Economics Sale Day Date Correction

CORRECTION

On Tuesday May 31st  all of the third graders will bring their products to school to sell.  They will set their product price and open business.  They will have earned money (our classroom currency) to shop and buy products from the third graders in their own classroom, as well as the other third grade classrooms.  Our Gold Rush staff will also stop by to shop.

You are invited to come and participate in the shopping as well.  Each parent will be given some class money to shop.  Mark your calendars now for May 31st, and we will look forward to seeing you and celebrating all of the hard work your child has done to really understand economics.

Economics Project

Hi Everyone!

Over the next several weeks the third graders will be studying economics.  They will learn to think critically about the way economics works in our everyday lives and how they personally have an influence on it.  We will study concepts such as producers and consumers, supply and demand, opportunity cost, etc.

In order to really have an authentic and deep understanding of civics and economics, and how they both work together, the third graders will be creating their own “mini society” here at school.  Each third grade class will be creating their own society with a unique class name, a class currency, laws and jobs, a system of earning money, a class motto, etc.  They will even take out their own business loan.  The students will be taking full ownership of their classroom societies!

First, students will need to apply for an additional classroom job that will help them earn money  that will be used on Sale day. Students will need to fill out a detailed job application and have it turned in by Tuesday April 26th.  Their product information and parent interview will need to be turned in by Tuesday May 3rd (this will come home at a later date.)

As part of our mini society, each third grader will be responsible for creating a product at home to sell here at school.  Your child will need to create multiples of the product.  For example, if your child has decided to create bookmarks, he/she will need to create several of those bookmarks to sell.

To keep the cost minimal and to keep the quantity and quality of products pretty even between the students, please give your child a budget of no more than $10.00 to spend on supplies for making the product at home.  We definitely encourage the kids to use items you already have at home at to think through what can be found or recycled and used in a unique way.  For example:  One student collected sticks outside to make several slingshots.

We encourage the third graders to think outside the box, to be creative and innovative when they are making their product.  The kids should think through what will set their product apart from others.  What makes it a unique product idea?  Will it attract buyers?  Does it show creativity and innovative thinking?  Please encourage your child to take the time to think of something different and unique.

On Tuesday May 31st  all of the third graders will bring their products to school to sell.  They will set their product price and open business.  They will have earned money (our classroom currency) to shop and buy products from the third graders in their own classroom, as well as the other third grade classrooms.  Our Gold Rush staff will also stop by to shop.

You are invited to come and participate in the shopping as well.  Each parent will be given some class money to shop.  Mark your calendars now for May 21st, and we will look forward to seeing you and celebrating all of the hard work your child has done to really understand economics.

Please let us know if you have any questions along the way!  We can’t wait to see what cool products your kids create.

Thanks!

Your Third Grade Team,

Jessalyn Russell, Lara Castro, Naomi Meredith, Jeannette Shepperd, and Chelsie Schwartz

April Newsletter

April Newsletter

LITERACY:

Reading: Poetry:

Throughout National Poetry Month, we read all types of poetry; rhyming poems, haikus, short and long poems. Within poetry, we discovered many elements that poets used to strengthen their poetry. Some of those elements included; similes, metaphors, personification and alliteration. While reading, we also noticed the Point of View poets wrote from, the main idea and the overall theme of a poem. While exploring and writing responses about our discoveries within poetry, we will carry this knowledge into writing our own poetry. 

Some of the poetry that we will begin to write is more interpretive; not following the typical structure of writing but using line breaks, stanzas and verses. The use of writing with our five senses will be essential to creating poems that will help the reader visualize the scene. We will also experiment with other structures like rhyme schemes, reverso poems, haikus and color poems. While poems are typically short, sometimes those few words can be so powerful and descriptive.

Persuasive Writing:

In our new Lucy Calkins curriculum, our 2^nd unit of study is titled “Changing the World: Persuasive Speeches, Petitions, and Editorials.” Students will continue to use critical thinking to create meaning strategically in the genre of persuasive writing. To start the unit in bend one, third graders will gather and support bold and brave opinions as they write persuasive speeches. Students will learn that persuasive writers look at their world and imagine how it could be better to grow ideas for possible writing projects. They’ll see problems that need to be addressed and imagine solutions then write quick persuasive speeches. After practice writing many short speeches, students will spend the second bend of this unit choosing to work for an extended amount of time on one piece, taking it through the writing process. In the third bend of this unit, students will transfer and apply everything they have learned about writing persuasive speeches to writing other types of opinion pieces-petitions, editorials, persuasive letters, and so on. Students will see that much of what they have already learned to do applies to these other persuasive genres. In the final bend of this unit, “Cause Groups,” students will work in collaborative groups to support causes. These groups will decide on various projects they need to create to get others to act for their cause. To finish off the unit, students will write a final piece and consider where in the world the text should go for it to reach the particular audience the write has in mind. This entire unit will allow our third graders to put their civic responsibility into action through writing!

SCIENCE:

Earth Materials- Rocks  
For our rock unit students will be exploring solid materials from the earth, rocks and minerals.  The focus is taking materials apart to find what they are made of and putting materials together to better understand rock and their properties of the rock cycle. Students will:

• 
Use measuring tools to gather data about rocks.
• Collect and organize data about rocks.
• Use evaporation to investigate rock composition.
• Learn that rocks are composed of minerals and that minerals cannot be physically separated into other materials.  
• Compare their activities to the work of a geologist. 
• Acquire vocabulary used in earth science.
• Exercise language and math skills in the context of science
• Use scientific thinking processes to conduct investigations and build explanations; observing, communicating, comparing and organizing. 

MATH: 

Parts of a Whole Can Be Modeled and Represented in Different Ways 

Students have begun to develop an understanding of fractions as numbers. We will begin to start solving problems, describing fractions as numbers on a number line, and explaining equivalence of fractions. Through all activities, our class is using critical thinking to make sense of problems and demonstrating resiliency when persevering in solving them. This requires them to interpret, evaluate, summarize and synthesize every day!

IMPORTANT DATES TO REMEMBER:

April 11-April 14: Math PARCC testing

April 15: PARCC Party

April 22: No School