Week of February 4-8

According to Punxsutawney Phil, we’re in for an early spring!  I know it felt that way a couple of weeks ago and then we were blasted with winter again.  So, we will see.  At any rate, we are in the last half of third grade! We have many exciting activities in the month of February.  The Annual Third Grade Post Office begins this week, Thursday, February 7.   Our classroom will launch the opening day and make sure all mail is delivered on time! Each third grade student has a specific job to do, and like most work environments, we all pitch in and help when needed.   The Post Office will close at Noon on Thursday, February 14.  The classroom parties will be in the afternoon, beginning at 2:30.  Your child will come home on Monday with a list of the names of classmates to help in writing out Valentine cards.   On Friday, February 15, students will be dismissed at 12:05 PM and Monday, February 18 is no school for students. On Tuesday, February 26, Bath Elementary will hold its annual Art and Literacy Night.  Look for more information about that in the coming weeks.

This week in reading, we will read the selection What Do Illustrators Do? (Unit 3, Week 5).  Students will learn about text structure, the way writers organize nonfiction to present information.  The text structure that we will focus on this week is sequence.  Sequence is the order in which events happen.  Signal words and phrases, such as first, next, last, finally, after, before, and at the same time, help readers identify a sequence of steps or events.  Recognizing sequence text structure helps students understand nonfiction text. The spelling words follow the /oy/ oi / spelling pattern and in grammar, students will learn to combine sentences.  We are wrapping up Opinion Writing this week, recommending our favorite book for others to read.  In math, we are working on division.  The students seem to really enjoy this and are making the connection with multiplication.  In science, we began a unit on animal adaptations and are specifically looking at how animals adapt during the winter.