An update from Mrs. Ford

Parents and Families,
Welcome to our blog.  This will be a great site for you to use for information about what is happening in the classroom.  Ms. Skrivanek and I will do our best to update the front page weekly.  Please use the "FOLLOW BY EMAIL" box to join our blog.  When you join the blog, you will be alerted by email each time we change the front page.  You may also wish to save the URL in your bookmarks.  Students will also need to reference the blog for homework.
We have had a marvelous first week of school.  It was wonderful to get to meet and get to know your children.  You must have fun in your homes!!!
This week in Mrs. Ford's class (Language Arts and Social Studies) we will start getting more into academic work.  Students will begin practicing routines for daily independent reading.  We call this special time in our day, DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read).  During this time, students will be allowed to read a book they have self-selected.  They will be asked to apply reading strategies we have learned as a class during their DEAR time.
We will also continue to brainstorm and journal in writing.  At home, please help your student think of things her or she knows much about. One of the hardest parts of writing is thinking of an idea.  We will work this week to create different lists and try different brainstorming activities to get our ideas moving from our brains to the paper.
Students completed a spelling inventory for me last week.  It gave me some great information to know what they KNOW about words and how they work.  This week, we will review vowels, consonants and syllables.  We will also learn about synonyms and antonyms and how to use a thesaurus and a dictionary. Later this year, each third grader will receive his or her own personal dictionary.  These ideas will help us as we work towards creating spelling groups.
Our focus for social studies this 9 weeks is Community and Government.  Last week we worked on building our classroom community.  This week we will look at famous Americans who helped change his or her community.
Homework will begin this week.  Students will be asked to read NIGHTLY for 20 minutes.  They will record the title and genre of their book in their planners.  I will check each morning to see that they have this recorded.  Homework is a study habit that will be recorded and reported on your student's progress report.