Math Day

Lower School celebrated World Math Day today!  We mixed up the third grade classes and rotated through perimeter math lessons.  Each grade-level was assigned a continent, and we had fun pretending to be in Australia.  :)

  

  

Drama Performances

Dear Third Grade Families,

We are so excited to be working on our dances for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  In the upcoming production, the 6^th grade will be doing all of the speaking roles and third grade will be doing either a beginning or closing dance as wood goblins and fairies.  Please note that the dances are between two and three minutes and will offer students the opportunity to participate in a Shakespeare production in an age appropriate way.  We will be doing other activities this month to research character creation, character histories, costume creation and activities that will integrate both writing and art. Our shows will be on February 24^th during the day and in the evening.  Please check your calendar and let us know as soon as possible if you will have any conflicts regarding the performances. We ask that third graders come dressed in costumes 30 minutes before each show.  We are so excited to share this cross-age production together.

Performance Times and Dates:

Performance Groups:

Group A-Birdsong/Caldwell/Pease/Erlach- Group A Day 9:30-10 AM/5:00 PM (call 30 minutes before each show)

Group B-Chandler/Murray/O’Connor/Stretz- Group B Day 2:20-2:50 PM/6:30 PM (call 30 minutes before each show)

Costumes:

Black pants, jeans or leggings in which a student can comfortably move

A solid color t-Shirt or tank top to wear under the student’s costume

Please feel free to contact me with any thoughts or questions.

Best Wishes,

Lee Lee Newcomb

lnewcomb@graland.org

303-336-3773

Class Valentines

Dear Families,

Our class Valentine’s Day celebration will take place on Friday, February 12^th at 10:40. Students will bring valentines for each of their classmates.  They can be homemade or store-bought, but students may NOT include candy with their Valentines. Please help us monitor this. Happy Valentine's Day!

                               

              Adam O                                    Jake

              Adam W                                   Jesse

              Addie                                        Joe

              Audrey                                      Oliver

              Caitlin                                       Sadie

              Carmen                                     Sloane

              Carter                                       Sophie

              Ginna                                        Soren

              Jacob                                         Teo  

Go Broncos

January Newsletter

Happy New Year!!!  We hope you had a magical holiday season with family and friends.  We were excited to see your children return to school and impressed with how eagerly they jumped right into their academics.

In reading, students have been exercising their compare and contrast skills, as well as analyzing a text in order to formulate an informed opinion.  As we continue through the month we will discuss author’s purpose, summarize, analyze characters to better understand them and work on our inferring and predicting skills.  We are also working on homophones and homographs, so when you come across any, have some fun and discuss them with your student. A very exciting third grade reading incentive, called the Newberry Club, begins in February. Students will have the opportunity to read award-winning books to become part of the club. The process involves independent reading of appropriate level books reaching different goals along the way. Be on the lookout for more information about this project to come home soon.

In writing, we are focusing on growing our independence and ability to self-assess while moving through the writing process.  In addition to practicing this in school, students will take responsibility for completing the entire cycle once a month for homework as was outlined in the writing contract which was recently sent home.  As we write, we continue to work on organization, sentence fluency and using sensory words in our descriptive details. This month we will also focus on making our stories come to life by showing, not telling, what is happening.  This means instead of telling you “Janet was happy”, we will show you by writing “Janet’s eyes lit up and a huge grin broke out on her face”.

Our exciting journey through Colorado history continues. We culminated our study of Native Americans by completing a Venn diagram comparing Ute Indians to Plains Indians.  Our interactive map, timeline, and e-book have all been updated, as we added many key events and people to them. We are now learning about the trappers and traders who came to Colorado to hunt for beaver, Rendezvous, and Bent’s Fort.

During our Math in Focus work this month we are expanding our multiplication skills by mentally solving problems involving ones, tens and hundreds.  Ask your student how the problems 8 x 1, 8 x 10, and 8 x 100 are all related.  We are also solving multiplication problems involving two and three digit numbers multiplied by a single digit multiplier.  As you can tell by the increased complexity of our work, mastery of our multiplication facts is extremely important.  Please take time to work on these with your student three or four times a week.  Quizzing them on facts while driving, for a few minutes before or after dinner, or before bed is helpful and important. At this time in the year, we expect students to have mastery of addition and subtraction facts and to be working daily on multiplication. 

Señora James has arranged an exciting experience for us.  To complement our Spanish classes, representatives from the Denver Zoo will educate third graders with a bilingual presentation on Colorado animals.  They will even bring live animals with them!

We continue to feel fortunate to be able to spend our days with your children and thank you for all the support you provide at home. 

Wishing you a healthy, happy new year filled with heartwarming experiences,

The Third Grade Team

Upcoming Events:

January 18 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (no school)

January 29 – Spirit Day

February 12 –Third Grade Concerts, 8:20 – 9:00 and 2:20 – 3:00

February 17 – Field Trip, Naturalization Ceremony

February 24 – Third graders have a role in the Sixth Grade Play.  More details to come.

Homework: Go Write!

Dear Parents,                                 Sent home: January 5, 2016

The week of May 16th, Lower School Graland students will be taking a final writing assessment: The Unit 5 Journeys Benchmark. This is part of our Journeys comprehensive literacy curriculum. Starting next week, third grade students will be practicing the required skills to complete the full writing process. We will practice a lot in class, as well as at home for homework. We are calling the homework writing assignments “GO Write!” and they are scheduled for next week, and the weeks of Feb. 22, Mar. 14, and Apr. 25. Other homework expectations (spelling, cursive, math, literacy) will be adjusted during these homework weeks.

        

You will notice that the writing homework involves five steps. To help your child with pacing, a recommended timing schedule is noted.   

·       Prompt

·       Brainstorming (15 minutes)

·       Rough draft (45 minutes)

·       Editing (15 minutes - Please let your child edit on his/her own and providing your child with a child dictionary will be helpful.)

·       Final draft (45 minutes - This skill will be included in the final two “Go Write!” homework assignments). 

The Journeys program provides a prompt that the students must write about.  This process happens at the end of each unit. The students will take the Unit 5 Benchmark writing test in two sessions, over two consecutive days, each sessions taking approximately 60 minutes (Day 1: brainstorm and rough draft, Day 2: editing and final draft).  In the first session, the children write a rough draft, and in the second session they revise that draft and produce their final essay. All writing assessments are scored using our four-point writing rubric, which will also be attached to each “Go Write! homework assignment.

We are pretending this is a contract J, so please sign and initial this letter with your child.  If you have any questions, please feel free to ask your child's teacher.  Thank you for all of your support at home!

The Third Grade Team

Twins

We had two sets of twins in our room yesterday!

Plains Indians and the Bison

Our students learned how the Plains Indians (Arapahoe and Cheyenne) hunted bison and used each part for a specific purpose.  Nothing was wasted and all living things were respected.

Each student posted their buffalo to their student Digital Portfolio, teaching all who look what each part of the bison was used for.  Check out your student's blog by clicking on the "Student Portfolio" tab at the top of the classroom blog.