October Newsletter

We had a very busy September, getting to know one another and learning the new routines and expectations of third grade. We literally climbed a mountain! Our trip to Chief Mountain was a great success. Thank you for helping your child to be organized and ready to go. Now, let’s take a peek at the month of October.

October is a busy month for third graders. Learning about jury trials, children making a difference, and bridge building figure into our literature study these weeks. We have begun small reading groups to read and discuss the text and practice comprehension skills. Students are working on understanding characters, compound words, inferring, predicting, and analyzing of text. We are continuing vowel patterns in our phonics instruction to assist students in decoding words. They continue to work on fluency, accuracy, and expression in their reading. Cursive and weekly spelling assessments have begun and homework is growing. Please remember that third grade homework is designed to be completed over the course of the week and not in one night. If you have questions about homework, please share them with your child’s teacher. Be thinking about what other questions you might have for your conference on Oct. 13 or 14.

When you head to the store, check out your third grader’s estimating skills. Have them try mental math addition and subtraction problems, and ask them to explain the rounding and estimation process they’ve been working on. When they do math assignments, check-in with them to discuss “reasonableness.” Please help your student manage their math fact study time. Our next math chapters will deal with addition and subtraction up to 10,000.

Technology and the Colorado Life Zone Project have been well integrated with the writing process these past few weeks. Taking dash notes from on-line and book sources, and then turning these notes into well-developed paragraphs about life zones and animals, were classroom activities for all third graders. Creating a bibliography and working with a life zone team to design Google Slides have been creative learning experiences. Dioramas are due to class on Tuesday, October 25 and presentations will follow.

Third graders will meet their buddies for the second time and participate as partners in Field Day. After this, the next Buddy Activity will take place during the Halloween Parade, scheduled for 2:30 on October 31.

How you can help at home. . .

*Help your child find a productive time and space to do homework.

*Ask if they are organized for the next day.

*Read with your child each day.

*Help them study spelling words.

*Ask your child to tell you 3 great things that happened today!

Thanks to the teamwork between home and school our year of learning is right on track!

Sincerely,

The Third Grade Team

Upcoming Events/Reminders:

October 10: Class Pictures and Retakes

October 13-14: Parent/Teacher Conferences

October 17: Fall Break (No School)

October 18: Professional Development Day (No School)

October 21: Birch Street Bash

October 31: Halloween