LIGHTHOUSE AWARDS

On November 16th, The Knox Civic Club presented Lighthouse Awards for the first grading period.

A special thanks to this group of community women, who four times throughout the year, take time to recognize students for their attitude, work ethic, and citizenship.

Congratulations to our Lighthouse Award winners for the first grading period:

Best Friend and Helper: Jordan and Peyton
Random Acts of Kindness: Rori and Maddie
Most Hardest Working: Sylvia and Terry

CLASSROOM READ ALOUD

Our new read aloud is The World According to Humphrey. Humphrey narrates this delightful story about a very likeable hamster that becomes a classroom pet. We have read the first chapter and the students are hooked! They can't wait to hear more from Room 26's class pet! Stay tuned...we'll keep you posted!

ACADEMICS (Nov. 16 - 22)

READING

Our story until Thanksgiving Break is "Moses Goes to a Concert", by Isaac Millman. Moses is a deaf boy who learns about playing percussion instruments from a talented, deaf musician, when he and his classmates attend a concert.

The story is told in words, as well as American Sign Language, introducing hearing children to the signs for some of the key words and phrases. At the end of the story there are two entire conversations in sign language, and a page showing the hand alphabet.

Skills include: main idea and supporting details, summarizing, using a diagram, and context clues.

ENGLISH

We have been focusing on singular possessive nouns after completing our study of singular/plural nouns, and common/proper nouns. Plural possessive nouns are next and that's when the FUN begins, along with a little confusion!

MATH

After learning the three forms used to express numbers (standard, expanded and word), we are moving on to comparing numbers in the hundreds and thousands using the greater than (>), less than (<), and equals (=) signs.

SOCIAL STUDIES

Our community unit has begun and the three types of communities (urban, suburban, and rural) will continue to be our focus.

SCIENCE

Our study of roles of living things continues. The students completed a camouflage activity where they got to "hide" a camouflaged moth to show how animals adapt to their environment and protect themselves.

ACADEMICS (Nov. 7- 10)

READING

Our story, Spider's at Work by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith, continues through Wednesday this week. This non-fiction selection inform us about how spiders use their unique abilities to survive in the natural world. The dangerous black widow and the tarantula are among the spiders featured. Skills include: important and unimportant information, using a dictionary, drawing conclusions, and antonyms and synonyms.

ENGLISH

Our study of nouns continues. We are currently working on common and proper nouns and will be moving on to possessive nouns in the near future.

MATH

We have begun our chapter on place value. We are learning how to write numbers in the hundreds three different ways: standard form, word form, and expanded form. We have also learned about ordinal numbers and that numbers are used to: count, locate, measure and name.

SOCIAL STUDIES

We are wrapping up our study of maps. We are reviewing on Monday and Tuesday of this week and will have our culminating map unit test on Wednesday, Nov. 9th. A study guide and vocabulary cards were sent home last week.

SCIENCE

Our "Roles of Living Things " unit has begun. Topics will include: relationships among living things, how living things are adapted, and living things in the environment.

APPLE CRUNCH DAY

October 26th is Apple Crunch Day. We will be joining together with Mr. Zerbe's class to do some apple centers and activities.

Be sure to ask your child what he or she did to celebrate Apple Crunch Day.

WELCOME BACK!

I want to welcome you back to a new school year. It's hard to believe that summer vacation is over. I hope everyone had a fun-filled summer, whether you played in your backyard or took a family vacation! Now it's time to make new friends and learn lots of interesting things. I'm looking forward to a GREAT year in Room 117!

2011 - 2012 HERE WE COME!

Your Third Grader

Parents, follow this link, http://school.familyeducation.com/third-grade/parenting/36066.html?detoured=1 and discover what goes on in a typical third grade classroom. Use these academic skill-builders to encourage your child's development at home during the upcoming school year. Help your child deal effectively with social and peer pressures, and find out what you can do to promote his/her happiness and safety.

SCHOOL'S OUT!

Our last day of school was yesterday.

We've worked hard and have had a very busy year! Some of our fun included: Walk to School Day, Apple Crunch Day, Fall Festival, Movie and Popcorn Day, Red Ribbon Week, Go for the Greens, Salute to America program, Third Grade Spelling Bee, and our Cook Forest trip. Now it's time for some fun and relaxation!

Be kind to others, enjoy the outdoors, read a book, get some exercise, learn how to do something new, and turn off the TV, computer and video games.

Have a safe and happy summer!

See you in late August!

ACADEMICS MAY 16 - 20

READING

Our story, The Many Lives of Benjamin Franklin, will continue through to the end of this week. We will continue learning about the many great accomplishments of this famous American statesman, and will be working on a special project to share what we have learned.

Skills include: main idea, making judgments and decisions, following directions, and root words. The selection assessment will be on Friday, May 20th.

ENGLISH

We have just finished learning about subject and object pronouns and will now be moving on to possessive pronouns.

MATH

We are in full swing with our geometry chapter, as we have learned about lines, line segments, rays, angles, triangles, polygons, and quadrilaterals. This week we'll focus on flips, slides, and turns, and then finish up the chapter learning about perimeter, area, and volume.

SOCIAL STUDIES

This week, we are wrapping up our chapter about Jamestown, the first permanent English colony in America, as we check out Jamestown Settlement and a Powhatan village.

THIRD GRADE FIELD TRIP

We will be heading to Cook Forest on Wednesday, May 25th. Please be sure to dress for the weather and bring a sack lunch. We will be leaving for the forest around 9:30 a.m. and will be returning for the regular student dismissal time. Students will be participating in a variety of interesting, hands-on, outdoor activities. Let's hope for warm weather and lots of sunshine!

THIRD GRADE PROGRAM

Family and friends are invited to attend our musical program, "Salute to America", on Wednesday, May 18th at 2:15 P.M. in the elementary gymnasium. Hope to see you there!

SPELLING BEE PARTICIPANTS

Congratulations to Alyssa, Kayla, Raegan, Ethan, and Troy for qualifying for the Third Grade Spelling Bee!

The Spelling Bee will be held on Friday, May 20th at 1:30 p.m. in the elementary gym. Family and friends are invited to attend.

Hope to see you there!

ACADEMICS May 2 - 6

READING

Our story this week is Two Bad Ants, by Chris Van Allsburg. He is well known for his story, The Polar Express. The story allows the reader to experience the world through an ant's point of view. When a troop of ants are sent to a kitchen to get sugar crystals for the queen, two of its members get a little greedy and stay behind in the sugar bowl. The next day, there is nothing but trouble and dangerous situations for the two "bad" ants!

Skills include: drawing conclusions, context clues, and author and title search.

Author and storyteller, Robin Moore, visited Keystone on Tuesday, April 5th. His family has lived in the Pennsylvania mountains for two hundred years. Since 1981, he has presented thousands of programs and workshops at schools, museums, and festivals. His program combined traditional and original North American stories with a demonstration of old-time living skills, and was enjoyed by all.

READING

Our story this week is Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, by Judi Barrett. It is about the town of Chewandswallow where the weather comes three times a day, at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, but in the form of food and beverages! The students will have fun creating some wacky weather forecasts, after reading this story!

Skills include: judgments and decisions, root words, summarizing, and reading and identifying signs that inform or persuade; as well as recognizing propaganda.

ENGLISH

We have been studying helping and linking verbs, and will be moving on to commas in a series, and combining sentences.

MATH

We have finished up telling time to the minute and elapsed time, and will be moving on to bar graphs and line plots.

SOCIAL STUDIES

We have been working long and hard on natural resource powerpoints with our partners, to wrap up our geography unit. There will be a special presentation of these for parents on Friday the 15th, at 2:30 p.m. Next up is our Jamestown colony unit of study.

WE DID IT!

Room 117 has survived the PSSA test! We took our last test this morning. As a reward for working hard and doing their best, the children had the opportunity to have read and feed this afternoon.

Way to go, Room 117 students!!!

BALD EAGLES IN THE WILD

The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, in partnership with the Norfolk Botanical Garden and WVEC, is providing a rare glimpse into the life of two bald eagles and their offspring. There are currently three eaglets in the nest that the parents are taking turns watching and feeding . The last eaglet is Irish, having hatched on St. Patrick's Day!

The following link will take you directly to the eagle cam. Happy nest watching! http://www.wvec.com/marketplace/microsite-content/eagle-cam.html

LEARNING MULTIPLICATION

Learning multiplication and third grade go together. It is a big thing for third graders, and when they get done learning their facts, they feel like they have really accomplished something.

HOW CAN YOU HELP? Many eager parents go out and buy flash cards or some cute math game for the computer and have their child start practicing. But wait…

Before your child starts memorizing the multiplication facts, he/she needs to understand the concept of what multiplication is.

Here is how you can help:

Decide on an object (I used footballs) and put the same amount in equal groups. I made three groups of two footballs. You can use buttons, pennies, cereal, or anything you have at home.


Ask your child to make an adding problem to find the total. I did 2+2+2 = 6.

Then have them write it in words. Three groups of two equals six or three groups of two footballs equals six footballs.

Finally, show them the multiplication way: 3×2 = 6

They also need to know, and realize, that you can change the order of the numbers in the multiplication problem, and the answer (the product) will be the same. This is the commutative property of multiplication.

They are really learning two facts at one time!

We have gone over all of the above steps during our class introduction to multiplication.

A great site to help your child learn and practice his/her facts is multiplication.com.

PSSA Testing

FOUR TESTS DOWN...TWO TO GO!

We have survived our first four days of PSSA testing...YAHOO! The children have all worked hard and are trying their very best! We are confident and prepared.

A special thank you goes out to the parents who made a contribution so we could enjoy healthy snacks during our testing.

Remember to get a good night's sleep and eat a healthy breakfast before our last two days of testing.

GO FOR THE GREENS

March 17th is Go For The Greens Day!

This day is designed to help remind students of the importance of healthy eating. If you wish to donate vegetables or fruits to our classroom for this event, please send them in by March 16th. Your welcomed donations (any colors will do, not just green) will be used for some healthy snacking during our PSSA testing.

PSSA Test Week

We will be taking one PSSA test each morning for the next six schooldays. Please be sure to get a good night's sleep and eat a good breakfast each morning.

We have all worked extra hard preparing for these tests.

WE'RE CONFIDENT. WE'RE PREPARED. BRING THEM ON!!!

ACADEMICS (March 3 - 11)

READING

Our story this week is Big Blue Whale by Nicola Davies. It is a non-fiction selection about the biggest creature in the world.

Skills include: forming generalizations, using a graph, figurative language (similes and metaphors), and author's purpose and point of view. The test will be on Wednesday, March 9th.

ENGLISH

We are wrapping up our verb unit with composition leads and endings and summarizing. The unit test will be on Friday, March 11th.

MATH

We have finished our addition and subtraction chapter and took the chapter test this past Friday. This week we'll be going over skills to prepare for the PSSA test next week.

SOCIAL STUDIES

We have been learning about natural resources and minerals, and how we need to protect them.

This week we'll take a look at endangered animals and what we can do to protect them from becoming extinct.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DR. SEUSS!

On March 2nd, we will celebrating Dr. Seuss' birthday by reading Dr. Seuss stories and doing special activities with some of his books.

ACADEMICS (Feb. 22 - 25)

READING

Our story this week is Cactus Hotel, a non-fiction book about the life cycle of a saguaro cactus, by Brenda Z. Guiberson. It details the 200 year life-span of the cactus as it grows from a single seed to a towering cactus that is home to dozens of animals. Our test for this assessment will be on Tuesday, March 1st.

ENGLISH

After studying past and present tense verbs, we are moving on to future tense verbs this week.

MATH

We are closing in on the end of our subtraction chapter. We have subtracted three-digit numbers with regrouping and also across zero. Our last topic will be inequality number sentences. Our chapter test will be late next week.

Rocket Math Subtraction will officially end early next week. Please continue to keep studying your subtraction facts.

SOCIAL STUDIES

Our new chapter focuses on the geography of the United States and how it affects how we live in our communities. We are currently working on a landform poster with partners and will soon move on to learning about natural resources.

SCIENCE

After finishing up our Earth's Water unit, we are now taking a break from science for the time being to help prepare for the upcoming PSSA tests which we'll be taking from March 14-21.

ACADEMICS (Feb. 9 - 15)

READING

Our story this week is In My Family by Carmen Lomas Garza. This story is based on the author's childhood memories while growing up in a Mexican American family in southern Texas. The students will discover her family's pasttimes, favorite dishes, and fiestas that they shared and celebrated together.

Skills include: author's purpose and point of view, using a diagram, sequence of events, and figurative language.

VALENTINE NEWS

Every student is to make a valentine box and bring it to school with his/her valentines by Monday, Feb. 14th.

We are having a pizza party on Valentine's Day and are asking for a $1.00 donation from each student to help cover the cost of the pizza. Thank you in advance!

Still love the black and gold!

ACADEMICS (Jan. 31 - Feb. 4)

READING

Our story this week is The Terrible Eek, a Japanese folktale retold by Patricia Compton. A wild chain of events occurs as a result of a thief misunderstanding something he thought he heard.

Skills include: sequence of events, forming generalizations, reading a chart, and suffixes.

ENGLISH

This week, we are beginning our verb chapter, which includes past, present and future tense verbs, as well as linking and helping verbs. Our letters to our pen pals have been mailed and we are anxiously awaiting their replies!

MATH

We are finishing our money unit and are moving on to regrouping in subtraction.

Our ROCKET MATH for subtraction program is in full swing and we have a little more than three weeks left for this operation. Students who do not pass to the next level are to take their sheets home and study them for homework, as they will be taking the same exact one-minute timed test until they reach their individualized goal. This is a graded activity and students are STRONGLY encouraged to study on a daily basis, so they continue to move through the program in a timely fashion.

CONGRATULATIONS to Jessica for completing Rocket Math subtraction first and to Paige for finishing second! Great job, girls!!!

SOCIAL STUDIES

We are wrapping up our work on map scales, and there will be an assessment on this topic this week.

ACADEMICS (Jan. 24 - 28)

READING

Our story this week is the tall tale Pecos Bill. Pecos falls out of the family's wagon as they are moving west, and ends up being raised by coyotes. Later on, he meets his long-lost brother Carl, and the adventure continues. Skills include story elements, reading a map, and making inferences.

ENGLISH

We are wrapping up our noun chapter, finishing up with combining sentences, topic sentences, and abbreviations We'll also be reviewing common, proper, plural, and possessive nouns in preparation for our unit test on Friday.

MATH

Counting coin combinations and making change using bills and quarters, dimes , nickels, and pennies will continue to be our focus. Regrouping in subtraction will be next up on our agenda.

ACADEMICS (Jan. 18 - 21)

We will be taking our third 4Sight Test in reading and math on Wednesdsay and Thursday of this week.

When not testing we'll be working on the following:

READING - watercolor houses to finish up The Little Painter of Sabana Grande, multiple-

meaning words, making inferences

ENGLISH - combining sentences, abbreviations, topic sentences/main idea

MATH - money sums using quarters, nickels, dimes and pennies, ROCKET MATH

SOCIAL STUDIES - Martin Luther King, Jr., "pop" map quiz

SCIENCE - begin Earth's Water unit

AND...last but certainly not least...

we'll be writing our first letters to our new pen pals from Kansas!

ACADEMICS (Jan. 10 - 14)

READING

Our story this week is The Little Painter of Sabana Grande, by Patricia Maloney Markun. The main character, Fernando, loves art and wants to paint for the first time. Unfortunately he lives in a remote village in Panama, where he is unable to buy paint. He learns how to make paint from his teacher using natural resources. Then he realizes that he has no paper to paint on! After much persuasion, his parents allow him to paint on the outside of their adobe house. Now all of his neighbors want a painted house like the Espino family.

RECORDER REMINDER

Third graders will be learning how to play the recorder during the second half of the school year. Order forms for students who need to purchase a recorder need to be returned by Friday, Jan. 7th.

ACADEMICS (Jan. 3 - 7)

READING

Our story this week is A New Coat for Anna, by Harriet Zeifert, and is based on a true story. It takes place in Europe and centers around a mother acquiring a coat for her daughter during hard times in post - World War II. Anna's mother trades the few valuable possessions she has left for for a farmer's wool and the services of a spinner, weaver, and tailor in order to make the new coat.

Skills this week include: making inferences, main idea, and multiple meaning words.

ENGLISH

We studied singular posssessive nouns before Christmas, and will now be moving on to plural possessive nouns. Wish us luck---this is when things get a little tricky!

MATH

Double and triple digit addition with and without regrouping is next on our agenda. We'll then work on adding three addends using these skills.

SOCIAL STUDIES

Our work on urban, suburban, and rural communities continues. There will be a test on Friday on this topic, and a study guide will be coming home on Tuesday, Jan. 4th. Vocabulary words were reviewed and their definitions were sent home on Monday.