Upcoming Week 5

Thanks to all who came in to help decorate Writers Notebooks! The kids are excited about the beautiful notebooks and we look forward to using the decorations as inspiration for our writing. Next week, once we had wrapped up our All About Me projects, we will begin our writing unit on Personal Narratives. This unit focuses on helping children write true stories from their lives with details and voice. Students will be challenged to write as storytellers, not just listing events. Dialogue and descriptive details will be added to our writing to help bring our stories to life. We will even look at how paragraphs can help us organize our details for our readers.

Today, your child is bringing home a Mid Chapter Checkpoint in their blue folder. This is a check in to help us gauge their progress in math. We will have our first Math test next Wednesday, October 10th. Please feel free to use the sheet to help review with your child. In class, we will continue to review estimation as we continue working on subtraction and reading word problems carefully. Here are some links to try if your child needs some extra practice:

• https://www.ixl.com/math/grade-3/rounding
• https://www.ixl.com/math/grade-3/subtract-numbers-up-to-three-digits
• https://www.ixl.com/math/grade-3/subtract-numbers-up-to-three-digits-word-problems

We have finished reading Tooter Pepperday and are now enjoying  its sequel, Blue Ribbon Blues. We are practicing comprehension strategies as we continue to think about how what we know about the character from the previous book can help us understand what is going on in the new book. 

Here's what else is happening next week: 

• On Wednesday, we will have our first visit to the Tiny Scientist. We had our first exciting Science lesson today and the children came up with some impressive observations as to why a Maglev train would rise, float and fall. 

Finally, thank you all for your support this week, with Curriculum Conferences, and our Writers Notebook launch. Have a wonderful weekend!