September 03rd, 2018

Welcome to Third Grade! 

BIG IDEA: ADAPTATION
Enduring Understanding: Change is envitable, nothing ever stays the same.
Essential Questions: Why do people make changes in life? How do non-living things change?
We have all had to adapt to being in a NEW grade with a NEW teacher. We have spent a lot of time getting to know each other and creating our "school family."

​The 1st Day of Third Grade!

​​Exploring Our Core Values

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​6th Grade Buddies

Science

Our first Unit in Science relates to physical science, so we started by introducing the 3 main branches of science. Physical science is the study of matter and energy. Life science is the study of life and all living things and Earth and Space science is the study of Earth and what it's made of. Space science is the study of other planets and our star, the Sun. We used a RAN chart to incorporate opportunities for students to use nonfiction text to research what science actually is. We listed what we "thought we knew" and then verified our facts and identified misconceptions. We found that science is all around us!

As any good scientist who explores observations and answer questions we learned how to follow the 6 rigorous steps of the Scientific Method. We explored the six steps through various experiments. 

We also learned that matter is everywhere around us and is anything that has mass and takes space. It comes in 3 forms: solid, liquid and gas. Through the way of different observations and many experiments in class, we evidenced just that! Ask your child what happens to a paper towel that is inside of a cup when the cup is submerged into a bucket of water! Ask them to explain their answers! You can also ask your child how matter changes when energy is added or removed....we learned first hand that the changes that take place can be yummy! 

Math

In Math, we started off the year exploring how numbers can be expressed, ordered, and compared. Students can now write multi-digit numbers, use place value to compare, order, and round numbers as well as describe number patterns. We then learned how place value can help add larger numbers.  Addition properties such as (the commutative, associative, and identity) helps to add numbers more easily. We also explored how to round numbers to estimate sums to check to see if our answer was reasonable. We are now solving multi digit addition and subtraction problems (and how to add to check your answer) with regrouping! Estimation and mental math strategies and are important to learn because they can be used to check your work!  Students do quick math or fast facts everyday to improve math fluency.  When we are computing such big problems this really helps with accuracy and ease of solving such big problems.  We have also been learning how to solve word problems using different strategies to decide which operation to use.  Looking for key words and making sense of problems by drawing them out really help students to make a plan of how to solve.  Students are also using computer programs for challenge work and remediation and are encouraged to do these at home as well to further their understanding.  Programs we use are iXL and Dreambox.  

​Social Studies

In Social Studies we started off the year learning about South Carolina's six regions and four major rivers. We have also learned about the American Indians of South Carolina and how they interact with their physical environment, the Spanish and French explorers and their attempts to settle in South Carolina. Next month we will study the new colony of South Carolina, the Lord Proprietors and the pirates who sailed the seas off the coast of South Carolina. 

​ELA

We have spent the first few weeks so school building our reading and writing routines and procedures. 

We have worked to build our reading stamina through independent reading, buddy reading and read alouds. In reading, we have been learning to check our understanding of text we read and learning strategies to to decode unknown words including cross checking the pictures with the words and asking ourselves if what we are reading makes sense. We are working to build our own menu of strategies for students to choose from to support their reading comprehension accuracy, fluency, and increase our vocabulary. Students have been exploring with answering “right-there” and “author and me” questions with text. Students have been using texts to prove their answers while also learning to restate questions/prompts in their answers.

​In writing, we have been building our stamina through free writes! We have also been exploring writing fictional narratives. We learned how to organize our writing by including a beginning, middle, and end. In our beginning, we learned how to hook our readers, develop main characters, and introduce settings while using sensory details. We learned how the middle of our writing is the “meat” of our writing and how events can be told in sequential order using transitional words and phrases. We also learned how to use adjectives and dialogue to spice up our writing. For our endings, we learned how to close our stories and how to include conclusions that show how the characters changed throughout the story and also lessons learned. 

Jepson Center ​Field Trip