Hello 3rd grade families!
We hope you had a wonderful day off for Labor day!
Announcements
Please be sure your student has a copy of Little House on the Prairie! We will be reading through the end of chapter 9 next week.
The Poem By Myself, by Eloise Greenfield. Students will have two weeks to memorize this poem and they will recite it on 9/9.
We will begin recording tardies next week. Tardies accumulate to lunch detentions in groups of 3 (3 tardies = 1 lunch detention). Students who enter the classroom after the 7:50 bell has rung will be marked tardy, per school policy.
Please ensure your student arrives to school in time to walk to their classroom (some students like to stop and say hi to former teachers in the hallway on the way :) ), enter the classroom, turn in their homework, write the daily agenda, unpack, and organize their supplies BEFORE the 7:50 bell. We start our Spalding lesson promptly at 7:55 each day. Please make use of the time students have in the classroom with teachers before the day begins!
Here is what we will be up to in our subjects this week:
Math: Test on Tuesday
We are learning adding and subtracting numbers within 1,000. We are building a firm foundation of rounding and adding & subtracting numbers when changing the place value.
Math homework: It is not our goal for homework to be an oversized burden for your child. If your student works on homework for 30 minutes (truly working; staring at the wall with the workbook in front of them doesn't count ; ) ) and is still not finished, you may sign your students workbook at the place where they finish the 30 minutes, and leave a brief note to the teacher that this is where your child ended at 30 minutes. Your student may still get full credit for the assignment based on the correctness of the work they completed.
Science:
In science we are learning about life cycles! We read together in our Core Knowledge science books and are working on answering the chapter's "big question" in complete sentences. This is a way that we practice our writing skills and the skill of being attentive readers.
History: We are learning about Rivers
We share our history time with science. We study history on Monday and Tuesday, and Science on Thursday and Friday, with Wednesday being a day that changes between History or Science week to week. Like in science, we read aloud from our textbook, study the vocabulary words, complete pre-writing exercises, and answer the "big question" of the lesson in writing to summarize our learning.
Grammar: Quiz on Friday and Poem due Friday!
In grammar, we are learning about parts of speech, focusing on nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. We are focusing on the difference between adjectives and adverbs. Being able to distinguish between adjectives and adverbs is an important skill that we develop in third grade! We are also being introduced to sentence diagraming.
For grammar homework, we will start home connection worksheets this week. On our grammar home connection assignments, students will use their notes from grammar to discuss with their parents what they are learning. Parents will fill out a short record of the conversation. You can expect to receive a version of this homework assignment once per week--occasionally it will be replaced by a worksheet or study guide for your student to complete.
Writing:
In writing, we are working on writing in complete sentences. We are learning a basic format for writing a summary, in which we summarize the beginning, middle, and end of stories, such as excerpts from Aesop's Fables, in 3-4 complete sentences. We have also enjoyed writing story responses to picture based prompts. This is a fun way to work on our understanding of narrative.
Literature:
In Literature, we are reading Little House on the Prairie. We are learning 1-2 literary devices each week and working on identifying these in the chapters that we read! We have a literary device workbook that we will fill out over the course of the next few weeks. By the end of next week, we will have considered alliteration, personification, and imagery. We are working on writing summaries of our chapters and on differentiating between a summary (involves a beginning, middle, and end) and a main idea (a single sentence that expresses the most important event or central thought of a story).
Spalding: Test Friday over 20 new words!
We have completed our Spalding review, and are beginning our regularly Spalding routine of learning 30 words per week. We will learn 10 words on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. On Thursday, we review all 30 words. On Friday, we have a test of 30 words and 10 phonograms. We review phonograms daily through oral review (flashcards and group response) and written review (students write the phonogram the teacher reads and check their work afterwards).
For homework, students will write the words two times. The first time, they will write the words with rules, markings, and separating the syllables. The second time, they will write only the words with no rules or markings and no separation of syllables. The words should be dictated to the student by a parent/guardian/adult. After each word or each set of words, check the words with your student and go over any mistake. We grade the Spalding homework for correctness, inclusion of rules/markings, and penmanship. Homework is out of 10 points (1/2 point for each word since they are written twice).
Reading/Keyboarding: Begins this week!
During reading class, students read independently or in small groups with the teachers, or we read together a chapter of our Language Arts books. These stories help us to study vocabulary and learn new strategies for interacting with texts as we read. We complete worksheets on key language arts skills and use the chapters we read to help us answer the questions.
For reading homework, students should read aloud to a parent or adult for 20 minutes, and the student should write a one sentence summary of what they learned or what happened in the material they read.
Thank you for reading!
With wonder for our world and love for your students,
The Third-Grade team