Ghosts and Goblins Hard at Work!

It's Friday! Whew... we covered a lot of ground this week. We have concluded our study of Florida and have moved on the the Floridian Native Americans. We studied the Calusa this week. Ask your child why they are called the "Shell Indians." Next week we will begin our study of the Timucua Native Americans.

We are continuing with subjects and predicates along with adjectives next week. Please help me by encouraging the children to add adjectives to make their writing more descriptive. We also began listing the many homophones in our reading. With the help of last night's homework, we have a rather large list already. I have asked the children to be on the lookout for other homophones that were not used in the homework assignment for next week.

We have been reading a realistic narrative in our reading book, Grandfather's Journey. Our primary reading skill the last couple of weeks has been looking for cause and effect. We are learning that if we look for causes and effects, it helps us with details and sequencing of stories. We area also using this story as an example for our own personal narratives that we have begun in writing workshop. One observation that I have made during this writing time is that they have become more focused while they are writing and seem to be more comfortable with the rules of writing workshop.

We spent some time today in class looking up words in the dictionary and finding the matching guide words. Many of the children continue to have some difficulty when they have to go to the third or fourth letter of the word. They are quick to tell you that they can't find it. When they have words they need to spell at home, please have them look up the word in the dictionary with little to no help. Again, practice will only improve this skill. We will continue with this skill next week.

Measurement in math is going slowly. But, I am fine with that... measurement and fractions are generally the hardest skills in third grade. I am happy to take our time to make sure they have a positive experience. We will practice measuring using both standard and metric systems.

We have decided to take on the Scholastic Challenge. As a class, we are going to try and read 100 books in the month of November. It's called the Peyton and Eli Manning challenge. If we read our 100 books and turn in our paperwork, Scholastic Book Club, with the help of these athletes, will donate a million books to children in need. We discussed that this is truly a worthy cause. We also decided that this would be an easy goal for us to achieve in that not only are we good readers, but we read so much anyway that we should help others out while we're working. You should be able to get more details from your child if you are interested.

Since the Fall Festival is next Friday, I will have the spelling test next Thursday and the Wordly Wise test on Lesson 3 next Thursday. We will spend some time on these words on Monday and Tuesday so all they should have to do in review these words at home.

I hope everyone has a restful weekend.