Hello Everyone! I hope you are all enjoying your weekend. We had a very special event on Thursday of last week. The Orion Lions Club came and presented each Third Grade student with a dictionary! The students will be keeping these dictionaries at school for the rest of the year. Once we finish the year, the dictionaries can be taken home. The students have already discovered some of the many uses of  a dictionary. They are really enjoying them!

Book Orders
Some of the students thought that they still might be placing an order through Scholastic. Please have your orders in no later than Monday afternoon. I will place the order after school on Monday.

The Week Ahead
English: We will continue to learn about adjectives and adverbs. In writing, we have moved from how to organize our writing to how to select interesting words to make our writing come alive.
Math: We will learn to find square roots of perfect squares, to find the length of a side of a square given the area, how to add money amounts with decimals, how to read and show temperature on the Celsius scale, how to identify the number of days in each month, and how to identify the number of days in a year.
Reading: My reading class will be reading a story called, Lon Po Po. We will also discuss sequencing story events, we will discuss cause and effect within the story, we will continue to learn the difference between similes and metaphors, and more.
Science: We will learn about food chains, and how animals get energy from food.
Social Studies: We will learn about a community's various resources, how to find intermediate directions on a map, the government within a community, and how to find state capitals and borders.

Please feel free to e-mail me at: bcalcott@orionchools.us with any questions or concerns. You can also leave me a voicemail by calling the school.

Brrrr! It is so cold this weekend! From the looks of the forecast for this week, it's going to stay cold. Please make sure your child is dressed for cold weather. We will be having outdoor recess as long as it is 10 degrees (with the wind chill) or above outside.

Pringles Cans and Shoe Boxes
We are still in need of empty Pringles cans and shoe boxes. We are getting close to having enough, but we're not there yet.

Scholastic Book Orders
I sent home the January book order on Friday. If you are wanting to order, please have them in by Friday, January 25th. I just wanted to let all of you know that I have been able to get 10 free books for our classroom this school year. That is all thanks to the orders that parents have placed through scholastic. Thank you! The students get very excited each month when I am able to order books for our class.

The Week Ahead
English: We will continue to learn about Adjectives and Adverbs.
Math: We will learn to make reasonable predictions by collecting and analyzing data, how to read and write numbers to $1,000, how to write checks, how to select coins for a given amount, and how to read and write Roman Numerals.
Reading: My reading class will be reading a West African tale called, Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears. We will learn to make and confirm predictions, compare and contrast different stories and characters, how to make inferences, and how to interpret figurative language.
Science: We will continue to learn about how animals find food.
Social Studies: Last week, I spent time discussing bullying. We also learned about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This week we will learn the social studies lessons about Cahokia and St. Louis that were originally planned for last week.

I hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend! Please feel free to e-mail me at bcalcott@orionschools.us. You can also leave me a voicemail by calling the school office.

We survived our first week back from break! I really enjoyed hearing all of the stories the students told about their holiday celebrations! On Monday we had our belated holiday party. We had a treat and exchanged gifts. Even though it was January 7th, it really felt like Christmas in our classroom!

Pringles Cans and Shoe Boxes

Please continue to send empty Pringles cans and shoe boxes. We will be using them for a project. We still need quite a few more.

The Week Ahead

English: We are starting a unit on adjectives and adverbs. In writing, we are still working on organizing our ideas when writing about a topic.

Math: We will learn to write a fraction to show part of a whole, compare fractions, add and subtract fractions, write an extended response for a math problem, and use and understand ordinal position.

Reading: My reading class will be reading a story called, Coyote Places the Stars. We will also continue to sequence story events, we will identify cause and effect in a story, we will learn about onomatopoeia, and we will continue to learn about figurative language.

Science: We will learn about living things and food.

Social Studies: We will learn the story of Cahokia and St. Louis.

If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to e-mail me at bcalcott@orionschools.us. I hope everyone had a great weekend!

Hi Everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful break! With those two snow days, this break felt really long. I hope the students are ready to get back into the swing of things tomorrow! Since we did not have our Christmas party on the Friday before break, we will be celebrating tomorrow (Monday) afternoon.

Pringles Cans
Please continue to send your empty Pringles cans. I only have about 6 right now. I need one for each student.

Shoe Boxes
We will also be needing shoe boxes to make ecosystem dioramas. I am hoping that there are some empty shoe boxes hanging around your houses after the holidays. We will need one box per student.

The Week Ahead
English: Since our English test was scheduled on Thursday, we were unable to get that finished. I am going to assume that the students are going to need a full review before being tested. We will start reviewing on Monday, and we will take the test on Thursday. I will be sending students home with their English books starting Monday. Once we finish the test, we will be starting a unit on adjectives and adverbs.
Math: For multiplication, we will start off by reviewing all of the facts that we have learned so far. I am hoping the students were studying their facts over break. During math lessons we will learn to draw and read a line graph, tell and show time to the minute, round numbers to the nearest hundred, estimate sums and differences of three digit numbers, compare fractions, and add and subtract fractions using pattern blocks.
Reading: My reading class will be reading a historical fiction story called, Papa Tells Chita a Story. We will also learn what a good summary should do and not do, how to sequence story events, to identify figurative language, and to understand meanings of different prefixes and suffixes.
Social Studies: We will learn why communities are built where people meet, and about Cahokia and St. Louis.
Science: We will be learning about how living things find food, and we will also look at the different types of animal teeth.

Please feel free to e-mail me with any questions or concerns at bcalcott@orionschools.us.