Weekly Update- 4/15

Wow, only one marking period left.  This year is flying by!  The students are really growing in independence and are working hard to finish out their third grade year.

In math this week we completed our unit on fractions and today we started learning about decimals.  This math chapter is only 8 lessons long, so another test will be coming up more quickly than usual.

Today we finished our mini unit on nutrition.  The students learned about the importance of eating healthy, exercising, and getting enough rest.  They also learned about ways to stop the spread of germs and about the dangers of drugs and alcohol.  The students took an open notebook test on these concepts today.  They also worked in pairs to create posters illustrating one of the topics we learned about.  They were able to present their posters to their classmates.  On Monday we will be starting a unit called, Structures of Life.  We will be talking about living and nonliving things, learning about the life cycles of plants and animals, and doing some experiments with seeds in the classroom.

In shared reading we reread the book, Isla and talked about the characters in the story.  We discussed their traits and compared them to ourselves and characters in other books.  We also talked about how the setting can influence a character's actions.  In guided reading we read the book, A Home for a New Nation.  This was a historical fiction book that was interesting to the students because it combined made-up characters with real historical people that we have learned about this year.  Some of these characters were Benjamin Banneker, Pierre L'Enfant, and Thomas Jefferson.  Today we went to the computer lab and the students completed a graphic organizer on the book using Microsoft Word.  The students were able to use the internet to research some of the characters in the book who we haven't learned about to see if they were real historical figures or made-up characters.

In writing, the students completed their persuasive letters.  I was not only impressed with their arguments and details that they used to support them, but with their beautiful cursive writing as well.   These persuasive letters will be sent home next week. 

In Fundations we have started unit 11.  This unit focuses on contractions and will take about 2 weeks to complete.  In Spanish we have started to learn about the seasons.  In grammar we practiced using the correct forms of their, there, and they're.

Have a great weekend!  Remember, next week is only a 4 day week!