January 7-11

Hi Families,

Welcome to the New Year!! We are halfway through 3rd grade and are gearing up for a fabulous second semester.  Now that we are at the midway point, our focus is going to change a little bit.  Students in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade spend this time preparing for State Assessments.   The students will be learning how to be better test takers and should be ready for them in March.

Tomorrow we will have our International Festival parent meeting.  If you are able to attend at 11:15 in the morning, please let me know.

Reading logs for the past 3 weeks are due tomorrow.  A new reading log for this week will be coming home in Monday folders.

Here is what we have planned for this week:
Reading- 
We will be starting Theme 4 this week, How Does Electricity Work?  We will be practicing how to 'syntehesize' information when we read.  This is when new ideas are created after reading a text.  We have several picture books we will be using to practice this skill. 

We will also be doing an author study about Patricia Polacco.  We will read several of her picture books and then compare them with each other. 

Spelling-
The spelling lists this week are made up of words that contain one of these patterns:  ai, ay, ea, or ee.

Math-
Before break the students learned the meaning of division.  We will pick up right where we left off, and learn about fact families and many of our division facts.

Social Studies and Writing- 
International Festival Project-- the students are completing their research and will begin to organize the information in which they gathered.  They will be creating an outline for the paragraphs they will be writing and filling out fact sheets.