Dear Third Grade Families,
I hope that everyone enjoyed some fun family time during the April vacation. We surely had some wonderful, sunny weather! We will be very busy in Room 15 this week and throughout the month of May. Here's some information about what's happening in Third Grade.
Third graders have been preparing for the SBAC assessments of math and language arts by taking practice tests intended to introduce them to the
tools and style of the tests. Students will complete the actual SBAC assessments during the first two weeks of May. The assessments will be spread out over two weeks so that there is not too much time spent on testing during any one day.
Some families have asked how they can help prepare their child for the SBAC testing. The best way for you to help your child to be successful during the testing sessions is to make sure that your student reads and talks about their reading each day, gets a good night’s sleep, and eats a healthy breakfast. We stress that we simply want students to “do
their best”. This means that while we want them to work carefully and give the
tests their full attention, we also do not want them to be overly stressed by
it. Any conversations you can have to that end are appreciated. I will be giving students a piece of gum and a couple of Life Savers to have during the testing sessions. If you'd like to contribute packs of gum or Life Savers for the class to share during the testing sessions, please send them in this week. Thanks!
Homework will be minimal during the SBAC testing window (the first two weeks of May). Children will be asked to read and return their reading logs. After testing during the day, it's important for students to have plenty of time to run around outside and play. J
In literacy, we continue to develop our comprehension of complex texts. Our focus has been on understanding how a
character changes across a story, and how readers track those
changes. In Because of Winn Dixie, we
are seeing that the main character, Opal, continues to act in ways that help to
define her character by creating patterns of behavior within the book. We are also looking at character development
in the chapter books we are reading independently, as well as working on other
important story elements.
In writing, we are coming to the end of our unit on
persuasive writing. We are increasing our skills at building an argument,
taking the important reasons that support our position, and then adding more
and more relevant details to each reason. This also has led us to the creation
of multi-paragraph pieces of writing. In
doing so, we pay attention to important skills in the mechanics of writing-
indenting, proper punctuation, topic and concluding sentences, and
spelling. Students are building their
collection of “google docs”, which is where they utilize their growing
keyboarding skills to write final drafts on their Chromebooks.
Third grade mathematicians have been exploring the concepts of multiplication and
division more deeply, and seeing the relationships between the two. We have been looking at understanding
division as an inverse operation to multiplication, and seeing the
relationships in fact families. We have also been working on story problems
involving multi-steps, and focusing on using multiplication and division to
solve them.
I am very proud of the students of Room 15 for how hard they have worked on learning the multiplication tables! Keep reviewing and practicing the facts with your student at home to help him/her become even more fluent. Play multiplication games on Mrs. Simpson's blog. Play Multiplication War with a deck of cards at home. Split the deck in half. Aces are 1's, Jacks are 10's, Queens are 11's, and Kings are 12's. Remove the Jokers or make them worth a number of your choice (25 for a challenge). Each player flips over a card. The person with the highest number multiplies the cards and states the product. "11 times 8 equals 88." He keeps the cards in a pile to use when he runs out of cards. The person with no cards left in the end loses the game.
We have finished our study of force and motion. Students have had fun conducting a variety of experiments to learn about force, motion, friction, and gravity. This week we will be learning about wind and clouds as part of our study of climate and weather. We have a wonderful class of scientists in Room 15!
We are in need of Clorox cleaning wipes and large and small zip lock plastic bags. If you have a package to spare, they would be appreciated. Thank you!
Have a great week!
Sincerely,
Keelin M. Simpson
