Language Skills

Spelling words this week were "Frequently Misspelled Words."  We talked about what makes some of these words tricky to spell.  Combining sentences with similar subjects and predicates/sentences and fragments to make a better, longer sentence was our grammar skill (ex.  John likes to swim. John likes to dive.  Combine to make John likes to swim and dive.).  We even looked at some of our own writing pieces and found places in which we could combine short sentences to make a longer sentence.

Students also began writing a personal narrative, or a true story about an experience they have had.  We are working through the steps of the writing process for this writing piece.  So far we have completed the prewriting (forming ideas to write about) and drafting (or sloppy copy) steps.  Next up we'll edit, rewrite, and publish our stories.

Authors at work!

Lets Get Lost!

Pam Holtz, county naturalist,  visited the third grade class this week to introduce the kids to reading a map from a birds-eye view.  The kids had to follow a map to find clues to an animal found in Iowa.  By the end of their journey, most had figured out their animal.

Listening to directions

Orienting our maps - North at the top, and facing North

Science (and some math)

We worked on measuring the size of satellites this week in science.  The kids had to make a prediction by looking at pictures, which satellite was the largest.  Then the kids were given pieces of color coded string to measure.  Had a good experience in learning how to measure a piece of string that was longer than our meter stick.  We will have more measuring practice during our watermelon afternoon.  The largest satellite was the ocean satellite that had many solar panels, smallest satellite was a hummingbird.  How can that be?  There are two types of satellites, artificial and natural.  Have your kids explain what is the difference.

Recess Fun!

This 'N That

• Thanks to those who have volunteered to help with our Watermelon Day on September 16th!  We're  looking forward to a fun afternoon!

• Please be sure your child has tennis shoes for PE (we have PE on days 1 and 3 - due to our cycle system, PE is not always on the same days of the week).  It may be a good idea to keep tennis shoes in your child's backpack if he/she has been forgetting to wear tennis shoes for PE.

• Like the pictures on the blog?  You can have them!  Just right click and save to your desktop (Mac users highlight and drag).  This allows you to save any pictures you'd like of your child. We will not be providing a disc of photos at the end of the year, so feel free to save any pictures you want.  The posts/pictures will remain in the archives (at right) all year.

Friday! {Stations}

Everyone looks forward to Fridays, but in third grade Fridays are an extra special day because we have stations!  During stations on Friday afternoons, students get to rotate through several activities (these change weekly, but often include using the Smart board, catching up on math assignments/playing math games, using the laptops to play games on the websites linked to our blog, independent reading time, and even crafts).

Stations are a fun way to do some activities that we don't always have time to do on a daily basis, and allow students to work in small groups to complete tasks.

A peek at stations this week:

Using the Smart board

Crafting in 3H

Crafting in 3B



Playing math games

Today we even had a guest teacher help lead a station!  KE Technology Integration Specialist, Mrs. Swantz, came to help students learn to create folders on their flash drives, as well as to teach students how to open and save a word processing document, and to save/file that document on their flash drive correctly.

Reading

Both reading groups continued reading the story Cliffhanger in our anthology, and worked on the reading skills of predicting/inferring and identifying cause and effect.

Mrs. Bender and Mrs. Hartsock also continue to work with individuals administering the DRA (Developmental Reading Assessment).


Students work with a partner to complete a cause and effect chart after reading a short story

Language Skills

Our spelling words this week were words with short a, e and i vowel sounds.  Students also learned to identify sentences vs. fragments.  Now that we know what makes a complete sentence, we will work on always using complete sentences in our writing.  Students also finished up their "neat sheet"/final copies of their thank you letters to Mr. Mike or Mr. Jordan (our KE custodians) for custodians day.

Social Studies

We continued our study of maps this week (sorry, I forgot to snap pictures!).  Students reviewed Map Keys, and practiced using map symbols.  We learned that map symbols are usually simple pictures of a real object.

Math

Learning how to use the Student Reference Book has been our topic this week along with reviewing the addition and subtraction facts.  We also worked on taking a survey, making a tally chart, and creating a bar graph.  The kids' favorite section of the book was the games.  Ask your student how to play Less Than You and Addition Top-It.