Week of March 4th, 2017 -18

Reminders for the Week

Shelter in Place Drill

We will be having a drill on Monday, March 12 to practice shelter procedures. Teachers will discuss this as “shelter practice” with students in age-appropriate ways, but you may also want to also talk to your child about the subject. Last year, we shared this article with helpful suggestions for talking to children about safety procedures and practices. One of the things addressed is the impact of the terminology we use. Staff members will be going over this in advance, as we work together to ensure that students feel safe, protected, and aware of what to do in different situations. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/judith-simon-prager-phd/talking-to-kids-about-a-lockdown_b_4117330.html

-The drill will be held at 12:00 pm, so if you are on campus, we ask that you follow instructions when asked to go to a safe place. 

- Everyone who is outside will be moved to the ES Hall.

March 13th - ES Fundraising House Event

Walk-A-Thon and Fundraiser for African Hope food program. Click here for more information. 

Thursday March 15, 3:10- 4:15 - Movie Night 

Brought to you by the student leadership Team! Tickets will be on sale by the student leaders on the week of Sunday March 11. More details, coming next week and in CACN News!

READING
This week, third grade readers will continue exploring various topics of interest. Students will find out that the more they read on a topic, the higher the chances to become experts on that topic and be able to teach others about it. They will learn that to teach someone, a reader needs to know the main ideas and supporting details. So, they will work on organizing the bits of information into categories and will practice strategies, such as “hands” and “boxes and bullets”, to help them in the process.

        

              Boxes and Bullets

Main Idea:

Supporting Details: Detail 1 Detail 2 Detail 3

WRITING

In Writer’s Workshop, students are learning to organize their informational writing piece before starting their first draft. They will develop a Table of Contents first, as a planning tool by “talking across their fingers” to find out possible topics.  They will also learn about different types of text structure, such as boxes and bullets, compare and contrast, as well as pros and cons as a way of presenting their information. They will start writing their piece by developing the chapters they have a greater understanding of first, not necessarily writing in sequence according to the Table of Contents. They will learn that each chapter has a similar structure to the entire writing piece and develop a table of contents-like plan for each chapter. 

Third grade students are also being introduced to the punctuation focus for this unit.

I use capital letters:

-start of sentences

-names and place

-dates

-titles

I use end punctuation.

My sentences are one complete thought.

MATH

In math this week, third grade mathematicians will continue exploring the location of fractions and wholes on the number line. Students will begin the week examining different models of wholes and  begin to recognize that equivalent fractions always have the same size though they may look different. For example, in the image below, both models have contain four cubes that represent 1 whole and, of the whole, 1 half of the cubes are blue. The shape is different, but the size of the fraction remains the same. 

Students will also learn how to recognize and show equivalent fractions using fraction strips to compare different fractional units (e.g. 2/4 and 1/2) and plotting fractions on the number line. These strategies will provide visual models for students to see that equivalent fractions are equal to one another and are located at the same place on a number line.

With this understanding, students will begin to generate simple equivalent fractions and notice the patterns occurring between the numbers making up equivalent fractions. For example, 2/4 and 4/8 are equivalent fractions and we’ll be guiding students to recognize that when we double the numerator and denominator in 2/4 the result is the fraction 4/8. We could also cut the numerator and denominator of 2/4 in half to derive the equivalent fraction 1/2.

SOCIAL STUDIES

This week in social studies, we continue our research. Using the 'Big 6' research model, we will finish off research on our first of two questions, then start the second. We will look again at citing our sources correctly to include; title, author, publisher, date published and if an internet source, the URL.


With all this research into our countries, we still have in mind our essential question, 'How do history and culture shape communities around the world?'