News from our 3rd Grade Class

    April 17, 2008

The students will be wrapping up author study this week (at least reading books by their authors.) Today they will be taking their "noticings" about their authors' style and breaking them down into the three categories (external, internal, and deep) to see if they have enough of the deeper and internal noticings.  Last week I sent home an outline of their author study project which will be on display during our whole school celebration on the first Friday in June. As you know, everything your child needs to get a 3 is accomplished at school. If your child is striving for a 4, most of the requirements can be done at home.

Students will be finishing up their Power Points this week as well. Many students are finished with writing the information. The only thing EVERYONE needs is to transfer their noticings to the Power Point. The students that are done typing and revising their information are putting pictures and animation into their Power Points.

During reading homework, continue to look at the author style paper and ask your child questions about his/her noticings. Ask about the moods of the books (how you are supposed to feel), the themes (family, loss, friendship, etc), and the problems that you see in the books (are they real world problems, larger than life problems, silly problems, etc) Also you can think of other patterns you see across books. For example, we decided that our author, Cynthia Rylant, seems to have the characters in a routine (Solomon Singer always went for a walk around the city and the Old Woman who named things did things around her house over and over again.) -- Notice that I told you my CLAIM (routine) and gave you EVIDENCE (a sentence that supports my claim.) You can do the same thing with your children!

We are starting our fraction unit this week. We will be talking about what a numerator and a denominator are, parts of a whole, writing fractions and physically making fractions. Students will be making a "Fraction City" where they will be using strips of paper to make roads that are divided into fractions. With this model, they will be able to compare fractions, add and subtract fractions, and make equivalent fractions.

This week students will be thinking about their characters and their setting in their realistic fiction story. They will be drawing one of their characters and making a character web. In this web they will be thinking about how their character dresses, what their character says, how their character acts, etc. They will be able to weave parts of this web into their stories. We will be looking at "mentor texts" (picture books and chapter books) to get ideas on how other authors introduce characters and settings.

This week students will be delving into evaporation. They will observe how temperature, air, and surface area affect evaporation and the rate of evaporation. You can ask your child later this week about our "evaporation stations."

Ice Cream Sundae Celebration will take place this Friday afternoon. I sent home an email asking for help with the toppings. Please be on the lookout for this email.