September 2007 - Classroom Activities
READING & LANGUAGE ARTS:
We are mid way through the first theme for our Open Court Reading program. Our first theme is "Friendship". We have been reading stories about how children resolve conflicts, how people can have friendships with animals, and we are reading about adult friendships also.
COMPREHENSION SKILLS:
Comprehension skills for this unit are: Classify and Categorize, Cause and Effect, Compare and Contrast, Main Idea and Supporting Details, and Sequence of Events.
WRITING SKILLS AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE CONVENTIONS (E.L.C.):
Nouns, Pronouns, Verbs: Action, State of Being, Verb Phrases, Main Verb, Helping Verbs, Four Main Types of Sentences: Declarative, Imperative, Interrogative,and Exclamatory.
SPELLING:
Scoring: Each spelling test (without the bonus words) is worth a total of 45 points. Each missed spelling word from the list subtracts three points from the total score. All other word errors, capitalization errors, and punctuation errors subtract one point from the total score. Challenge Words are given with the intent of challenging students in spelling. These words are optional. If a child chooses to study and be tested on the challenge words, the words will be counted towards the spelling test grade as one point each. The challenge words are not considered extra credit and your child will be tested on ALL of the challenge words. If your child does not study the challenge words please tell him/her not to take the challenge words on the Friday test. If they
get them wrong it will only bring their spelling grade down. Spelling test plus challenge words is worth 50 points and on some tests it will be 51 points, depending if there are 5 or 6 Challenge words.
MATH:
We are continuing our study of Unit 1 which is Understanding Numbers and Operations.We are starting chapter 4 which is Subtraction of larger numbers. This is the last chapter in the unit so there will be a unit test coming up shortly. We will then move into Unit 2 which is Money and Time (something that none of us have enough of)!
SOCIAL STUDIES:
We are working on our Geography project and the children are having a great time. They are creating a country of their own making sure they include many geographical features along with writing a country description. We should be finishing it up by the first week of October.
SCIENCE:
We will begin our study of the Solar System in the 2nd week of October. This is always an exciting unit for 3rd. graders.
CHARACTER BUILDING:
September we have been working on the trait of Responsibility. October will begin our study of the trait of Respect.
Thank you,
Maria Matteis
