Third Grade News February 21, 2003
Last week was a short but busy week in Room 11. We have been learning about the presidents this week in honor of President's Day. We read about Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. We also read a book called "So You Want to be the President" which talked about all the presidents. We read a play about General Washington. We did several activities for Valentine's Day too and read some legends about St. Valentine.
In math we are doing better and better on multiplication facts. Five children have passed all the quizzes up through the 12's!! Today was the math test. We have been doing a lot with decimals this week, so I am hopeful about the test outcome. Our next unit is on geometry. We will, of course, continue to work on multiplication facts and we will begin to drill division facts as well.
In science we are continuing to learn about the moon, earth, and sun. The children did fairly well on the Chapter 1 test. Chapter 2 is about how the earth moves around the sun and rotates. We made star clocks yesterday. If we ever have a clear starry night the children can use them to help locate the Big Dipper, Little Dipper and Cassiopeia. Please sign their homework notebook if you do have a chance to stargaze and they will earn extra tickets! On Thursday we will be having a test on Ch. 2. Also, we will be needing a wiffle ball and a small amount of playdoh for an activity.
We are hoping to begin "Charlotte's Web". With the multiple delays this week we didn't get to it. If your child has a copy of the book, they may bring it in to use next week. We will be making dioramas in a few weeks of Charlotte's Web, so each child will need a shoebox the first week of March.
This week is the Archdioces Writing Sample test for third graders all over the Archdiocese. The children were given a topic to write a story about (write about a special object or pet), and are working on their stories without help from me. We began Monday to prewrite and will hopefully be finished by the end of the week. The children will be given as much time as they need to complete their story. In fact I am insisting that they take their time and proofread and edit as well as they can. This is such hard work for third graders! The stories will be taken to a central location and teachers from other area Catholic Schools will meet to rate each story on a scale of 1 to 4. Two teachers will grade each story and the scores will be added together for a final score. A score of 7 or 8 is excellent. A 6 is a good, solid third grade story. A 4 or 5 is a story that needed more work on punctuation, capitalization, complete sentences, or perhaps was very short. A 2 or 3 needs a lot of work and may be difficult to read. An X means the writer did not address the topic given. I think we have some very good writers in our class so I am eager to see how well we will do. The results will be back by the end of March.
By the way, my association with the Quia website is ending after this week. Quia began charging a rather high fee last February, which was donated to my class last year, so I got one more year of it. However, that year is about up, so I am switching to the TeacherWeb.com page which the other teachers at St. Al's are already using. This page will be linked to the Saintal's web page hopefully by next week. If not you can go to teacherweb.com. Then click the state of Ohio, StAloysiusGonzagaSchool, and MrsHolscher. This site has links for homework, announcements, upcoming events and other cool features.
In religion we learned about many patron saints this week.We made posters of them and found many interesting saints. There will be a religion test next Thursday on Chapters 8, 9, and 10.
UPCOMING DATES
Tuesday, Feb. 25 - Out of uniform 50 cents
Wednesday, Feb. 26- Spelling test
Thursday, Feb. 27-Religion test and Science test
SPELLING LIST cookie, foot, good, took, put, pull, voice, noise, royal, toys, oil, shook, point, enjoy
CHALLENGE WORDS destroy, plurals, disappointed, understood
HOMEWORK Feb. 18 -21
Monday:
Tuesday: math paper, practice math facts, Book It
Wednesday: math page, study for math test
Thursday: spelling page, study for math test
Friday: Have a great weekend!
|
|
