The Week in Review

READING: We continued to practice the art of "reading between the lines." Using our class read-aloud, The Horse and His Boy we looked for examples of examples of hidden meanings or even sarcasm by the writer. We discussed foreshadowing as a device and noted how many writers, such as C.S. Lewis, used even descriptions of the weather to provide clues to what might be happening in the story. We also witnessed how some of the predictions we made last week that were based on a thoughtful character analysis came to fruition in this week's reading of the story. Specifically, we saw how Bree the horse was humbled a bit upon his meeting with Aslan and how in the end, the only thing he really lost was his self-conceit. We decided we liked Bree better without all that self-conceit, anyway.

WRITING: Using our inferences and predictions as a guide, we pretended we were C.S. Lewis. We wrote our own fanfiction describing how one of the main characters saved the day.

MATH; We are continuing to commit our multiplication facts to memory. This week we focused on patterns we found in the fives tables and the tens table. We used our newly learned multiplication skills to help interpret data on pictographs. * We are currently taking timed tests to help us achieve our goal of committing our times tables up to 12 X 12 to memory. Students #5, and #24 are already up to their sixes! Way to go, girls! Several students are still struggling with their two times tables. I highly recommend you help and encourage your child to practice his or her facts over the weekend and over the next few weeks. Knowing these facts to the point of automatic recall will be a huge boon in fourth grade math. Click here to go to the website I use for our timed tests.

SCIENCE: We assembled Mr. Bones, the erstwhile model of a human skeleton. We applied some recently learned facts about the human skeleton to help us determine which bone went where. Specifically, we identified the femurs as the largest bones in the human skeleton. We identified the lower bones in both the arms and the legs as being made up of two separate bones. We attached the bones to the torso right side up by first identifying the ball and socket joints. Then we looked at a make-believe student's failed attempt to correctly assemble Mr. Bones and tried identify those bones that were incorrectly placed.

Mr. Bones et. al.

BOOK PROJECT: Instructions went home last week for this month's book project. There are also links to pdf copies in the homework sidebar. At this point, everyone should have chosen and begun reading a non-fiction text to use for this project. *Students, post a brief comment telling me the title of the book you are using for this project. Be sure to include your number so I know whom to reward on Monday!

OTHER: Congratulations, Third Graders! You earned 68 blue tickets so far. I am proud of you. On an unrelated note, several students asked about the website I used for the Choice Time drawing activities we do on Fridays.  That site can be found here. They have step by step tutorials for all sorts of fun drawing projects.