Some announcements for this week.

• Pumpkin walk's theme is "The Grave Yard." We will have our pumpkins right outside my window. So get those pumpkins ready for Thursday night.
• Reflections are due November 9th.
• And RED RIBBON Week is a big success.

Dictionary for Third Grade

Last week Brigham City Rotary Club graciously donated a Dictionary to each of the third graders at our school. We would like to thank them for their generosity.

And now for a story, I received a similar dictionary from when I was in Elementary school. The thing that I tell the students is that this sits right next to my computer. Why would I do that when there is a spell checker and the internet? Habit, the authentic feel, or (and I emphasize this point), because a dictionary is faster than a computer. Why? Because I know how to use it.  I love showing the comparison to the students, it is beat-up and is actually falling apart in the middle, and it's mine!

Spelling with /ch/ sound

The spelling words for this week use the /ch/ sound.  Normally "ch" by itself has three sounds, we can isolate this sound this week but even the students have learned that "ch" can say /ch/, /k/, and /sh/ as in the words much, school, and chef respectively. This weeks' list shows two different ways to spell the /ch/ sound, the first is of course "ch," the second is a common spelling found in the "tch" spelling.  The t sneaks itself into the sound, and we say /ch/ as in the word catch.  This makes it fun, and yes, you might have to do some extra practicing to know when to use ch and when to use tch. The one thing that might help is that the "tch" is usually the ch sound found at the end of a word, but be careful words like bench and crunch do not use the "tch."

Here are the words (Sorry for the delay):  Don't forget I have the spelling words also posted at SpellingCity.com.
Our Planner:

chick much pitch teacher chum lunch ditch cheek hatch cheese

bench chunk stretch watching crunching weak green seal catcher sandwich

Freaky Fly Day

The favorite book from my class last year was "Of Mice and Magic." The author has finished the third book, is from Utah and has a great imagination for children to latch onto.

The third Ravenspell installment finds Ben and Amber teaming up with the world's most perfect human -- California's glamorous movie star Governor Harold Shortzenbeggar -- as they attempt to defeat Beele Z. Bug!  http://davidfarland.zenfront.com/ravenspell/ravenspell-freaky-fly-day.html


David Farland will be doing a book tour through Utah throughout September and early October. Watch out soon for information on release parties for his books IN THE COMPANY OF ANGELS and FREAKY FLY DAY. 


And a sample chapter: http://www.fantasyreadersunderground.com/Freaky_Fly_Day_sample_chapter.html

Concerned about the Flu. Here is one way to help prevent the spread of most diseases.
http://www.billharley.com/Store_Level3.asp?ProductID=141&CategoryID=9


Bill Harley wrote the song "Wash Your Hands" to remind kids that hand washing will help to prevent the spread of the flu. The four important things to remember are:

1) Get vaccinated
2) Cover your cough
3) Wash your hands
4) Stay home when you're sick


We will be discussing this in detail this next week in a lesson that I have planned.  We have a black lamp that will allow us to see if just washing our hands is enough. Usually the kids will see that washing hands and then using hand sanitizer is the best route to really clean hands.

Enjoy the songs and pass them on:

Long Version (3 minutes, 51 seconds): 1. Click here and save the file

Short Version (1 minute, 49 seconds): 1. Click here and save the file

Spelling with long /e/

Today in class we found 6 different ways to spell the long e sound. The 4 most common ones that we will be reviewing this week are e, ee, ea, and ie. Be careful as we found out that a lot of these words have a companion word that sounds the same, but these words have different meanings, and are spelled different. This is what we call homonyms like in the words: meet - meat; read - reed; sea - see; and a whole lot more (at some point this year I usually have the students make a homonym list).

Here is the list of spelling words for this week:

Also a quick note the Literacy Night that was planned for this Thursday night has been postponed until November 10th.

Check it out Week 8

Dear Parents,

This year, we will be using SpellingCity.com in our classroom. SpellingCity is a website that helps students learn their weekly spelling words while having fun at the same time. As a teacher, I will put up my weekly spelling lists on SpellingCity and your children can review the words, and play spelling games with their words to reinforce the learning process. Here’s how to help your child master his or her spelling words: Simply go to http://www.spellingcity.com/MrFisher/ to see how the site works.

To get started, click on “Week 8” Spelling List. Then try the Teach Me, Test Me, or Play A Game link. You can always find our class spelling lists by simply clicking on “Find a List” and typing in my name, Ronald Fisher. The lists will appear and your child can immediately start using it to practice his or her words. Many kids enjoy building their spelling skills with Spelling City. Please encourage your children to spend about twenty minutes, two nights in a row before their weekly test. The challenge is to do the "Test Me, Teach Me and Play a Game" links before Thursday.

Let’s work together as a team to ensure that your child becomes an independent, lifelong learner. I have also linked the icon on the side to go directly to our Spelling List.

Yours truly,

Mr. Fisher

Spelling Words will be posted tomorrow with some further details about the long e and how it is used this week (not weak).

Other things happening this week include:

1. Reading the play "The Strongest One" a story about Little Red Ant and his quest to find out who is the strongest one. Here is a link to find out more about Joseph Bruchac and the illustrator Lucia Angela Perez.

http://treasures.macmillanmh.com/utah/students/grade3/book1 This is the main link (I wanted you to see this main page - so you can always come back) and look under Unit 2 to find the story "The Strongest One."

a. Try the Spelling Activity

b. Try the Vocabulary Activity

c. Look up the information about the Author and the Illustrator

2. Finishing Rule Page 1 - This is part of their spelling notebooks. I will explain this later.

3. Daily Grams:

a. Capitalization: Capitalize the name of a school, college, hospital, medical center, special house, museum, or department store.

b. Punctuation: Apostrophe (Bob's dad), Commas after the closing of a letter (Truly yours,), After dates (Tuesday, October 20, 2009), and using the Exclamation Point (Yikes!).

c. Parts of Speech: Past Tense (A bird hops / hopped on the grass), Nouns (persons, places or things), Adverbs often tell how (how did she wash the car? slowly), and Adverbs tell where (Come here).

d. Prefixes/Roots/Suffixes (dis + honest, dump + ed), Compound Words (made up of two words), Sentence Types (statement tells you something, question asks you something, command tells you to do something), Difficult words (Two = 2, to = preposition or part of a verb [to draw], too = also or overly [too fast]), Dictionary Guide Words, and Synonyms (words that have similar meanings).

4. Announcement - sometime this week The Rotary Club will be presenting our third grade students with a dictionary to be used at school, and if you are like me I still have mine from my third grade teacher.

5. Math - Math Block Assessment - from the district this test is designed to help us as teachers know where your students are in relation to what we have taught them so far this year. It measures their growth, but more importantly it helps me know what they didn't get. We are also reviewing estimating, rounding, Properties of Addition, and moving on to Adding 2 and 3 digit numbers. My goal is to have them try to add in their head. :)

6. Science This Week: Tools of Science, Antarctica, Penguins, Archimedes, and some more information on the Moon (plus the start of our Moon Journal). I will post more information on this Tuesday or Wednesday. The Lab this week looks at making a compass - hope you are ready.

Well thank you again for coming in last week and meeting with me during Parent Teacher Conferences. I have the best class and they proved it on Thursday afternoon. I had to leave for the afternoon to celebrate my mother-in-law's retirement (http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=8328296). The students were respectful for the substitute Mrs. Stacey, and they worked hard for her. Thank your kids for me.

Thanks,

Mr. Ronald Fisher

Pictures and SEP Conferences

Pictures will be Wednesday See the calendar above:
See the notes that went home today:

Week 7 Daily Grams

I thought it might be helpful for you as parents to know what we do everyday. I will start with an example of our Daily Grams. We do this every morning first thing when we sit down and wait for the school announcements. I feel that the English language needs to be practiced and used so we can understand it better and utilize its tools in our reading and writing. I hope this becomes a weekly update (see below), so you can see what we are working on. This week I have outlined basically what the students will see throughout the week. For example, Mondays assignment will have the following:

1. A part of a friendly letter,
2. exclamation marks in sentences,
3. Sentence Types,
4. the use of pronouns, and
5. Combining two subjects into a compound subject.

I will explain more about Daily Grams in a later post. For now read through and see if you can practice any of the following:

Daily Grams (Days 28 - 31 - respectively Monday = Day 28, Tuesday = Day 29 and so on).

1. Capitalization (part of a friendly note, proper nouns, do not capitalize plants or animals, Titles).
2. Punctuation (Exclamations, Initials, Comma after town, Possessive nouns, Abbreviations).
3. Parts of Speech and Sentence Structure
   
   
   • A. Sentence Types (statement, question, command).
   
   
   • B. Adjectives describe, and they often tell what kind
   
   
   • C. Prefixes / Roots / Suffixes - Some words are made by adding a prefix before the main word (root). Example: bicycle
   
   
   • D. Subject of a sentence tells who or what the sentence is about. The verb often shows action.


4. More Parts of Speech and Sentence Structure
   
   
   • A. Pronouns take the place of nouns (Use I as the subject of a sentence).
   
   
   • B. Nouns (plural nouns, most words add s, however add es to words ending in sh and ch).
   
   
   • C. Verb has to agree with the subject. A boy rides / ride his bicycle.
   
   
   • D. Prepositions and how they work in a sentence.


5. Sentence Combining (Combining the subject, combine a list, use adjectives to combine).

Thanks,

Mr. Fisher

Week 7 Spelling Words

Another week without Spelling Words. (I know we all know that the building block and foundation of the English language is the words and we don't have spelling words for two weeks. What is Mr. Fisher thinking)? Well, this is what Mr. Fisher is thinking. We are reviewing our Third Grade Vocabulary Words. We are practicing these words and I have the students enter the words in their notebooks. Here is the cover of the notebook. I will post more information about these words in a later post. For now suffice it to say that we are practicing our vocabulary instead of our spelling. And yes we all get a small break from doing spelling (that's not to say that we are not practicing spelling as we look up our vocabulary words - because we are).