HAPPY SPRING 3M FAMILIES!!!

I hope everyone had a restful, enjoyable, and much-deserved Spring Break.

Below you will find my SPRING NEWSLETTER so that you will be aware of what is coming down the pike when your children return to school.

One of the items you will be reading about is our ongoing State Project. This project requires occasional work at home which uses art supplies such as crayons, colored pencils, flair pen, etc. It would be helpful if they have these materials available to them at home so that they can successfully complete their projects. Also, please be sure that your child returns to school with a supply of pencils.

Now that your children are nearly fourth graders, the pace of their workload will increase during these final months of third grade. I am hoping that through my website, specific guidance and preparation, the children will be able to transition to this elevated rigor with ease.

Below is an overview of what to expect in the coming months:

SOCIAL STUDIES

THE STATE PROJECT

As you are well aware, the State Project has begun. I have set up a specific page on my website with all of the assignments your children are to complete. Each of these assignments will come together in a State Project created on Book Creator where all of their hard work will be celebrated. Upon its completion, the children marvel at their accomplishments. We will attempt to complete much of this project at school, but on occasion, students will need to complete assignments at home.

CURRICULUM

The remainder of the year will take us on a journey of the Midwest, Southwest, and Pacific States of our country. As in the past, the children will learn all of the states and capitals for these regions as well each region’s unique landforms.  In addition, we will be doing some special class projects and explorations as we journey West. One of them will be a “Pioneer Project” where they need place themselves in the mindset of a 19th Century pioneer heading westward.

The year will culminate with a final quiz which will require them to know all of the 50 states, their capitals, and important landforms and boundaries of all regions. Since we are building our knowledge region by region, they will definitely be ready for their “Nifty Fifty.”

READING

In addition to our ongoing non-fiction reading – Time for Kids and other informational reading – we will be reading two novels that take place in the regions of the United States that we will be exploring. The novels are Sarah, Plain and Tall and Justin and the Best Biscuits in the World.  As always, each of these books will require frequent written work and responding to the text.

WRITING

We have been exploring Poetry over the past several weeks.  Using the work of Carl Sandberg as a foundation, we've been discussing the poetic devices poets use such as alliteration, contrast, onomatopoeia, metaphor, simile, etc.  Using Sandberg’s work as inspiration, the children wrote some beautiful poetry about a place that is special to them. We will continue our Poetry unit after break by writing poems about their states.  These poems will become part of their State Project binder.

We will also continue to do weekly writing to hone their ability to write about informational topics as well as weekly grammar, editing, spelling, and punctuation work.

MATH

In the coming weeks, we will be wrapping up our Unit – “Up and Down the Number Line.” This challenging unit provided the children with an investigation exploring positive and negative integers. Through this unit, the children were encouraged to learn to distinguish two areas of knowledge – 1) Counting and Computing, and 2) Relations between numbers and operations.  Examples of the first area include knowing how to count and knowing when to add or subtract. Examples of the second are knowing that addition increases the result, knowing that subtraction cancels addition, and knowing that the order of successive additions and subtractions does not affect the result.

Next we will begin the unit – “Combining and Comparing.” This unit will be about addition and subtraction in contexts in which two or more quantities are compared, one quantity is removed from another, or quantities are added together to reach a given total. In this investigation, students need to THINK about what’s actually involved in the problem. For example:

If my grandfather is 89 and the oldest person on record is 120, how much longer would my grandfather need to live to tie the record?

Does “how much longer” suggest that something should be added on? If so, what should be added to what? Can this problem be solved with addition or subtraction? How would you solve it?

This is a fantastic unit to build their number sense and critical thinking skills. One of the most important goals of this unit is to have your children articulate, develop, and use their own strategies for solving problems.

MUSIC

Mrs. Finn does a fabulous job of integrating our Social Studies curriculum into her Music classes. Each week the children go on a musical journey of the U.S. regions we are currently studying. It is such a treat to see the children use a wide variety of instruments as they explore the beats, rhythm, lyrics, and specific instruments of the different regions of the United States.  You will all have the opportunity to come in and watch them perform in May during their “Music Fling.” I will send home a flyer with the specific date and time once it has been set.

SCIENCE