Week 2

Reminders: First day packet forms are due Friday, September 2.
We have a school holiday, Monday, September 5.  We hope you will have a safe and fun Labor Day weekend.

Reading: We will continue to build routines and establish expectations for Reader's Workshop. This week students will continue to talk about our thinking while we read.  Students will participate in discussions on: What was the story about?  How do you know if you have picked a good book? What do you do when you get hung up on something in your book?  How can you track your thinking while you read?

Teachers will begin pulling students for reading assessments.  This time with your student helps us get to know them a bit more as a reader.  Please know that reading teachers will pull all 40 students for assessments during the month of September.  You do not need to prep your child for this reading time.  The assessment will give us a good look at a starting point for our instruction and guide our creation of small groups.

Classes will get to the library for the first time this week.  Our schedule is below.  We hope that many of you will volunteer in the library and help us navigate our way to great books!

Badrack/Jackson- Tuesdays at 12:40

Duncan/Ford- Wednesdays at 9:00

Rozzell/Scott- Thursdays at 9:00

Writing:  It was a pleasure to watch your children build their Writer's Notebooks this week.  It was a wonderful opportunity for us to get to know each other better and for the storytelling and sharing to begin!  This week in writing we will continue to build anchors and lists of stories we might be able to share.  Students will generate ideas and practice focused storytelling in partners before moving to writing in their journals.  
We'd love you help at home!  Cultivate a culture of storytelling at home.  Everyone LOVES a good story.  Stories we love to hear have a point and share an event we have in common with those around us or an interesting event that has made an impact on who we are.

Word Work:  This week we will administer the Words Their Way Inventory.  This assessment will be given three times throughout the school year to track students progress and developmental understanding of how words and spelling patterns work.  This assessment is not graded.  It will be used for information to help develop lessons and small groups that will target your child's learning needs.

Social Studies: We will introduce our Social Studies resources to students this week.  They will work to build their Social Studies resource folder and journal.  We will also use our story sharing in Writing to continue to build our classroom community.

Math:Last week in math we learned about classroom procedures and routines. We began reviewing some second grade skills. This week we will continue working on standard form, word form, and expanded form on numbers up to 100,000. 

This week we will be discussing in greater depth the value of each place.  The students will be taught strategies on how to compare and order numbers using the greater than and less than sign.  We will be introducing some new Math Station games to the kids to practice these skills as well. Last week, I encouraged your child to begin practicing their math facts every night or five minutes. The class blog has some great websites to practice - you can find these under the Math Websites page on the right side of the blog.

Science: We skimmed the surface in Science last week.  The kids made a title page and table of contents for their Science Journal and decorated them with Science Icons.  On Thursday we talked about “What is a Scientist?” We discovered all the different types of Scientists that exist and began working on our first project.  In Science next week we will be going through Lab Safety procedures and learning the names of many Science tools.  On Tuesday,  we will take a gallery walk with a partner and work on categorizing tools by tools that are used for observation, safety, measurement, or recording.

Welcome to 3rd Grade!

We are excited to a new year and ready for the FIRST day of school!  

REMINDERS:

• ·         If your child did not purchase school supplies, he or she will need $5.00 to purchase a planner from the front office.  Third graders keep track of daily homework in planners.  This will be a great organizational tool for your child to learn to use this year. 

• Third graders need to go to the gym before school begins each day. They are welcome to walk to our classrooms at 7:45am. 

 

• Children will be counted tardy if they arrive after 7:55 A.M.

• Children will be counted absent if they arrive after 9:15 A.M.

• You are welcome to escort your child to class on the first day of school, but please allow him or her to enter the room independently.

·         Please send a healthy snack and a reusable water bottle daily. We have snack time each morning after specials.   Due to peanut allergies across the grade level, we ask that you send peanut free snacks and lunch items this year.

·         Your child’s lunch number will be the same as it was last year. We will have lunch numbers available for any child who might have forgotten. We eat lunch from 12:00-12:30 daily.

• Dismissal is at 3:00 P.M.  If your child will be picked up in a car in parent pick up, you must write his or her name on a piece of large yellow paper. Please write your child’s first and last name as large as you can on the paper. This will help the teacher on duty to see and call your child’s name in a timely manner.

• It can get chilly in the classrooms. Please send a light jacket, sweater or sweat shirt in your child’s backpack so that he or she will be comfortable. Remember to write your child’s name on the tag inside so that it can be returned if lost.

READING:  During reading this week we will be talking about books and the ways that reading impacts our lives.  
To help with this practice, you can talk to your child about your reading life.  Do you enjoy novels?  Do you read the newspaper?  Are you an e reader or a paper reader?  Are you a member of a professional or personal reading group?  What story was your favorite when you were a third grader?  
WRITING: This week we will introduce the writer's notebook and establish expectations and procedures for writer's workshop.  We ask that students bring pictures, stickers, and mementos to decorate their writer's notebook by Thursday, 8/25.  Please make sure to send things that are okay for us to glues and adhere to the journals.  Items will not be returned.

SOCIAL STUDIES: For the first few weeks of school we will be building our classroom community through games, conversations and activities that help us learn more about each other.  

MATH: In math this week, we will begin setting up our math journals that we will use daily for word problems. We will discuss thing about ourselves that involve numbers: shoe sizes, address, phone numbers, age, number of family members, etc. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, we will review vocabulary for addition and subtraction and think of words that mean the same thing as adding or subtracting. We will not have homework in math this week. 

SCIENCE: During our science time this week, we will set up our interactive science journals. We will create a table of contents that will help us stay organized this year. We will brainstorm types of scientists in our world and your child will have the opportunity to put themselves in the shoes of a scientist. On Thursday and Friday, we will discuss lab safety and complete a gallery walk with science tools. 

Welcome to Third Grade!!

Welcome to 3rd Grade at Hunters Creek Elementary!

We are looking forward to getting to know you, learning together and having some fun in the process.  Feel free to look around the blog and find out a little more about what's to come this year!

Love,
Your Third Grade Teachers