Third Grade News

Hello, Third Grade Families!

To begin this week, we would like to share a few business items:

1.    Next Friday, December 8th, is an early dismissal day. PLEASE remember to discuss with your child if s/he needs to order a school bag lunch, as orders need to be placed by Tuesday of next week. Your child is bringing home an order form today. The kitchen cannot guarantee student lunches without prior orders.  We appreciate your attention to this!  Students will be dismissed at 12:30 pm on the 8th.  

2.    The last day of school before the winter break will be on Friday, December 22nd.  On that day, we will take some time to celebrate December holidays and traditions.  We will also watch a movie that is a sequel to a readaloud we have been enjoying during literacy.  The book we are reading in called “The Best/Worst School Year Ever”. The movie we will watch has all of the same characters in a school holiday play, and is called “The Best/Worst Christmas Pageant Ever”. We look forward to seeing those wild Herdman kids in a new adventure!

3.    Winter is here! Please send your child with appropriate outerwear to be warm and comfortable for a twenty minute recess period. Please be advised that snowpants, as we tell the children, provide protection from the wet and cold as well as the snow. Please write your child’s name in his/her clothing help that clothing makes it back to its correct home!

4.    Please remember to return SaveAround coupon books.  If you do not plan to purchase the book, it needs to be returned to school. If you are purchasing the book, please return the envelope with a check. Thank you!

5.  We are sending the optional December homework packet for those families who enjoy having some at home work time.  These do not need to be returned to school.  Daily reading and number fact practice are required expectations for homework.

We had a wonderful time at the Flynn performance of Jazzy Ash and the Leaping Lizards this week. It was a lively, interactive presentation of American music, with a focus on New Orleans jazz.  We certainly saw the musical side of many of our students as they joined in the fun! You can find some of their music online and on Youtube.      

In literacy this week, we have been focusing upon how readers approach nonfiction text.  We have learned that we need to build our expectations by asking “what will this mostly be about?”, and thinking of what we might learn.  We then need to recall any prior knowledge we have about the text in order to deepen our understanding. If we have no prior knowledge, we need to prepare ourselves for some unfamiliar vocabulary, and be ready to re-read. We also learned that we can use our hand to help us organize chunks of text, stopping to ask “what is the main idea of this part?’ on our palm, and then using our fingers to think of supporting details. When we use our notebooks, we are calling this process “boxes and bullets”.  Please encourage your child to stop and discuss their nonfiction reading with you at home, using their palm and fingers to highlight the main idea and details.  Today, students will bring home reading logs to record their daily reading. Logs are useful for students to track their progress, and to set new reading goals (number of pages read, genres of books being read, etc.).

Third grade mathematicians have started a unit of study about addition, subtraction, and multi-step problem solving.  We continue to work towards memorizing the multiplication facts each day. Please make sure that your child is practicing the Doubles (x 2 facts) and Double-Doubles (x 4 facts) at home.  Students should continue to practice skip counting by numbers 2 - 9  (count by 3’s to 30, 8’s to 80, 9’s to 90, etc…).    

We are in need of cleaning wipes for our classrooms.  If you have a package to spare, please send them in.  

Sincerely,

Kathy Buley

Keelin Simpson

Sharon Robinson