Students are sharing and elaborating on a special time from their lives in our Personal Narrative unit in Writer's Workshop. After using a variety of strategies to generate ideas for their writing, they "zoomed in" to find a small moment. They are learning how to feature the "heart" of the story and make it more interesting to a reader with devices like figurative language, dialogue, descriptive details, and word choice.

We wrapped up our unit on responding to literature are now just enjoying our "just right" reading by discussing them with classmates.

In Math students are learning and comparing the different types of measurements and their units that we use in life (time, weight, capacity, height, length, etc.) They are also becoming familiar with the concepts of the Customary and Metric systems. Next up is Geometry! Kids will identify polygons based on attributes as well as the relationships among them.

In social studies we continue to learn about our earth and local community's geography. Students have do Daily Geography (DG) which features a different area of geography each week. They answer two questions per day to hone their geography skills. These will be sent home each week in Wednesday folders. We have studied the regions of our state and our own geographic identity here in the San Ramon Valley. Next up we will learn how the indigenous people of the valley utilized the land and how where they lived shaped their culture.

Reminders:

Typing is KEY!!! We encourage students to use Typing Club to practice their keyboard skills. Just as they became fluent in print, we would like them to be fluent in typing. This will give them the option of typing tasks like publishing writing pieces, or presenting with slideshows. This is optional.

Students should be reading "Just Right" books for their nightly reading. Their designated level is considered their instructional level. Please use the resources regarding "Just Right" reading on this site to aid you in finding the right books.

Learning and memorizing multiplication facts from 0-10 is an essential skill for third grade. And it will remain a goal throughout the year. Please encourage students to utilize the wide variety of strategies we have learned in class to figure out the product as well as practice the facts for automaticity.

http://kidsactivitiesblog.com/52468/multiplication-apps-for-kids

http://interactivesites.weebly.com/multiplication.html