September 22, 2014
Dear Third Grade Students and Parents,
I hope you all had a wonderful time at WestFest! Thank you for all of your hardwork in putting WestFest together. It sure was a great success!
MAGAZINES: Tomorrow is magazine turn-in day! Let’s keep up the high selling and shoot for 100% participation!
Scholastic Book Orders: I will be sending home scholastic orders today. If your child would like to make a book order, please make sure that these are in to me by this Friday.
Parent’s Club Meeting: There will be a parent’s club meeting-happy hour discussing the online components of the new Reading program this Tuesday, September 23rd at 6:30.
Art Workshop: A flyer will be coming home today about a fun art workshop that Ms. Reuter will be putting on.
This 8-week course will be packed with unforgettable art projects that are designed to introduce kids to new and wildly fun avenues of creative exploration, create lasting memories, and produce priceless works of art. Projects will include: 3D dragon sculpture, paper mache pinatas, giant frosting cookie paintings, shrunken apple head carvings, multi-media photo portraiture, wearable shrinky dink accessories, customized hand-made stickers and more!
Steps to Respect: We will start our Steps to Respect curriculum this week. A letter about this program will be coming home with your child tonight.
This week we will study:
Reading: We read the story Destiny’s Gift. Our target skill this week is understanding chararcters. Students will look for traits, motivations, and feelings. They will then use these to help them understand what the characters are like. Our vocaublary strategy for the week is antonyms.
Math: We spend time reviewing for and taking our first summative assessment on place value this week. We will be moving on to chapter 4-understanding multiplication. We focus on the meaning of multiplication and how to use repeated addition. This will help us get ready for the IOWA tests in October.
We will be going back and doing chapter 2 and 3 in a few weeks.
Science: Students continue to investigate their mock rocks. They break open their mock rocks to discover what is inside! Through this investigation learn a rock is made of smaller parts called minerals.
Social Studies: We will locate the continents and oceans on a map. We will learn about where we are in relation to the rest of the world.
Religion: We continue our work with Sacred Story.
Here is some more information about Sacred Story: This year we are taking part with many other HRS classes in a religious education program called “Sacred Story”. Sacred Story teaches the Ignatian “examination of conscience” in a new rendition called Sacred Story Prayer. This three-five minute guided meditation will be used during the week to quiet the mind and guide students to learn how to hear the voice of God in their hearts. In 3rd grade we are focusing on the relational paradigm: I believe God loved me into life and so I commit myself never to break relationship with anyone by my false or destructive words or speech! This is a meditative experience we will undertake from September to January to help children build sensitivity and awareness of God’s presence in their lives and to allow God to shape one’s Sacred Story according to his will and graces. You can find more information at sacredstory.net.
We also discuss God and his Creation. Children will understand that God creates freely and out of love.
Language Arts: We learn about compound sentences and how to use them in our writing. Students also write a persuasive paragraph about what makes a better pet, a cat or dog.
Spelling: The assignment comes home tonight and is due Thursday. The test will be on Friday.
This week’s spelling list:
Lesson 3:
lay real trail sweet today dream
seem tea treat afraid leave bait cheer speed
Challenge word: yesterday
This week’s star: Annabelle
Next week’s star: Matthew W.
Have a great week!
Sincerely,
Erin Meland