Weekly Update: February 28, 2020

Happy Friday 3B Parents!

The class and I had a great week back from vacation! Everyone was well-rested and ready to get to work!

Important Upcoming Events:

·         Next week, March 2^nd-March 6^th----Reading Week (see below for details)

·         Friday, March 6^th---Chapter 3 Social Studies Test

·         Friday, March 13^th----No School (Faculty PD Day)

·         Friday, March 20^th ----Report Cards/MAP Scores go home

 Here is our schedule for Reading Week:

·         Tuesday-Crazy Socks Day and Drop Everything And Read (DEAR) Day! The third graders will have a special day. We are going to focus the entire day on reading! Students will be meeting in book clubs, reading to self, reading to buddies, listening to reading on the Kindle, and using Epic on the computer. Students are allowed to bring in a pillow, blanket, slippers to cozy up for a day full of reading. They should bring in enough books to last for the day! 

o   We are also hoping to have some secret pop-in readers throughout the day. If anyone is interested in coming in and being a guest reader for a short story (around 8-10 minutes) please send me an email with a couple of times that work best for you. We are hoping for 4 guest readers. Unfortunately, we cannot schedule more than that so it will be first come, first serve!  Times that won’t work for us include: 11:10pm-12pm, and 1:00-1:45pm.

·         Friday is dress as your favorite book character day.  Come to school as your favorite character! 

Math: We began Topic 8 this week. Students circulated through math rotations as I used my small group time to reinforce and strengthen division skills. This will be our last topic on multiplication/division before moving on to fractions.

Reading: Students continued learning how to find the main idea/supportive details in a fiction story. We read Enemy Pie and discussed the main idea. Students discovered that the theme was to never judge someone before getting to know them. With the theme in mind students identified the events in the story that supported the theme.

Next, week we will read an informational text called, I Wonder Why Penguins Can’t Fly. Lessons will focus on discovering the main idea in a non-fiction text.

Grammar- This week students learned about pronouns. We will continue this next week.

Religion: This week lessons focused on the beginning of lent. We enjoyed a wonderful Ash Wednesday service and had multiple discussions about our Lenten sacrifices. One thing we decided on as a class was to spend time in personal prayer every day. To help, students are learning how to focus their prayer using The 5 Finger Prayer model.

Art Docent: This week students enjoyed a wonderful presentation about the Impressionist artists: Monet and Renoir. After the presentation, students completed their very own Impressionist garden scene.

*Please see the handout attached to email for more information!

Science: Students received a letter from the mayor of a fictional town who needed the help of environmental engineers. Plants and animals in the town were mysteriously getting sick and dying even though everything seemed to be operating as normal. Students learned about pH levels and how soil and water that is too acidic or too basic can cause harm to the environment. Students tested the pH of soil and water samples sent to the school from “Mayor Higgens” from different parts of the town. They compared their pH levels to that measured 3 years ago and decided if a dramatic change in the pH had occurred.  Students then decided if they thought this location was polluted based on their data results.