Third Grade Newsletter                                                            September 17, 2007

 

Good day, Families.

 

This week, we are continuing our study of living things in science. We hope you have enjoyed talking about traits and life cycles. This week we will be talking about adaptations, studying more about complete and incomplete metamorphosis in life cycles, and examining tortoises, thanks to Kenny’s family. We will also be watching a video about baby animals.

 

For social studies, we are continuing to practice appropriate behaviors, use of routines, problem-solving, and taking responsibility for not only our own learning but making the classroom conducive for everyone’s learning. We are also introducing China this week as we begin the “Legend of Mulan” in reading.  

 

Reading introduces multiple-meaning words such as bank, the place, and bank, the river’s edge. We are also focusing on the reading strategy of monitoring our own understanding as we read then clarifying if something is confusing. We teach the students to go back to reread when confused, or read a little way ahead to see if they can clarify their understanding through the context of the story. We are continuing to teach about sequencing and making inferences. Additionally, we will be delving deeper into the use of the dictionary. With the legend, the students need to make judgments also.

 

Spelling focuses on short o and short u words. Both classes of students did a BEAUTIFUL job on their first spelling tests. J We will begin to teach students to write a personal narrative. In the meantime, we are reviewing what a sentence is and asking students to identify different types of sentences. We are also teaching students how to syllabicate words that have two consonants in the middle. Those words include: yel low, mar ket, fol low.

 

Math draws to a close our first unit on numeration and comparing numbers. We continue our practice of estimating and using <,>, = signs. We will be continuing to write large numbers in standard, expanded, and word forms. The review of even and odd numbers is included this week too. We will be adding how to create and read a graph, so watch for an exciting homework assignment related to that.  

 

  • Thanks for your book orders and to all of you who returned the Handbook and Computer use forms.
  • Look for a picture of Good Hope School on the Ocean Conservancy website, www.oceanconservancy.com.  Then put 8 AM on September 22nd on your calendars to join GHS in our annual CoastWeeks beach clean-up. We are to learn on Monday where we are cleaning.
  • Please see a copy of the Healthy Snacks hand-out distributed at Back-to-School night. The GHS Lower School teachers continue to make a concerted effort to be sure our students are eating only healthy foods at snack and lunch times. Thank you for preparing and sending only healthy snacks. The amount of yogurt, cheese, fresh fruits, vegetable sticks, plain popcorn, and peanut butter has definitely increased. It is nice to have the students themselves talking about how their snacks are so much healthier than chips, cookies, cinnamon rolls, and sweet drinks. The water, juice, and healthy snacks truly make their attention better and behavior improves. Thank you for caring so much to pack appropriate snacks.
  • Finally, just so everyone has it as a reference, here are the steps that since the 1930s have repeatedly been shown to help us learn to spell unfamiliar words. These steps help short-term learning; incorporating our new spelling words in our writing is what helps us learn to spell correctly from our long-term memory. Of course, long-term memory is the ultimate goal! But we have to get them into short-term memory first, so here are the steps:
  1. Look at a word (Yes, this works best one word at a time!)
  2. Copy the word
  3. Say the word aloud
  4. Spell the word aloud
  5. Cover the word
  6. Write the word
  7. Uncover and check the spelling

 

Have a terrific week!

Mrs. Layton and Dr. Kimble