Monday, January 30, 2017

February Newsletter


READING- DETERMINING IMPORTANCE
WE WILL CONTINUE TO MAKE MEANING STRATEGICALLY BY LEARNING HOW TO FIND THE MAIN IDEA OF THE TEXTS WE READ AND THE EVENTS OR IDEAS THAT ARE TRULY SIGNIFICANT TO WHAT WE ARE READING. THE STUDENTS WILL LEARN WHAT IT MEANS TO SUMMARIZE AND HOW DETERMINING IMPORTANCE IS KEY TO WRITING A SUMMARY ABOUT SOMETHING WE HAVE READ OR WATCHED. WE WILL DISCUSS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN EVENTS THAT ARE SIGNIFICANT AND EVENTS THAT ARE JUST SOMETHING WE HAPPENED TO ENJOY MOST IN THE STORY.

WRITING- INFORMATIONAL WRITING AND SUMMARIZATION 
WE ARE WRAPPING UP OUR UNIT ON INFORMATIVE WRITING. STUDENTS HAVE DONE AN AMAZING JOB WITH THEIR FINAL DRAFTS AND IT IS CLEAR THAT STUDENTS ARE EXPERTS AT MANY THINGS!  THEY HAVE DONE A GOOD JOB IMPLEMENTING STRUCTURES OF A NON-FICTION, ORGANIZING, AND ELABORATING ON THEIR WRITTEN PIECES.

WE WILL BE FOCUSING ON RESPONDING TO SUMMARIES THROUGH OUR READING AND ALSO PROMPTS. STUDENTS WILL BE LEARNING HOW TO USE THE STRUCTURE OF NAME IT, VERB IT, BIG IDEA TO HELP WRITE A STRONG TOPIC SENTENCE. THEY WILL ALSO FOCUS ON GREAT WAYS TO CAPTURE BIG IDEAS AND ENSURE THAT OUR SUMMARIES ARE WRITTEN IN THEIR OWN WORDS. ADDITIONALLY, THEY ARE MAKING SURE TO ADD TRANSITIONS SO THEIR THOUGHTS ARE ORGANIZED AND WELL WRITTEN.

MATH-
PERIMETER, ANGLES AND AREA: 2-D GEOMETRY AND MEASUREMENT

THIS UNIT DEVELOPS IDEAS ABOUT THE ATTRIBUTES OF 2-D OBJECTS AND HOW THEY ARE CLASSIFIED (THE DEFINITION OF A TRIANGLE, RECTANGLE, AND SQUARE), LINEAR MEASUREMENT (WHICH INCLUDES PERIMETER), AREA, AND THE MEASUREMENT OF ANGLES. USING THE CONTEXT OF PERIMETER, STUDENTS ARE CONTINUING TO DEVELOP THEIR ABILITY TO USE MEASUREMENT TOOLS AS THEY WORK ON ACCURATE LINEAR MEASUREMENT TECHNIQUES. STUDENTS LEARN TO IDENTIFY ANGLES BY THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO A RIGHT ANGLE. (IS THE ANGLE GREATER THAN, LESS THAN, OR EQUAL TO A 90-DEGREE ANGLE?) THEY ARE ALSO DEVELOPING AN UNDERSTANDING OF AREA AS THE AMOUNT OF FLAT SPACE AN OBJECT COVERS AND DETERMINE THE AREA OF 2-D SHAPES IN SQUARE UNITS.


SCIENCE- MATTER
THROUGHOUT EVERY SCIENCE UNIT, ALL THIRD GRADERS ARE USING CRITICAL THINKING TO DEMONSTRATE THE PROCESS OF INQUIRY. BY EXPERIMENTING, READING ARTICLES, DISCUSSING AND REFLECTING. STUDENTS WILL LEARN THE SCIENTIFIC PROCESS AND HOW THAT IS ESSENTIAL WITH THEIR NEW LEARNING WITH IDENTIFYING THE STATES OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF MATTER. THROUGH FOSS INVESTIGATIONS, VIDEOS, LITERATURE AND CLASS ACTIVITIES, STUDENTS WILL DISCUSS DIFFERENT ATTRIBUTES OF SOLIDS, LIQUIDS, GASES AND PLASMA WHILE USING EVIDENCE TO DEVELOP A SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATION AROUND HOW HEATING AND COOLING AFFECTS STATES OF MATTER. OUR GRADE-LEVEL SCIENCE DAY LATER IN THE YEAR WILL ALLOW STUDENTS TO PRACTICE ANALYZE, INTERPRET AND WRITE OBSERVATIONS ABOUT MATTER AS IT FREEZES AND MELTS, AND BOILS AND CONDENSES.

DATES TO REMEMBER 
SOCK HOP: FEBRUARY 3
SCIENCE DAY: FEBRUARY 10
VALENTINE PARTY: FEBRUARY 14
PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DAY/NO SCHOOL FOR KIDDOS: FEBRUARY 17
PRESIDENT’S DAY/NO SCHOOL: FEBRUARY 20

This Week in Third Grade

This week we participated along with Legend High School in collecting money for Wish Week!


Disney Day







We also had the great experience this week of learning about the robots that GRE purchased with our Digger Dash money.  We had an amazing day of coding our Dash and Dot robots.










Monday, January 23, 2017

LHS Wish Week: Making A Child's Dream Possible

LHS Wish Week: Making A Child's Dream Possible

Gold Rush is excited to participate in Legend High School's Wish Week next week!  All schools feeding into the high school are sponsoring Rayne, a seven year old girl with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma.  Gold Rush students can bring change each day if they wish to participate in Legend's spirit events.  All proceeds will contribute to Rayne's dream of going to Disney World for her birthday in April.  We look forward to joining other schools and making Rayne's dreams come true! Click here for more information about Rayne and our partnership with Make A Wish Foundation.


Monday, January 23  * Ski & Summer Looks
Tuesday, January 24 *  Farm & Western Wear 
Wednesday, January 25 * Sports Day
Thursday, January 26 * Anything Disney
Friday, January 27 * Pink & Blue - Rayne's Favorite Colors

Sunday, January 22, 2017

This week in third grade:

This week in third grade:

We started the week off by opening up our pen-pal letters from Australia.  



On Thursday four of our classmates battled in our school Battle of the Books competition and did an amazing job! They have been reading books and practicing since the beginning of the school year.  


Sophie, Caitlin, Stella, and Lauren celebrating a great Battle of the Books Battle with donuts.
We ended the week by listening to Colin O'Brady speak to us and help us to realize that we are able to accomplish any goal we set our minds to.



Colin became the fastest person to complete the 7/2 mountaineering challenge, also breaking the speed record for the Seven Summits in 132 days.  Colin is now a 2x world record holder!

Find out more at http://beyond72.com/ .

May Newsletter

Literacy Read & Writing: Poetry Throughout National Poetry Month, we read all types of poetry; rhyming poems, haikus...