First Week of November!

I am so grateful for the opportunity to meet with each of you during parent-teacher conferences.  Your appointment time was on the half-sheet of purple paper that I sent home last week, and it is written on the report card that you will receive on Tuesday.  I have also put a list of times and initials on the blog if you need to check it.

Our learning goals for the week:

Reading: We are continuing to read Because of Winn-Dixie, and the skills that we will be focusing on this week are making predictions, using contractions for am, is and are, and using similes (making comparisons with "like" and "as". The main genre that we will read this week is realistic fiction.

Vocabulary: shadow and search

Spelling: Unexpected Consonant Patterns (kn, wr, tch)

Math: We will be wrapping up the structured lessons on subtracting on Monday and Tuesday.  Later in the week, the students will start to learn multiplication by investigating groups of items.

Science: During our LEAD 21 Reading time and small groups, each student will be investigating the question "How does science help us understand the natural word?"

Have a safe and happy Halloween!
Miss Kimpton

Oct. 26 to Oct. 30

Welcome to the week!  Here are our learning targets:

Reading: The students are beginning Week 2 of their Science and Play unit.  This week, each small group will be reading a non-fiction story to learn about how technology helps people.  They will be investigating the question: "How does science create news ways for people to have fun?"

Vocabulary: observe, classify, electricity

In our story about Winn-Dixie, the students will be working on remembering details, summarizing, finding compound words, and analyzing idioms (such as "it's raining cats and dogs").

Math: This week, the students are focusing on different strategies to subtract and find differences.  They will also begin the introduction to multiplication.

Writing: We will be working on the quality of writing, such as revising to create better sentences and editing to follow proper punctuation and capitalization rules.

Please remember that next week will have three short days that dismiss at noon: Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.  We will be doing parent-teacher conferences during the afternoons.  I am really looking forward to meeting with each of you!

Miss Kimpton

A Week in Review

I can't believe that I am now just updating the blog...with the week basically behind us.  We've been pretty busy here at school!

Here is a look at some of the learning that we did this week:

Reading: We started reading the novel Because of Winn-Dixie, and we are working on the skills of summarizing and recalling and retelling. We also started the LEAD 21 Unit titled "Science and Play". The students have been reading their leveled readers during our small groups to investigate energy, force, friction, and gravity.

Vocabulary Strategy: use antonyms (words that mean the opposite) to understand words

Spelling: short and long vowels

Math: mid-chapter test on adding, start subtracting by estimating differences

Class Counselor: Be drug free and make healthy choices

I'm sorry for the late post!  Have a great weekend.
Miss Kimpton

Painting!

Oct. 12 to 14

This week is short! The students will be:

Reading: The students will be reviewing the various skills that they have learned in this unit.  They will be finding synonyms, writing about changes in their lives, and finishing their reading in their small readers.

Math: We will be practicing adding using place value and regrouping (carrying for those of us that went through school a while ago).  To start this, we are using base 10 blocks to physically maneuver values into ones, tens, and hundreds.  We will then convert this to adding the numbers written vertically and practice regrouping.

Art: We will be finishing our masks this week.  We will use designs and colors to illustrate changes that we have had in our lives.

The students will be dismissed at noon on Wednesday, and they will be no school on Thursday and Friday.

Have a lovely week!
Miss Kimpton

Spelling Sentences

In order to help the students identify the various spelling patterns for the week, they divided into groups to create sentences with specific patterns.

Oct. 5 to Oct. 9

Do you ever get to the middle of the week, and then realize, IT'S THE MIDDLE OF THE WEEK!  I am sorry for not posting our learning goals earlier.  The days are flying by a little too quickly.

Reading: We are in Week 3 of  Unit 1: Changes.  This week, our focus question is "What changes can we choose to make?"  We are reading a story called Scaredy Squirrel to examine this question. We will be working on making inferences (thoughts we have based on what we already know plus what the book tells us), using word relationships to determine meanings of words, and using prefixes that mean "not".

Vocabulary: familiar, prepare

Spelling: Long /i/ Words

Math: Use different properties to add numbers (Commutative: change the order of the addends and Associative:  choose the order in which you add the addends), Add using Expanded Form

Writing: Make a numbered list on LEAD 21 about changes you choose, discuss brainstorming activities

We will also be using Typing Club to learn keyboarding skills.

Thank you!

Happy Friday!

We rounded out our week of testing with a little bit of fun this Friday!

In between filling glue bins and smoothing strips of paper, I managed to get one shot of a team working on their masks.  This project is in-depth, but it is worth it!

Waiting for the Skyview Homecoming Parade!

The best third grade EVER!

These smiles just can't help but make you smile.

The excitement was building! 

Dancing in freeze-frame.