October

One of our ELA stories at the beginning of this month focused on Communities. We read a Social Studies chapter "Our Communities" and a poem "Armadillo from Amarillo". During this unit we focused on: characteristics of communities, poetry elements, figurative language, adverbs, moral of a story, and shades of meaning. 
Students loved listening to the song “Figurative Language” https://youtu.be/3K9pd6h9JT0

 The culminating activity for this unit had students complete a project in which they had to identify the different communities they were part of such as: Planet, Continent, Country, State, Town, Street, and Me.  Students then had their picture taken pretending to hold up the world!

Fire Prevention Week

October was another busy month in third grade!  We began the month with Fire Prevention Week.  Our town fire department came and discussed with us what to do in an emergency. We got to practice calling 9-1-1.  We learned how important it was to know our address. The most fun we had was we got to practice getting out of a smokey house and counting to make sure we had gotten everyone out of the fire.We also got to see a firetruck and an ambulance.  The volunteers told us about all the equipment on the firetruck and what it was used for. We also got to sit in an ambulance!

Fun Learning about the Earth and Moon

In ELA we read a Science Chapter "The Sun, Planets, and Moon". We also read a reading story called "Visitors from Space" which explained all about comets.  During this unit we focused on context clues, fluency, main idea, summarizing fiction and nonfiction, adverbs, shades of meaning, and figurative language. We spent time learning about the phases of the moon and made a "Moon" Booklet. 

We also completed an Oreo activity in which students had to shape Oreos to look like the phases of the moon! Students really enjoyed this activity!

  
                                Fun with Simple Machines!
In our last ELA unit for this month we learned all about simple machines. We read a Science chapter called "Forces, Machines and Work".  We also read "Wile E. Coyote Experiments with Simple Machines" by Mark Weakland and "Wile E. Coyote Experiments with Force and Motion" by Mark Weakland. Our focus for this lesson was on context clues, understanding force and motion, identifying simple machines, shades of meaning, adjectives, fluency, and text features.

Students enjoyed listening to a simple machines song: https://youtu.be/l1Fhs8pXGxM

Students enjoyed listening to a gravity song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1kVro7P1KE


During this unit we completed a craft on adjectives. Students had to choose nouns and create matching adjectives for the "Adjectives are like Magnets" craft.

Students also created a Simple Machines Flipbook to assess their knowledge of simple machines.

The culminating activity for this unit involved students using a variety of nonfiction books to create a poster about "Simple Machines".

September

Throughout the month of September we did a lot of fun learning!

We began the month of September reading the Story "Balto, the Dog Who Saved Nome" and "Rosie A Visiting Dog's Story".  Both stories focused on how dogs helped others.  During this unit we focused on prefixes/suffixes, context clues, using illustrations,  fluency, main idea, and writing a newspaper article.  


The next part of our our ELA curriculum we read the "The Stories Julian Tells" and "Julian Dream Doctor". Throughout this unit we focused on similes, metaphor, context clues, fluency, sequencing, possessives, main idea, and comparing two texts by the same author.


OPEN HOUSE
During the month of September we also had Open House! Students completed a poster "I am Proud of my Parent/Guardian" because and Parents also completed a Poster "I am proud of my child because".

The third part of our ELA unit, we read the story "Little Grunt and the Big Egg" and Nonfiction Science "How Plants Live and Grow".  We focused on mood, reading with expression, nouns, plural nouns, character traits/emotions/motivations, text features, synonyms/antonyms, cause and effect, and text dependent questions. Students listened to song lyrics and had to work on guessing the mood of the song. We also completed a Mood Craft.

The culminating project was a plant foldable in which students worked in pairs to show what they knew about Plants!

First Week of School

The first week of school was a busy time in 3rd grade!

The 2nd day of school we filled out a paper entitled "Glad to be in Grade 3!" On this paper students have to decorate the 3 however they wanted and also had to answer questions about 3rd grade.

On the 3rd day of school we learned what a Venn Diagram was.  We completed a class activity together comparing Summer and School.  Once students understood how to complete a Venn Diagram, they then worked in partners to complete a Venn Diagram about themselves and another student in the class who they didn't know very well. It was a great learning activity!

We all fit together!

Students completed a puzzle piece for our project "We all fit together".  We talked about how we are all different, but that is ok because we help to make this class unique!