Autumn is definitely here...some days it has been feeling like winter! Please be sure your child has a winter coat when they come to school on these chilly days!
This week in Language Arts, we will be covering the story How Animals Talk. We will focus on identifying the main idea and the supporting details in a story. Students received Robust Vocab and spelling words this past Friday. We will have our spelling test on Thursday, November 21 and our reading test on Friday, November 22.
In math, we will continue to move forward with multiplication! We will have a quiz on the 6, 7 and 8 times tables on Wednesday. Hopefully, will have learned all our times tables by Thanksgiving and then will just be practicing to master them! Keep on practicing these facts at home.
In science, we will be finishing up Chapter 4, Lesson 2 on energy in a food web. We will then move into Chapter 4, Lesson 3, on competition between living things. The students are really enjoying all these little glances into the animal kingdom! They certainly have lots of stories to share.
We will be covering Chapter 10 in Religion, "The Church Prays." We will start by learning about the prayer taught to us by Jesus, the Lord's Prayer, and then we will learn about some different kinds of prayer. Our religion test this week will be on Friday, November 22.
A few reminders...
Welcome to the second marking period! Report cards will be available on Powerschool early next week. Please take a moment to check out your child's grades before Parent-Teacher conferences later this month.
This week in Language Arts, we will be working with the story Aero and Officer Mike. We will continue with the focus skill of fact and opinion. Students have already received both spelling and vocabulary words that go with this story. In grammar, we will be talking about nouns, with a focus on common and proper nouns. We will have a spelling test and a reading test on Thursday, November 14.
In math, we will continue to work on multiplication. The children did a great job on the multiplication test we had this past Friday! This week, we will be working on the 6, 7, and 8 times tables. We will have a quiz on Friday, November 15 on the 6s and 7s facts.
We are switching back to science! We will be covering Chapter 4, Lesson 1 this week. We will learn about ways that living things interact...focusing on how they can help each other. We will then move on to Lesson 2, which focuses on how living things get energy.
In religion, we will be covering Chapter 9, "The Church Teaches Us." We will learn that the Church is the Body of Christ and the People of God, and that it is the Holy Spirit who guides and teaches us. Our test on this chapter will be on Friday, November 15. We will also be continuing to pray and learn about Mary through our Consecration prayers and reflections.
A few reminders...
Wow! It is November already! 3A had an awesome Halloween party (thanks to all the class parents and all parents who helped in any way) and we enjoyed a beautiful school Mass on Friday in honor of All Saints Day.
This week in reading, we will be finishing up the story The Babe and I. We will have both spelling and reading tests on Tuesday, November 5. Don't forget to review our focus skill, facts and opinions, at home when you are studying! After our spelling and reading tests, we will get our new Robust Vocab and spelling words that go along with the next story, Aero and Officer Mike. This is a nonfiction story, and we will also be focusing on identifying facts and opinions in this story.
In math, we will continue to work on multiplication! We will have a short quiz on 4s and 5s times tables on Wednesday, and on Friday we will have our first test on multiplication. Students should know the rules of multiplying by 0 and 1, and also know their times tables from 2 through 5. They should also be able to show multiplication by equal groups and drawing arrays. We will of course be practicing all these skills in class throughout the week.
In religion, we will be finishing up Chapter 8 on the Four Marks of the Church, and our test on this chapter will be on Wednesday. We will then begin Chapter 9, "The Church Teaches Us." In this chapter, students will explore some different ways the Church teaches us, including things like the Apostles' Creed and the Holy Spirit. We will also take some time to explore some of the Saints of our Church throughout the week.
I really enjoyed checking out the students' Social Studies projects on different communities! This week we will be finishing up talking about natural resources and moving on to Unit 1, Lesson 5 on ways people interact and change the environment- either for positive or negative reasons. We will talk about how we all have the responsibility to help protect our environment.
A few reminders...
Have a great weekend! God bless!
I can't believe it is almost the end of October already!
This week in Language Arts, we will be starting the story The Babe and I. This is a fiction story about Babe Ruth, and our baseball fans always really enjoy it. Our focus skill for this story will be identifying and differentiating between fact and opinion. Our spelling words, which the students received on Friday, are compound words; and students received the new Robust Vocab words on Friday too. In grammar, we will be learning about simple and compound sentences.
We will continue to work with multiplication in math. We will learn our 3s times tables on Monday. On Wednesday, we will have a quiz on 2s and 3s times tables. Children should know the facts 2 x 0 through 2 x 12 and 3 x 0 through 3 x 12. We will then continue to work with 4s and 5s times tables.
In religion, we will be working on Chapter 8, "The Church Has Four Marks." We will learn what it means that the Church is One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic. We will also talk about and celebrate the Feast of All Saints, on Friday, November 1.
We will be moving forward in Social Studies. We will spend a little more time on map skills and map scales, and then move on to Unit 1, Lesson 4, on resources in different communities. We will learn about renewable and nonrenewable resources, and how to best protect them and our environment.
A few reminders...
Have a great weekend and God bless!
This was a very exciting week at SFCS. We had the Blue Mass on Thursday, and the students really enjoyed the parts of that that they were able to participate in and observe. We also had a great Buddy Day on Friday making Rosary posters with our 4th grade buddies!
This week in Language arts, we will be reviewing Unit 1 and completing our Unit 1 test. Students should study Robust Vocabulary from the first 5 stories- Ruby the Copycat, The Day Eddie Met the Author, Schools Around the World, Ellen Ochoa, Astronaut, and The School News. There will be no content from these stories on the test, only the Robust Vocabulary and the skills we learned with these stories. Students should also be familiar with grammar concepts from the first 5 lessons- types of sentence; simple, complete and compound subjects and predicates. The students will be bringing home books to help them study throughout the week. We will complete the first section of the test on Wednesday, October 23 and the second section on Friday, October 25.
In math, we will be officially working with multiplication! We started learning about making equal groups on Friday. We will continue to explore multiplication using the "equal groups" model, creating arrays, and using repeated addition to solve. We will also work with the 0 and 1 rules of multiplication. We might get to the 2 and 3 times tables by the end of the week as well!
Our Social Studies work this week will deal with Unit 1, Lesson 3 on how our country's geography shapes the lives of the people and animals who live in different areas. We will learn how geography affects what people do for fun and what they do for work.
In religion, we will be working on the mini-chapter in our textbook on Ordinary Time. We will also be discussing more about what it means to be consecated to Our Lady as we prepare to start our consecration program with the children. We will not have a religion test this week because of the short week.
A few reminders...
3A completed our first round of MAP testing! The students did a great job...and we all appreciated how "short and sweet" it was!
This week in language arts, we will be finishing up our work with the story Ellen Ochoa, Astronaut. We did not get as far as I had hoped last week because of the MAP testing. Our test on this story will be on Wednesday, October 16. We will then enter into our "review unit" in preparation for our first unit test! Students will not have spelling words this week.
In math, we will wrap up our work on subtraction. We will have a subtraction test on Thursday, October 17. We will then reach a major 3rd grade milestone...we will be starting multiplication! I know the children are looking forward to this new topic, so I'm sure this will be very exciting.
We have switched from science to social studies. We will be covering Unit 1, Lesson 1, about communities, and Unit 1 Lesson 2, reviewing urban, suburban and rural communities. Some of our little friends seem to have a slightly negative attitude toward social studies...please encourage your child to remember that social studies is important, and know that I will do all that I can to make it fun!
We will be working on Chapter 6 and 7 in our religion book this week, dealing with the Church year and Ordinary Time. We will talk about the different season of the Church year with a focus on, of course, Ordinary Time. We will also spend some time talking about our consecration to Our Lady of Guadalupe and other timely topics in our faith.
A few reminders...
Happy Feast of St. Francis! We enjoyed a very nice school liturgy on Friday celebrating this feast day. Thank you to those family members who could join us in prayer!
As a note, we will be taking the MAP test throughout this week. The children have an hour each of math, language and reading testing. We did a few practice tests this past week. This test is simply a baseline and the children should be encouraged to do their best, but not to be upset or worried about it in any way. I look forward to the opportunity to get their baseline scores so that I can further plan out our school year!
This week in Language Arts, we will be reading the story Ellen Ochoa, Astronaut. This is a biographical piece that gives the students nonfiction information on the life of Ellen Ochoa. This is an inspiring story that encourages children to always do their best and "reach for the stars!" Our spelling test on the words the children received this past Thursday will be on Friday, October 11. The reading test on the story will be next Wednesday, October 16. Don't forget to study Robust Vocabulary, too!
In math, we will continue to work on subtraction with regrouping. We will apply this skill in various ways, including subtracting money! Look for a simple quiz coming up later this week...date to be announced, pending how our week unfolds!
We will be finishing up science this week and switching to social studies. Children received a take-home imaginary animal adaptations project this past week and it is due on Thursday, October 10. We will be working on Chapter 2, Lesson 4; comparing animals of today to animals of the past. Around Thursday, we will switch to social studies, and we will learn about different types and features of communities.
Our religion chapter this week, chapter 5, talks about the growth and spread of the Early Church. We will learn about how the early Christians lived and prayed, and how they spread their faith even when it was challenging or difficult. We will have a religion test on chapter 5 on Friday.
A few notes...
God bless and have a great weekend!
I can't believe it is nearly October already! September really flew by this year.
This week in Language Arts, we will be working with the story Schools Around the World. This is our first nonfiction story. Please encourage your child to read this story carefully and thoroughly. Third graders often tend to skim through nonfiction texts as opposed to reading them carefully. Our focus skill for this story is using nonfiction text features to locate information. Our spelling words all feature long vowel sounds. We will have both spelling and reading tests on Thursday, October 3 this week.
In math, we will be moving into subtraction with regrouping! The children really did a great job with addition and I'm sure they will do just as well with subtraction. We will begin by reviewing our regrouping skills with 2-digit numbers, and then we will apply them to larger (3, 4 and more!) digit numbers.
Our religion chapter this week deals with Jesus' promise to his Disciples that the Holy Spirit would come to them. We will learn about what happened at the first Pentecost and why we continue to celebrate this important holy day. We will learn a bit about the growth of the early Church and the challenges faced by the first Christians. Our religion test will be on Friday, October 4.
In science, we will continue to talk about different adaptations that animals have to survive. The children did a great job experimenting with different types of "bird beaks" on Friday! We will have a quiz on animal adaptations on Wednesday, October 2. Children should study the notes in their Sci/SS notebook as well as reading over Chapter 2, Lesson 3 in their textbook (pages 48-53). We will then move into our next lesson, on how animals of today are alike and different from animals of the past.
A few reminders...