Thursday, September 3, 2015

Monthly Newsletter...

MATH
In math students are solving addition and subtraction problems with two and three-digit numbers. Students are finding combinations of numbers that add to 100, and working with coins and coin values. Their understanding of place value is developing as they add and subtract 10s to form three-digit numbers. In this unit students have learned to break three-digit numbers into hundreds, tens, and ones in different ways, and solve story problems involving missing addends.

LITERACY

Reading comprehension refers to the ability to acquire meaning from written text. When students enter third grade, they are no longer learning to read; they are now reading to learn. In order to allow for the utmost growth as "comprehenders" in third grade, our reading curriculum relies heavily on comprehension strategies instruction. That is, students are taught a variety of strategies to apply before reading, during reading, and after reading in order to make the most meaning from a text. (Block, Gambrell, & Pressley, 2002; Robinson, McKenna, & Wedman, 2004) In reading our first strategy has been activating our schema with building our knowledge through different types of connections and making sure that we are choosing books that are at their level. 

For Writer’s Workshop we have been focusing on Personal Narratives. Students are learning to take everyday events of their lives and stretch them out into a well-structured story. Students are learning that in order to do their very best to communicate these stories they need to create a plan, then apply that to their writing. 

SOCIAL STUDIES
For our social studies unit we started our learning with comparing communities from the past to the present. Students now have an understanding of what makes a community.  We will be exploring local history that will allow students to grasp how communities change overtime. Later in the month we will be going to the Plains Conservation Center and we will also be listening to a historian tell us about the “good old days”. 


DATES TO REMEMBER
September 7th: Labor Day-No School
September 14-16: CogAT Testing
September 21st: Castro, Schwartz and Russell’s Field Trip to the Plains Conservation Center
September 23rd: Shepperd and Merideth’s Field Trip to the Plains Conservation Center
September 29th: Parent Teacher Conferences
October 1st: Parent Teacher Conferences