THIRD GRADE NEWS

Dear Third Grade Families,

 It has been an amazing first two weeks of school! We have a wonderful group of third graders! During the first few weeks of September, our activities largely revolve around the following three themes- Getting to Know Each Other, Agreements and Routines, and Getting Ready to Learn. We practice Chamberlin School’s “Three Bees”: Be Responsible, Be Safe, and Be Respectful in all of the places and spaces in our school. By taking the time at the beginning of the school year to establish a caring learning environment in which expectations are clear, we ensure future learning will proceed in a productive manner. Here are the latest updates from our first two weeks together in Third Grade! 

Third graders have been learning several different skills to help increase learning including: how to focus our attention and how to listen respectfully. Check out the attached family letter for more information about what students have learned as part of our Second Step program for positive social-emotional growth.
Math
Third grade mathematicians have created and interpreted scaled picture and bar graphs. Students have worked on making agreements about what our classroom will look and sound like during partner and group work times. Students have shared about their learning preferences by organizing and representing their information as a glyph and a picture graph. Students have created a survey and are collecting data to be shared as a scaled bar graph with several categories. Ask your child to teach you how to play Make the Sum at home. We learned how to play the original version and “variation C” on the attached instructions.
Writing
During Writing students have worked on their Star Student Poster. This poster will be displayed in the hallway and teaches others about what makes each third grade student unique. Spelling and Reading We have taken spelling assessments with Ms. Cota to learn our just-right level. During reading, students have learned how to find just-right books. We have also had lessons on fake versus real reading. Right now students are working on building up their reading stamina. Both classes can already read for 20 minutes comfortably in their selected reading spots. Nice job third graders! Science 
During Science students learned how to respectfully collaborate with a group while completing two exciting experiments last Friday. The first experiment was called Save Fred. Fred is a gummy worm who needed help getting his life jacket on. The challenge was we could not touch Fred with our hands, we could only use paper clips and support each other! The second experiment was an engineering task called The Spaghetti Marshmallow Challenge. Students were challenged to build the tallest possible tower that could support a marshmallow using a limited supply of materials. This Friday we began exploring the idea of life cycles. Students have enjoyed observing our class caterpillars journey through their life cycle towards becoming Painted Lady Butterflies.
Upcoming Events: 
September 10th – Welcome Assembly, 8:10-8:30 AM, Kindergarten and New Family Welcome Coffee, 8:00-9:00 AM
Picture Day is on Wednesday, September 11th. Order forms were sent home last Friday. Let us know if you need another copy.
September 17th – Buzz Assembly, 8:10-8:30 AM

Happy Friday!
 Keelin Simpson and Ashley Cota
 kmcgrath@sbschools.net
 acota@sbschools.net