Mrs. Cranley's 3rd Grade : December 2016

Greetings 3rd Grade Families,

There's nothing like a couple of snow days to bring on the holiday cheer. I hope everyone is taking advantage of the extra relaxation time with your families.

These unexpected days off left us in a precarious situation back in the classroom. We are in the middle of some exciting holiday art projects, which will need to be the focus of our first days of school next week. We have a few more geometry math concepts to cover before our Unit 3 Assessments next Thursday and Friday. Needless to say, next week will be busy and festive, and I look forward to being back in the classroom. Here's a recap of our short week in school.

LITERACY

This week in literacy, we started our Unit 3 theme of People and Nature. Our first story in this unit was The Gardener.

This was a story about a young girl from the country who is sent to live with her uncle in the city, when her mother and father struggle to find work. The story takes place during the depression era. The young girl knows nothing other than planting and gardening, so through her own perseverance, she transforms the top of a city building into a wonderful rooftop garden. She develops new relationships and understandings in the process, and eventually returns home to her parents.

The comprehension skill with this story was cause and effect. We also continued to practice close reading, using post-its to show our thinking while reading.

The students filled out the cause and effect graphic organizer once they were finished reading.

We worked on our evidence-based responses with this story using RAPS! They are really getting the hang of it!

WRITING

This week most students finished up their main idea paragraphs, so it was time to learn how to write an introduction and conclusion paragraph for their informational article.

INTRODUCTION

ü Use a hook to get the reader’s attention.

ü Introduce your topic in a way that gives the reader a little bit of

“background” of your topic. (pretend they know nothing about your topic)

ü Preview your main ideas (In this article, you will learn about…)

CONCLUSION

ü Restate importance of topic

ü Review your main ideas (You just learned…)

ü Leave the reader with something to think about or do.

We started by completing a scavenger hunt in our Reading Street textbook, of many good examples of authors using an effective "hook".

What’s the Hook?

Directions: Read the first sentence on each of the following pages.

Place an “X” in the column showing the strategy the author used to get the reader’s attention.

Page #	Interesting Fact	Question	Important Information
15
39
63
67
85
89
112
151
153
171
220
251
269
300

By the end of this activity, students had a pretty good idea of what a "hook" sounds like.

Next, we looked at several examples of introduction and conclusion paragraphs written by other 3rd grade students.

SAMPLE INTRODUCTIONS by 3rd Graders

Did you know that Barcelona is the largest city in spain, or that

Barcelona is the most famous city in spain? This article describes Barcelona’s history, architecture, climate, language and soccer culture. Hope you enjoy the article!

Did you know that comets have 2 tails? Do you know what the biggest asteroids are called? Well if you want to know, keep on reading this interesting article about big outer space. A of couple things you will learn about is small and big planets, asteroids , and cool comets.

Obviously when you enter Scotland on a plane, you can recognize it by the unique music of the bag pipe (Scotland’s traditional musical instrument). Another obvious observation is that Scotland’s weather is worse than Portland! Wait, you might not know that because Portland’s is so bad. In this article, you will learn about Scotland’s highland, and Scotland’s traditional dance. Enjoy!

SAMPLE CONCLUSIONS by 3rd Graders

So as you can see, Barcelona is a special city in Spain. Many people travel to Spain every year to experience it. Barcelona’s history, architecture, climate, soccer culture and language, are all worth experiencing for yourself. I hope you get a chance to visit Barcelona yourself someday!

Now that you have learned a lot about outer space. You might want to buy a telescope and gaze up at the big planets. I hope you learned a lot. Have you ever seen big outer space?

Now that you know all about the awesome Scottish Highlands, and the fun traditional Scottish dance, I think that you can adventure Scotland with your own beautiful eyes on your own face. Then you don’t have to read about Scotland, except maybe in the travel guide on the plane. Now go travel to Scotland, and bring me back a souvenir.

The goal will be to finish these articles up this week!

MATH

Last week in Math we began an exploration of perimeter of shapes.

We began with a definition of perimeter= the distance around any shape.

Then we brainstormed a list of things that have or represent the concept of perimeter.

Then we completed a measurement activity using paper quadrilaterals.

Students were asked to name the quadrilaterals, then cut them out, and place them in order from shortest perimeter to longest perimeter, based on their own estimation.

Once they recorded their estimates,

they could use the ruler to measure and calculate

the perimeter of each quadrilateral.

Students then shared some of their findings. Several students thought it was kind of tricky to estimate the perimeter of a shape. Sometimes the shapes that looked longer, were actually shorter.

Our next exploration with
perimeter involved finding and measuring quadrilaterals in the classroom. Again, students had to estimate the perimeter before measuring their object.

In addition to perimeter, we also looked at the concept of symmetry.

On Wednesday, it was very timely that our math lesson focused on the creation of a snowflake, as we made symmetrical snowflakes with white polygon pattern-blocks.

Many students still need to finish these up on Monday.

SCIENCE

This week we finished looking at the various changes of state we are familiar with as we completed simple illustrations in our science journals.

After illustrating each change of state, we took time to discuss and record what was happening to the particles of matter, the heat energy, and the temperature during each.

GUEST SCIENTIST

On Tuesday we had the exciting opportunity to investigate the unique properties of dry ice, as our guest scientist Danielle Grube, led us through 4 experiments.

Dry ice is frozen carbon dioxide and behaves differently from that of frozen water. The students learned that similar to melting, sublimation occurs when a solid, such as dry ice, warms up and changes directly to a gas, essentially skipping the liquid state. This was a fascinating concept to explore.

Investigation #1

Dry Ice and a Balloon

The dry ice was placed in a test tube, and a balloon was attached to the top. As the dry ice warmed up, and changed from a solid back into a gas, the balloon inflated.