Grade 3

Unit 1

Unit 2

Unit 3

Unit 4

Unit 5

Miscellaneous Activities

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Week 1

Essential Question:

When is money important and when does it affect our lives?

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·        Needs and Wants (Template 1 and Template 2) Kidspiration Activity

·        Excel “Back to School” Activity

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Students will use MS Word to write a letter to a local business.  The letter will help them learn more about that business and what someone needs to do to get a job there.  Their letters should include questions about:

• Special tools required to do the job
• The skills they would need to do that job
• Subjects (math, science, social studies…) that help in that type of job
• The ways that company helps the local community, and/or the global community

The students should also include information in the letter about their grade level, the school they attend, and why they are interested in the business they chose.

Students should address an envelope and send their letters to the businesses.

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Based on the outcome of their business letters, students could create an Advertisement Poster for the company they researched using Microsoft Publisher.  It should include:

• A headline
• An image relating to the business
• Body copy – explaining the value of the service the business provides
• A Signature – a clever phrase or the brand name (something the consumer will relate to)

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With students working in groups of 3, assign one or 2 vocabulary words per group.  Each group will create one PowerPoint slide for the word including:

• The vocabulary word
• Click INSERT à MOVIES & SOUNDS à RECORD SOUND to record the pronunciation of the word
• Definition
• Sentence including the word
• Image to help remember the meaning of the word

Use Toolbox Pro’s ToolBlog Pro to pose questions for student reflection and response online about the story, vocabulary, the big idea question, the Question of the Week…

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VIEWING: ANALYZE A PHOTO:

• MEDIA LITERACY: use the PowerPoint to look at examples of money from different countries around the world.  Ask the following questions:
  • What do you notice about the money from [country]?
  • What is important in that culture, based on the people, images, and colors that you see?

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Daily Fix-It PowerPoint or Wiki (see general tips below for wiki info)

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Writing Workshop – use Kidspiration to gather ideas for the writing prompt

Draft and Revise

• Teach students how to right click on words in MS Word and choose synonyms to make their writing more interesting.
  
   
• Teach students to right click words underlined in red to correct misspellings

TG p. 41k

Use Toolbox Pro to pretest and/or post test the vocabulary, spelling, and phonics lessons

General Tips 

Some of this is set up already at http://cppreads.pbwiki.com (ask Cheryl for the Password)

Enter your FIX-IT sentences, Writing Prompts, Skills Practice, etc. into a student-safe Wiki site.  Only one student at a time can edit a page in a wiki. 

Daily Fix-Its: Students would edit sentences and offer tips for why they fixed it the way they did.  If teacher or students notice a classmate did something incorrectly, they can fix those mistakes as well.  Then you can look at how the page evolved over time as more students entered information during the week.

Writing Prompts: Offer students a writing prompt on the wiki so they can collaboratively write a response.  It can be creative writing prompts.  They can do research and write collaborative essays about a social studies or science topic…  If you have many writing prompts on separate pages, students will be able to find a spot to edit pretty easily.  The point is to leave them up there.  This should help students appreciate the need for revision and collaboration.

Skills Practice: Have students use the wiki as a place to define and practice new skills:

• Compare / Contrast
• Sequence of Events
• Plot
• Summarizing
• How to write a paragraph, personal narrative, memoir, essay…
• Finding the Main Idea
• Predicting / Drawing Conclusions
• Figurative Language
• Vocabulary Words (word structure)
• Etc………

They could make a “wik-tionary,” with a wiki, about the reading skills and/or the vocabulary they learn throughout the year.  By the end of the school year, they can see how far they’ve come together and they’ll have a great study aid.