and what we’ll be up to in our class:
Readers Workshop:
Last week we learned how to write
summaries. We discussed how summaries
are when you retell what happened in a story, but only telling the most
important parts. One strategy that we use to
help us remember how to write a great summary is “Somebody Wanted But So Then." This strategy can work for
retelling about an entire book, or just a chapter or two! This will be an ongoing practice as
it is really hard for us to not tell EVERYTHING that happened in our stories.
We rounded
out the week discussing characters in our stories and their character
traits. This is really a lesson about
the comprehension skill of inferring.
Authors rarely come right out and say that a character is determined or
jovial; instead, the reader must infer these traits by their dialogue and/or
actions. Students assigned certain
traits to their characters and were asked to provide support from the text that
showed that trait. We just started to
scratch the surface with this last week and will continue with character traits
next week.
Here’s how you can help at home:
When
reading with your third grader, you can begin or end their reading session by
asking them to summarize what happened. If
they start going off on tangents, you can guide them back to reminding them
about the “Somebody Wanted But So Then” strategy. Also, you can guide your child to discuss how
certain dialogue and actions shows certain character traits. You can do this with them or you could also
encourage them to do this on their own by saying, “ While your reading, I want
you to think about character traits.
If you come across something in your reading that really shows how a
character behaves, I want you to jot it down, or talk to me about it.”
Writers Workshop:
We are
plugging away on personal narratives.
Last week, we studied some personal narratives from famous authors. Through our studies, we found that great
personal narratives come from stories in which author had a strong emotional
connection. The authors wrote about
things that were really important to them.
We also discovered that they used exact details, multiple descriptions
including similes, hyperboles (exaggerations), and exact nouns. Our discoveries didn’t stop there! We also noticed that they use repetition and
dialogue in their pieces. We decided
that we wanted to write like professionals and so we are trying to add these
elements into our own pieces!
Here’s how you can help at home:
Sometimes
we have a hard time remember all those small special moments on our own. You could help your child come up with a list
of 3 or 4 moments that were really special to them. This is totally optional, but could really
help as we will probably write at least one more personal narrative after the
one we’re currently working on. Another
way to help is to encourage your child to read like a writer. If they come across anything in their stories
that the author did really well (great dialogue, description, simile) as them
to mark it with a sticky and see if they can use that to be inspired in their
own writing.
Math:
This unit
has been all about adding and subtracting two and three digit numbers. As we discussed in class, there is more than
one way to solve a problem in life, and there is more than one way to solve a
problem in math. This week, we focused
on subtraction and we learned two methods: Counting Up and Trading First.
Counting Up was a huge hit in our
class. At first we thought that it
looked like a lot of extra work, but we found that it really made math even
more fun! Here’s an example.
We also learned the Trade First
method, or as we used to call it, subtraction.
We used manipulatives at first to really understand what it meant to
borrow. The reason it is called trade
first is because when you borrow a ten from the tens with manipulatives, you
have to trade it out for ones before you can subtract. The whole concept here is that students
really understand what it means to borrow rather than just go through the
motions and figure it out later…like I did!
Here’s how you can help at home:
Ask you
child to explain how to do either of these methods. Truth be told, they really love showing off
their skills! Also, you can ask your
child to “Roll their threes or sixes.”
This is how we memorize our multiplication facts, by rapping them! You can also check out a video of us rolling on our class website. http://melissasthirdgrade.blogspot.com/
Social Studies:
We just
started our unit on maps. Last week we
learned about continents and oceans. We
explored and labeled maps and tied this into our Global Citizenship
organization Heifer International. For
Heifer International, we split into pairs and each chose an animal gift to
study and present. We created amazing
posters and learned how important these animals are to families around the
world.
This week
we’ll be shifting from continents to countries.
We will be focusing on North America and breaking it down into
countries. Next will be states!
Here’s how you can help at home:
Bust out
the family atlas and check out some maps.
This can be purely exploratory.
Ask your child what they notice.
Discuss certain features like the Key and the Compass Rose.
Thank you for reading. Also, you can check out our website at http://melissasthirdgrade.blogspot.com/
