Third Grade News

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Valentine's Day is coming up fast and we know it is on everyone's minds! We will have our fantastic Valentine Fair in the gym during our PE times for all the kids on Thursday, February 13th (the 14th is a bad weather make up day). Parents are welcome to attend the fun in the gym!

We will then have the Opening of the Valentines in our classrooms at the end of the day with just the students and teachers. If you would like to send in Valentines for the students, please make sure to send in one for each student in their homeroom class so no one is left out. They are welcome to bring in extra Valentines for friends in other classes and we will make sure they get distributed as needed. Your teacher will send home a class list of names so you will know who is who!

All 3rd and 4th Grade students will begin their recorder until the week of February 24th. Click HERE for more information.

Dear Parents,

All 3rd and 4th grade students are about to begin our recorder unit! This is a great way for all of our students to learn how to read notes, note values, and it gives our students a head start toward band and choir in middle school. It is a very important learning experience!

We will start our recorder unit the week of February 24. Each student needs to own a recorder. In previous years, we collected money and ordered the recorders all together. Your child will receive their instrument faster if each family orders their own. Here is an Amazon link. Yamaha recorders are some of the best on the market and come in pink, green, blue, and white. They are sturdy and cost around $8. Any style or color of Yamaha recorder is fine.

There are many toy recorders on the market that do not play the correct tones and/or break easily (especially the ones from discount stores). Please be careful when buying a recorder. You are welcome to email me and check a brand name if you would like. Yamaha recorders are strongly recommended.

If your child has a recorder from previous years, they are welcome to use this instrument. Also, if they have an older sibling that has a recorder they can use, they are more than welcome to do so.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or concerns. Thank you for your continued support of our music program at Bransford.

Sincerely,

Ashley Benson

Elementary Music Specialist, Bransford Elementary

ashley.benson@gcisd.net

Start the New Year with some fun by joining our BES Dads Club! It is a great group who make magic happen for our kids and school! Come be a part of the team!

If you have a change to make in how your student gets home or if your student is ill, please include Shelly Sartin (shelly.sartin@gcisd.net) and Charlotte Brumley (charlotte.brumley@gcisd.net) on the email. Due to our schedule, we don't have a lot of opportunities to check our email during the day and Shelly will make sure we get the message. We don't want to miss any important messages!

Our wonderful Morning Melodies Program is back!

Mr Kaufmann started this program last year and it was featured on the evening news!

We have a fabulous old piano Mrs Kaufmann found that needed a new home so we fixed it up, got it painted and now students can play some fun tunes in the morning to welcome our Texans into the school as they enter the building! It is a very relaxed, positive space to try out a new tune or show off something you are learning in the piano lab!

If your student would like to sign up for a slot, please click the link below!

Morning Melodies

• Third Grade is a stress free zone! If something seems to go wrong, just let us know and we'll work through it with you!

• Students are welcome to bring in a non breakable sealing water bottle with water in it (please no soda or colored drinks) to drink from during the day in our classroom. Plastic or padded waterbottles are a huge help as the metal/glass ones make a lot of noise in the hallways when they fall.

• Recess is at 11:30 each day and lunch time is at 12:00.

• Students are welcome to bring a dry, nutritious snack to class each day. We will have a short, designated snack time in the morning to tide us over until lunch.

• Please check the schedule below to see when your student will have PE to make sure they have gym appropriate shoes for that day. They are also able to bring a pair to change into if they want to wear their fun shoes the rest of the day.

• We know that the headphones provided by the school supply pack are not as sturdy as they can be so you are welcome to send in a pair from home if you would prefer!

1/31 - Last Day to Buy a Yearbook!

2/4 - 100th Day of School

2/7 - Dads Club SUPER CEREAL BOWL 7:20-7:40 AM

2/13 - Valentine Carnivals during PE

2/14 - Campus Holiday / Bad Weather Make-Up Day

2/17 - Student Holiday / Staff Professional Learning Day

3/13 - PTA Meeting at 8:00 AM

3/17-21 - Spring Break

3/25 - Spirit DAY at Portillo's in Grapevine 10 am - 10 pm

4/9 - STAAR Reading for Grades 3-5

4/11 - BES Arty *information coming soon*

4/22 - STAAR Science for 5th Grade

4/29 - STAAR Math for Grades 3-5

5/6-7 - Campus Performance of Moana at GHS Auditorium at 6 pm

5/20 - Field Day

5/22 - Last Day of School / Early Release at 11:45 am

Reading: In reading this week, we read another great informational text about a Siberian Tiger cub named T.J. With this text we identified text & graphic features and how authors use them to help us understand the text better. We then dove a little deeper into the five text structures that authors use to organize their information. With this knowledge, we discussed why authors would use each kind of text structure, and then we used our text about the tiger cub to practice identifying it!

Writing: This week we are focusing on the art of revising a written piece. In our HMH curriculum and on the STAAR test, students are given short passages that they are asked to revise and edit. They can be asked to do anything from replacing words with stronger vocabulary to combining two short sentences into one sentence using a conjunction. We are working on strategies to make these types of passages and questions easier, like trying out each of the multiple choice options to see which one sounds and looks best. This is tricky but we are getting the hang of it!

Social Studies: We continue to study geography with our Studies Weekly curriculum. This week our lessons revolve around the physical characteristics of the places all around the world. We learned that "physical characteristics" include the natural things that are not human created, such as landforms, climate, and resources. Students compared and contrasted different places and then focused in on the physical characteristics of our home here in Texas!

Science: This week our scientist continued exploring outer space! The focus this week is all about the order of the planets in our solar system. The knowledge we learned last week about orbits was foundational to having the students understand the order of the plants. We discussed how the planets each have their own orbit around the Sun. This helped the kiddos to understand that while we often see pictures of the order of the planets all in a straight line from the Sun, the planets are actually on separate orbits at various distances from the Sun. Our scientist also learned a fun song to help them memorize the order! Ask your scientist to sing you the song and teach you the order of the planets!

We are so proud of our math students! They did an amazing job on the Interim and we are using that data to guide our small groups for extension and review! They now know what it feels like to take the STAAR and can say that it is a challenging test but hopefully not as scary as the thought it was. Every day they learn more and it becomes easier and easier!

We are continuing to examine the concept of fractions as we remember that...

• Fractional parts are equal shares of a whole or set.

• The more fractional parts used to make the whole, the smaller the parts.

• Equivalent fractions are ways of describing the same amount by using different-sized fractional parts.

• A fraction does not tell us about the size of the whole only the relationship between the part and the whole.

• The denominator of a fraction indicates how the whole has been partitioned

• The numerator of a fraction tells how many of the fractional parts are under consideration.

• A line can be used to represent numbers, their properties and the relationships to each other.

Some things to consider-

**The weekly homework that is due each Friday, is such a great review of skills we have been studying that will help them keep that learning up to date!

**Practicing their multiplication facts and keeping those facts sharp is one of the best gifts you can gived your kid! It takes a lot longer for them to complete their work if they are having to write out the arrays and equal groups instead of automatically knowing their facts. I know it's hard to do but it sure pays off!

1.Students are able to bring in one small, dry, healthy snack to each during the morning. Water bottles that seal are welcome as well.

2. We will be getting our Chromebooks soon and trading in our iPads. Chargers will be coming home with the Chromebooks so you can make sure to have them charged each night.

3. Dismissal changes at the end of the day - If you need to change how your student is getting home and it is the day of, please call the office and Shelly Sartin will make sure we get the information. With all that goes on during the day, we don't have an afternoon break throughout the day to check email and we don't want to miss an important notice! Thank you!

Corrie Kaufmann corrie.kaufmann@gcisd.net

Jenna Flink jenna.flink@gcisd.net

Alex Diaz alex.diaz@gcisd.net

Megan Delfeld megan.delfeld@gcisd.net