Concepts Covered for the Week of January 23, 2012

1. Reading: Understanding plot and climax, identifying similes, character motivation, critical thinking, story mood, writing to prompts, vocabulary words

2. Phonics/Grammar: Irregular PAST TENSE verbs

3. Math: We will explore more problem solving skills and expand our "thinking outside the box" when it comes to word problems. Our homework will focus on math essentials for 3rd grade. I want the children to start thinking about math in their every day lives. During math lessons, I relate each concept to how I use it in my life right now. This allows the children to "see" math on a personal level and answers the question "Why do I have to learn this?".

4. Science/Social Studies: FOr the next two weeks we will be exploring the world of Rocks, Minerals, Soil, and Natural Resources. We will answer questions such as "How do rocks form?", "What are minerals?", "Why is soil important?", "Haw can we classify resources?", "What are natural resources?", "How can we protect our resources?", "What are ways to use resources again?". We will investigate how much water can soil hold and where our freshwater resources. We will also hypothesize "What settles first, small gravel, sand, or clay soil? We will predict, observe, and write out the controlled, observed, and changed variable during our hypothesis!

5. Religion: We will finish up our unit on the Church Calendar and move into reviewing vocabulary words from our past units. We will also learn that the church has four marks: One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic. We will investigate the meaning of these marks this week.