Week Ending April 21

ACTION ITEMS: A big thank you to all you wonderful parents and homework helpers. So many of emailed your children's completed stories for Young Authors Day, (YAD.) Thank you for helping your children revise and polish those first drafts, edit those final copies, and complete a final copy that is ready for publishing. I know several of you were gone over the break and were unable assist your children in revising and editing their YAD stories. The grace period ends on Monday. Please email a Word document with your child's revised and edited final copy. We will format the stories here in class and paste them into our YAD books.

 

#1 poses for his About the Author photo.





Click on Kirby Larson's to visit this year's YAD guest author.

Common Core State State Standard

LITERACY- In an effort to become better acquainted with the SBA testing process, students practiced reading and taking notes on multiple sources. They read two tall tales and an informational article about tall tales. Students used their notes as a resource to help them answer multiple choice questions about the sources. They also used their notes to help them write a detailed response in paragraph form to a prompt that analyzed all three sources together. Students followed the CER (claim, evidence, and reasoning) formula as they composed their thoughts. Finally, they used the sources, their notes, and their responses to the multiple choice questions to help them begin a performance task. In the performance task, students will plan, draft, revise, and edit their own tall tale narrative. The performance task should take several days to complete and should prepare students for the ELA (English Language Arts) portion of the SBA.

How you can help at home-An informative SBA brochure went home earlier this week with information and resources to help your child practice and become familiar with the SBA process. Please take a moment to read through the brochure and visit the online resources. Keep your eyes open for more SBA information in the coming weeks.

Common Core State Standards-writing
Common Core State Standards-reading

MATH- We've started unit 6. This new unit introduces students to basic geometry concepts. It is rich in math-specific vocabulary, which can be quite the challenge for third graders. This week we explored the relationship between lines, line segments, rays and angles. Students learned how to identify angles according to how their size compared to a right angle (90 degree angle.) Students learned to identify triangles according to the measurement of their angles as well as according to the length of their sides. They also learned to identify quadrilaterals in mathematical terms as parallelograms, rectangles, squares, rhombi, and trapezoids.

How you can help at home- Click here for an informative video from Kahn Academy. Students watched this in class. It's a helpful review of the differences between lines, line segments, and rays.

Common Core State Standards



Prof #10 demonstrates how to use a protractor to measure the turn of an angle.

 

Have a great weekend. Enjoy that sunshine while you can!