Busy Busy Busy

We have really been working hard on our on expository write prompts. We have been planning and writing one almost every week. We have written about traditions and holidays, being a good Bobcat and next we are writing about our hero!
Every Tuesday we spend Brainy Bobcat time practicing extended response math problems. One week Mrs. G. teaches us one and the next week we do one on our "lonesome." We are getting better at those. They aren't as difficult as they used to be.
We have been taking a timed addition and subtraction test every Monday during "Community Time." We are competing against the other two third grades. We have come in second place every week! The good news is that we have improved each week!
Everyone has been bringing in gingerbread ingredients so that we can make our gingerbread houses next Tuesday, the 15th. It will be lots of fun! We need to bring in a shoebox by this Friday too.
Since this is a really busy month for families, and we are not in school for that many days, we only have to do 2 AR tests this month.
This week we are in new groups and have new books again for reading. We are making little booklets to use with our reading stories. We will write summaries, use vocabulary and make new endings for our stories too.
We went on a wonderful trip to the Native American Museum. We saw pottery, wigwam, a longhouse, kachina dolls, jewelry, clothing, animal hides, baskets and lots more artifacts. It was a great trip.
Next week we will be learning some holiday poetry with a poetry and will perform it for our class. We so that to help our fluency and to practice reading with expression.
Mrs. G. says that we should return our progress reports after our parents see them and sign them.
WE are supposed to wear appropriate clothes to play outside at recess. Wear snowpants and boots if we want to play in the snow. Make sure our names/initials are written on a tag to make identifying them much easier!
3G wishes everyone a Happy Holiday and wonderful winter break!

Random thoughts from 3G

Everyone contributed to this post today! Since we have all been tested for reading, we will be starting new guided reading books and new groups. We all read a neat story in our reading book and then we wrote about why the dog in the story made a good visiting dog. Mrs. G. said we did a really good job for our first time writing like this. We will do lots more of these. We have been doing extended math response too. We do them every Tuesday. Mrs. G. teaches one week and then the next week we do one alone. We are getting better at those too. We computation competition a few weeks ago. All of the third grades take an addition and subtraction timed test and the teachers grade them and average the scores. The winning class gets the trophy by their class picture on the bulletin outside in the hallway. We haven't won yet but our scores have improved 9 points in 2 weeks. We had so many paws that we got to eat at round tables in the lunch room today and we had a game day in the gym too. Ryan Heger represented the third graders in competition using almanac questions in an assembly this week. He did a really good job! In Social Studies we have been talking about Native Americans. They have many different cultures and use natural resources for their clothes, homes and food. We are going on a field trip to a Native American Museum to see some Indian things in a few weeks. We have written to a writing prompt about be a respectful, responsible and safe Bobcat and today we wrote about a zoo animal. We have been writing a lot!
Mrs. Greenstreet is working in all of the third grade classrooms now. She is a teacher that can help all of us when we need it.

Where did October go?

We have been soooo busy....We completed our four bully prevention lessons. Ask you child about them. They should be able to tell you what should occur if they encounter a bullying situation. (Stop-Walk-Talk) We have been using webs to pre-write paragraphs and have written a few more paragraphs. We just finished our latest one describing what it means to be a respectful, responsible and safe Brookdale Bobcat. The students are doing a wonderful job of planning and writing! I listened to each child read individually and will be talking to you at conference time about his/her reading level change. We have been to the computer lab a number of times to learn about some research sites in preparation for an activity we will be doing soon. This past week the kids partnered and practiced some scary poetry to share in front of the class. They did such an awesome job! We have some real actors and actresses among 3G!!! Our Halloween party was a huge success. Thank you to our volunteer moms that provided games, treats and crafts for plenty of fun for all!

With the weather getting chillier, please remember that the children do go outside for recess unless it is extremely cold. Do dress them appropriately and mark their outdoor gear with his/her initials or name. Lots of their clothing looks alike and can get mixed up when they get ready to go outside or home. It sure helps if it is marked.

I look forward to meeting with all of you on the 4th or the 10th to discuss your child's progress. I always find that I learn much from you at the conference too. The entire education process takes both of us working together. See you soon!
Mrs. G.

Math Facts

In 3H math we learned about measuring and perimeter and area. We measured our math partner's head and their height.
In 3M math we measured the perimeter of shapes. We measured our math partner's height and today we had to figure out how many feet in a yard.
In 3G math we played multiplication top-it. We have been measuring distances using a map scale. It is not like the scale that you weight yourself on! Next week we add more points to our line graph after we take another multiplication timed test.
By Aditi, Benjamin and Matthew

Language Arts

We have been working on getting ideas for our writing. We rated some paragraphs on how good they were with details. We found the main ideas of the paragraphs too. We will start using webs to do our planning for our writing like we used for the hero papers. We will learn other ways to plan writing next week.
We didn't have a spelling list this week. We read a lot in our guided reading books. We captured a picture from out books and had to write a caption for it. Some people are reading mysteries.
by Priscilla, Michael, and Evan

Math facts

Social Studies

We're learning about landforms.Some of the landforms are plateaus, mountains,valley,hills, canyon , plains.Geography is the study of landforms and bodies of water. Also we're learning about the whole world. The bodies of water are the Pacific Ocean, Atlantic Ocean, Indian Ocean and Arctic Ocean. The continents are South America , North America , Asia , Australia , Africa , Europe and Antarctica.