September Newsletter

Dear Families,                                             

We’ve had an exciting start to a new year in third grade!  In every aspect of the curriculum, learning is happening. From getting to know each other and our classrooms, to researching Colorado life zones, we are hard at work.

The Responsive Classroom approach provides the foundation for our social curriculum. We begin each day in morning meeting and strengthen our community with greetings, sharing, activities, and messages. Arriving to school by 8:05 is especially important as we begin our classes promptly at 8:10.

Just as we are building our communities in the classroom, we are watching our new building in its final stages of construction. The once empty space now holds a beautiful, new building for us all to use. This is like our classrooms. We start out with many unknowns and begin to construct our classroom family with safety, respect, responsibility, and honesty. Ask your child about some of the routines we employ each day, and ways we have shared our personal experiences and interests with each other.

In math, we are reviewing place value and extending our understanding of our number system with numbers up to 10,000. Daily math fact practice at home will reinforce automaticity with the basic facts, and allow your child to meet more challenging math concepts.

  

In the coming weeks, we will be conducting Fountas and Pinnell reading assessments to identify your child’s instructional and independent reading levels. The students already know “The Rule of Thumb” for figuring out whether a book is just right for them, but knowing the F&P reading level will help your child find a book that meets his/her fluency and comprehension. “Just Right” books should be used for the daily 15/5 homework assignments as well for Repeated Oral Reading.

  

Our Writing Workshop during this first unit focuses on writing personal narratives. We are learning how to use details to enhance stories. One game you might play to help this skill is to say a noun and see how many descriptive adjectives your student can attach to that noun. We are also exploring sentence structure, compound words, subjects and predicates, and more.

During social studies, students are researching Colorado life zones in small groups. They will soon select a specific life zone and an animal for their Life Zone Project. More information about this project will come home soon.

Third grade is looking forward to climbing Chief Mountain! In fact, students are climbing a mountain of independence and responsibility throughout third grade. Working together, parents and teachers are essential in supporting this journey for the children. We foster positive attitudes and perseverance as the students’ sense of independence grows.

Lastly, please be sure that your child gets a good night’s sleep and has a healthy breakfast each morning.  The Dining Hall is now offering chocolate milk for lunch every day, and desserts are available Tuesdays and Thursdays. The lunch menu can be found on the Graland website (click here) and we are asking each student take at least three different items, including a fruit or vegetable, for lunch each day.  Discussions at home about healthy choices is always helpful.

We are looking forward to a great year with your child!

Warmly,

The Third Grade Team

Sandy Erlach

Julie O’Connor

Dana Pease

Julie Stretz

Sheri Baker

Mary Helen Sheehan   

Upcoming Events/Reminders

• Back-to-School-Night: 6:30-8:00 PM September 13^th in Fries Theater
• Chief Mountain Hikes:
•  Thursday, 9/15 – Pease and O’Connor classes
• Friday, 9/16 – Streets and Erlach classes