Week 3 Post!

Dear 3C Parents and Families, 

It was another wonderful week in 3C!  I am so excited to see you all on Wednesday, August 24th forCurriculum Night.  Curriculum begins at 6pm.  You will find a note from your child on his or her desk and we will have the opportunity to have time to share more about 3rd grade with you!  I am really looking forward to this event.  If you have any questions you would like me to cover during the course of the night feel free to send them to me via email.  We will have lots of time for questions that evening.  :) 

In addition, we wanted to let you know that students will be taking a MAP test on Wednesday, August 24th.  The MAP test is similar to the Galileo test you may remember from last year.  The MAP test is a test the students will take at the beginning, middle, and end of the year to help us track their progress and let us know where they need some extra help or an extra challenge!  The MAP test does not count towards the students' grades, but it is still an important marker or growth so we ask that students get good rest the night before and pack some healthy snacks for that day.  You can also help by discussing with your child the importance of perseverance and always doing their best.  The test is somewhat different than Galileo because it will get more difficult as students continue to get questions correct.  That means a student who might normally fly through a test will come across questions that will challenge them because the program will start giving them more difficult questions.  However, if a student is struggling the program will begin giving them easier questions to find their appropriate level.  I am hoping this test will give us better data and information about our students, but it is a bit of a paradigm shift from what we are used to with test taking.  

Class Wish List Items

1. Tissues

Next Week...

Math:  We will have our first math test on Monday.  This will cover everything we have covered thus far in math.  To prepare with your child, feel free to review pages 1-25 in their workbooks.  We will also be diving into our next math unit which covers adding and subtracting with mental math strategies!  In addition, students will be taking the MAP pre-test on Wednesday.  There will be no math homework on Wednesday since we will not have a math lesson due to testing. 

Science:  This week we will continue practicing and performing their reader’s theater scripts which focus on the 5 classes of vertebrates.  The scripts are very fun and the students are excited about this activity!  Towards the end of the week we will begin learning about reptiles more in depth.  Students are going to have a “Mr. Fab” packet where they will take the majority of their notes for this unit.  Throughout the unit we will have a few quizzes and a final assessment.  We will let you know what pages to study as those quizzes get closer in their packet. 

History: Our studies will turn toward a closer look at the details of a map and the regions of North America and they will put their knowledge of cardinal directions to good use. We have activities planned that include a tour of our school, the floor plan of a royal castle, and the challenges of being a cartographer.

Language Arts:

In Spalding we will begin using our intermediate notebooks and creating our rule pages together, you will continue seeing cursive handwriting practice come home each night. Starting this week Literature, Spalding, and Grammar/Writing need to be in cursive.  We will continue adding more subjects to get all students writing in cursive 100% of the time in all subjects-coming soon! In grammar we are reviewing the 3 rules of pluralizing nouns and focusing on common and proper nouns; we will end the week with listing all of the pronouns. In writing class we will be reading about upper and lower Egypt and working as a class to create a 3 sentence summary of the story. Poetry class will be a review of rhyme scheme and Touchpebbles will be an exercise in abstract art.

Monday: Math Quiz on Rounding

Wednesday: MAP (Reading and Writing) Benchmark Test

Best,

Mrs. Bowers