October 10, 2016
Dear Third Grade Parents and Students,
REMINDERS:
IOWA Testing: The third grade will be taking the IOWA tests Friday of this week and all next week. It is important for the students to be at school to take the tests. Please do not schedule any appointments between October 14- 25. Here are some helpful tips to discuss with your child:
* Plan ahead for a peaceful, unhurried evening and morning before the test.
* Make sure your child sleeps well, eats a healthy breakfast, brings a healthy snack, and gets enough water to drink.
* Be on time for school. We take the IOWA tests first thing each morning so be at school by the first bell (8:15) so that students have time to settle in before we begin.
* Give an honest effort; take pride in yourself and DO YOUR BEST.
* Never leave an answer blank!
Mass: We have Mass on Tuesday morning at 10:15 am. Students need to be in perfect uniform.
Old Magazines Needed:
Next week we will be learning about nouns, adjectives and verbs. We will be doing an activity where kids need to cut out pictures from magazines. If you have any magazines lying around the house that you no longer need, I would love use them. Magazines like Good Housekeeping work great. Thanks!
Prayer to the Holy Spirit: Students have been reciting The Prayer to the Holy Spirit. This prayer will need to be memorized by Friday, November 4th. Your child can also recite the prayer to me before this date, if they are ready. They can recite the prayer to me before school, after school or at recess.
Touching Safety Curriculum: The Archdiocese is having all teachers teach two Touching Safety lessons this year, one in October and once in March. Our first lesson will be this week, called “Safe Touching Rules”. We will discuss safe touches and unwanted touches and what to do about unwanted touches. Here is a link to a program guide more information for parents and guardians:
https://www.virtusonline.org/educators/TeachingTouchingSafety.pdf
Math Homework: There will be no math worksheets Tuesday-Thursday this week. Instead, students are bringing home a multi-digit addition game to play at home. If you feel that your child has mastered addition, they can easily adapt this game for subtraction as well and there are challenge ideas on the back of the instruction sheet. This is due on Friday.
Multiplication Assessment: The multiplication assessment we took last week will be coming home with your child tonight. Please review it with them. Thanks!
CURRICULUM:
Reading: We read chapter 3 and 4. We focus on sequencing the main events of each chapter. We also use some our reading time to begin IOWA testing.
Language Arts: We continue to work on persuasive paragraph. This week we finish drafting, editing, revising and publishing their opinion pieces. I can’t wait to read them!
Cursive: We will begin cursive this week! We will start off with the letters “i” and “t”
Science: Students learn about inherited traits in plants and do a classmate search for specific inherited traits and learned behaviors.
Math: This week we review focus on addition and subtraction. We review multi-digit addition and subtraction that involves regrouping. We also are focusing on preparing for the IOWA tests. Students will take a few practice tests this week in math.
Social Studies: Students take a test on the Pacific region states and postal abbreviations on Friday. We continue to work on our geography lapbooks.
Spelling: Assignment due on Thursday and the test in on Friday. The pattern this week is short and long vowels.
This week’s spelling list:
math toast easy socks Friday stuff paid cheese June elbow program shiny piles sticky
Challenge word: holiday
This week’s star: Charlie
Next week’s star: Elena
Have a fabulous week!
Sincerely,
Erin Meland