Weekly notes and Homework

Homework

You can expect for your child to have daily homework this year in 3rd grade. 

• Math workbook pages 3-4 times a week (on average) for reinforcement of skills

• Practice multiplication math facts 1-2 nights per week (or more!) 

• Reading nightly (M-T-W-TH) for 15-20 minutes and related follow up using comprehension strategies

• Spelling/phonics skills - weekly lists for study at home

All homework will be sent in their Purple Back and Forth folder and your child should return their work the following day. 

What are we learning in 3rd grade? 

Updated May 4th

Reading - Over the past few weeks we spent time reading informational text and exploring how text features contribute to our understanding of the text. The students enjoyed reading folktales about the Earth and identified characteristics of a folktale and also compared and contrasted the theme in each folktale. In addition, the students learned about using a dictionary entry to determine or clarify the meaning of an unknown word. Each group finished up reading their guided reading book relating to our main topic of Earth's Surfaces and worked on answering comprehension questions about the text.

Writing- This past week students chose topics for their informational writing piece on the Earth's Surface. They also identified subtopics/categories so that they can focus their research on more specific parts within their bigger topic. We are using various kid-friendly websites to discover facts about our topics.  Students will publish their informational/scientific writing this coming week on a Google Slide document! They will have a title page, Table of Contents, 3 pages of informational about their topic, and a Glossary. In addition, they will use/import/create text and graphic features to add information to their writing pieces.

Phonics/Word Study- The students have been practicing sound/spelling patterns related to prefixes and suffixes. They will have two more phonics units this year, one practicing spelling patterns of final syllables and the other about related words.

Math-  We are finishing out our year learning about how to categorize shapes by their attributes, in particular by looking at angles and sides. They have learned about right angles and quadrilaterals, and are working on finding the area and perimeter of shapes and partitioning shapes.

Math Minutes quizzes- They should practice their facts based on the quiz they last completed. We take our quizzes on Wednesdays and Fridays.

Students can work on practicing their multiplication facts by using the websites/games listed below this section.

Artful Learning- Over the past few weeks students have been learning about plant and animal life cycles during our life science inquiry in Artful Learning. They have watched videos, read articles and books, and played games to understand various life cycle stages. Students compared and contrasted animal and plant life cycles and acted out an organisms life cycle stages. They enjoyed doing a Power of Flowers hands-on Mystery Science activity and created an abstract representation of a life cycle. Students used items from our Makerspace (legos, blocks, pipe cleaners, foam, straws, etc) to create and represent the life cycle of a plant or animal. Then they created a visual Journey Map showing their life cycle in a more realistic way, using labels, captions and illustrations. They have loved learning about fossils and extinction this week. We made layered fossils and are doing lot of research about how organisms become fossilized and the fossilization process.  This week they will make an imprint fossil and will create a tear art piece and an environmental soundscape using items that are relate to fossils and extinction.

Second Step- We are learning about the steps to solving problems: S- say the problem, T-think of possible solutions, E- explore consequences, P- pick a solution. We discussed how to solve classroom problems with the skills we have learned this year in our lessons.

Our "Second Step" Social Emotional curriculum is an important part of educating the whole child. At Meadow View, we value each student as an individual, and are committed to developing life long learners through academics as well as social/emotional skills that will help them grow as individuals. 

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Fact Fluency

"Fact fluency" helps students move more easily through solving problems, just like sight words help them read more fluently.

Below are some ways/suggestions for the kiddos to practice their facts.

There are a multitude of apps/websites with games for practicing math facts. You can choose which ones, if any, you'd like for your child to play.

Some of these sites have all operations to practice.

• Multiplication self correcting quizzes

• Math Magician- for practice on multiples of 1-10

•  Math Playground. There are a lot of games for math facts, but also one and two step math word problems.

• ABCya- math fact basketball

• Fact Monster- online flashcards

• Arcademics- addition games

• Addition, subtraction and multiplication flash cards (linked below for your to print out)

• Use a deck of playing cards to add numbers (face cards are 10)

• Use 2 dice and add the amounts together (facts for numbers 1-6)

• Math games for addition that you can print out and play at home