This week's Spelling City assignment is focused on contractions. Contractions can be tricky for third graders to spell. Many children struggle to remember which words "fall out" or where the apostrophe belongs. I know that the activities on Spelling City will help improve your child's contractions!
Do you remember learning about contractions when you were in school? A contraction is two words that are smooshed together to make one word. When the words are smooshed together, some letters fall out and are replaced by an apostrophe. "Can not" smooshes together to make the contraction "can't." Ask you're child to share a contraction they heard or wrote this week.
This week's Spelling City assignment is focused on contractions. Contractions can be tricky for third graders to spell. Many children struggle to remember which words "fall out" or where the apostrophe belongs. I know that the activities on Spelling City will help improve your child's contractions!
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I hope your third grade readers have told you all about our focus on nonfiction text! We are learning lots of strategies to help us understand informational text. In addition, we are learning all kinds of new information about our world!
We have learned: *Proficient readers use nonfiction text features (captions, headings, diagrams, etc…) to help them "rev up their minds" to get ready to read the text. This means they are preparing their minds to understand the text by making reasonable predictions. As they read, they check to see if their predictions are correct. *Proficient readers don't just read for random facts, they read to determine the main idea. They consider what the author is trying to teach the reader. Third graders are learning to recognize main ideas and details as "boxes and bullets." The main idea is the box. The details are the bullets. *Proficient readers synthesize as they read. Third graders don't call it synthesizing. However, they are learning that they should think about how one section of text relates to earlier sections of the text. Be on the lookout for other helpful hints! It's even great to read nonfiction texts together at home! Third Grade Reading MCAS will be administered on Monday, March 23 and Wednesday, March 25 at 9:00am. The test is created to take about 60 minutes. Some children will be done sooner, and others will take longer. The test is untimed, so the children can take as long as they need.
I am asking all students to be in bed by 8:00 the nights before the test (Sunday and Tuesday night). Please help your children follow this guideline. In addition, all children should eat a healthy breakfast before coming to school each test day. The children are welcome to bring in an extra healthy snack if they would like to eat before the test begins. They will be encouraged to eat lightly so they don't become sleepy from overeating. After all children have completed the test, they will also be able to eat snack and relax for a short time. The children will get extra recess each test day in order to run off any extra steam. Next week will look different in terms of homework. Written homework will not be assigned. I do not expect children to complete Spelling City. Your children should continue to read (or be read to) for at least 20 minutes each night and continue to use Xtra Math at least 3 times this week. They also have a Regions assessment next Friday, but this only requires studying 5-10 minutes each night. Most importantly, I do not want your children to feel stressed about MCAS. It is important that they know we believe they will do well. Please encourage them to work hard and do their best. However, also remind them that no matter how they do on MCAS, we know they are smart children! Thanks for your cooperation. Don't hesitate to contact me with any questions or concerns you may have. We look forward to seeing you tomorrow at the Third Grade State Fair! The presentation begins at 9:00 and lasts for about 20 minutes. It is followed by a museum walk in the cafeteria where state researchers will show off their dioramas. Be prepared to be impressed! They have done an amazing job!
During the museum walk, be sure to check out the region boards. Room 221 studied New England, the Pacific and the Midwest. Each board displays the following: *state product maps *region brochures *drawings of state symbols Third graders worked hard to create the brochures. They include interesting information about each state. If you look on the back, third grade persuasive writing may just convince you to pay a visit to their region. Finally, the state connections demonstrate how states within a region often have similar agriculture, landforms and climate due to their similar locations. Ask your third grader to teach you all they have learned! Wow! Fractions is a tricky topic, and your third graders are rocking it! The district has asked third grade teachers to teach many new fraction lessons this year. I will be honest, they are challenging. I wasn't so sure what would happen when I taught them. But your mathematicians have risen to the occasion and are solidifying their concept of fractions. The most important understanding is the meaning of the denominator. We have done many activities where the whole has changed. This has given third grade mathematicians the opportunity to find the value of the denominator repeatedly. For example, we explored fractions using cuisenaire rods. As you can see in the example above, the pink rod is equal to one. In order to answer the question, third grade mathematicians have to find which color rod will line up 2 in a row to be the same length as the pink. (It needs to be the same color twice in a row because fractions are made of equal parts.) Here you can see that the 2 rods together are the same length as the pink. Therefore, the red rod is 1/2 of the pink rod. However, mathematicians need to think flexibly and consider what happens if the whole is different. In this example, the whole is no longer the pink rod. The whole is the blue rod. The children now need to find out the fraction represented by one dark green rod. What makes this problem tricker is that the green rod does not line up equally with the blue rod. Mathematicians can't put two green rods together because they would be bigger than the one blue rod. In order to solve this problem, mathematicians need to find the unit fraction. (The fraction with a numerator of 1.) Therefore, they need to find out how many white cubes it takes to line up with the whole (blue rod.) As you can see, it takes 9 white cubes to line up with the blue rod. Therefore, each white cube is 1/9 of the blue rod (the whole). Now, all we need to do to determine what fraction of the blue rod the green rod represents is to count the number of white cubes that line up with it. As you can see, it takes 6 white cubes to line up with the dark green rod. Mathematicians need to remember that each white cube is 1/9 of the blue rod (the whole). Therefore, the dark green rod is 6/9 of the blue rod.
As you can imagine, this is not easy work! I have admired the persistence your children have displayed as we have worked our way through the lessons. If you would like to better understand our work with Cuisenaire rods and fractions, your child is welcome to borrow some rods to bring home and teach you. Alternatively, you can click here to use virtual Cuisenaire rods together. ***Please note that the images above are not to scale. I don't know why all the images didn't download the same size, so I hope you're able to pretend. :) |
AuthorMrs. Sullivan wants you to feel informed! Check out this blog to learn about what's happening in Room 221. Feel free to leave a comment. Let us know what you think or ask a question. Archives
June 2018
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