This Week in 3B

Language Arts: We are continuing to delve into the Shiloh text. Students are enjoying comparing their own lives to that of Marty, the young protagonist. Thank you to all parents who come in to help with our literature circles! Our vocabulary words for Shiloh this week are Monday’s Riggs words. These words are: nudge, meadow, creation, manage, and relative. Related to Riggs, please note that the markings in your child’s Riggs notebook will not necessarily match up with the markings on the “official” version that is posted. This is due to differences in the pronunciations. Rather than demanding that all students use the same markings, the third grade teachers and I ask that the markings the students use are reasonable. We believe that this helps students feel ownership and feel motivated to consider the unique qualities of the English language. In grammar, we will investigate subject nouns and the five parts of a complete sentence. Your child will come home on Monday with their copy of Shurley English. I am asking that you help your child cover the book with any sort of protective material. We are going to have a review for homework and an in-class study session prior to our grammar test on Friday. Students will come home with review homework on Wednesday. Finally, our Socratic discussion this week is “A Case Study in Medical Ethics” from our Touchpebbles text. We will uncover and discuss the question of whether it is ever appropriate to lie.

Geography: This week, we are continuing to study our neighbors up north in Canada. We will discuss Canadian history, geography, and culture. We will compare and contrast Canada and the United states as a whole group using graphic organizers. Friday, we will have an in-class review and a short test over the material learned in the Canada unit.

Science: We are moving onto the warm blooded class of vertebrates this week. Particularly, we are studying the birds order. To aid in our understanding, we will create a lap book that focuses specifically on ostriches.