Happy New Year

Wow...what a great weekend. I forgot how energizing a dose of vitamin D can be. I took advantage of the sunshine and put the top down on my car today. Sheer bliss. Just the thing I needed as I listened to that nail-biter of a Hawks game on the radio. Oh my word! We'll be taking about that for a while, I think.

Here's what we've been up to on our first week back from break.

Literacy- We read Tops and Bottoms, and learned about the trickster tale genre. We practiced ordering the sequence of events within the story. This week, we welcome our wonderful curriculum coach, Mrs. Palmquist to our room. She will be introducing our class to WriteSmart, a feature of the Journeys' website that teaches students to read text online, take notes online, and type reading responses to comprehension questions using text examples as evidence to support their thinking.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.3.2

How you can help: Continue to encourage your child to read for a minimum of 30 minutes every night. Reading logs are due on Monday. Students may use blank notebook paper following the example posted in the sidebar of this blog, or use any downloadable, printable log they find online. Logs need only include the title of books read, the number of minutes read every night, and a parent signature verifying the content of the log.

Science- We read Paulo's Parachute Mission  to prepare us to design parachutes. This week as we begin designing our parachutes we will be learning about air-drag resistance and how changing variables within the design affects falling time.
3-PS2-2

Math- We are near finishing our unit on measurement and data. This week, we practiced converting tables of data into horizontal and/or vertical bar graphs. We learned how to use keys, the importance of labeling the X and Y axis, and using tally charts and frequency charts to design plot line graphs. We are continuing to practice telling time. Students are learning to tell the minutes after the hour, and the minutes until the next hour e.g. 2:45 or a quarter to three. CCSS.Math.Content.3.MD.A.1

How you can help: Continue to ask your child to tell time on any analog clocks you have at home. Ask them to tell the minutes past the current hour, and the minutes until the next hour. Continue to work with multiplication flash cards at home.

Students: In the comments below, tell me what time you usually start your homework at night. About what time is it when you usually finish your homework? How much time do you spend on homework in all?