Week of October 2, 2017

Good morning parents,

Our Wonder Wall has been a great place to record questions. In the coming weeks, we will move on to adding different prompts to encourage even more thinking. We have begun talking about the upcoming cardboard challenge (ask your child about Caine’s Arcade) which will lead us toward Genius Hour. We need your help! Please send in cardboard and other materials that students could use for building. We will need this by October 11.

With ISA testing behind us, we are getting ready for parent-teacher conferences. Remember that third-graders are expected to attend conferences along with their parent(s).

This week we begin on Day 6. Please make sure your child has a water bottle and hat each day.

Reading

This week we end our first reading unit. We will then move from fiction reading to information/nonfiction to focus on main ideas and text structures. This is perfect as we think about areas of interest, so students can build on their strengths.

Writing

We are also ending our personal narrative unit. At conferences next week you will see both the pre and post assessments for this unit, which will help with goal setting as we move forward. Many aspects of writing are transferrable across genres so this information will help us as we move on to informational writing. This is not a unit where the focus is on research, rather the students will use informational writing strategies as they compose texts about subjects they already know well.

Math

We have begun our second math unit and in the coming week will focus on rounding to the nearest ten. We will introduce multiple strategies including using a number line, using benchmark numbers, and finding halfway numbers. As always the parent learning connection has ideas for you in math and reading/writing here.

Social Studies

As we continue to look at different maps and what we can learn from them, students are creating their own maps (landform, resource, climate, and population are the focus). We have noticed that water is a key resource and larger populations are usually where there are bodies of water.

October 2, 2017- Choose 2 activities to complete before Friday to share in class.

Math: Show an adult how to round 23 56 78 to the nearest ten. Explain to the adult how you know.	Language arts: Write a letter to someone.	Language arts: Read a nonfiction book about one of your interests/passions.  Share something you learned.
Math: Write the following numbers in words (English and your home language if it is different), expanded form, and model it using base 10 blocks. 347 679 204	Social Studies: What has been your favorite part about our Mapping unit? What are 3 things that you learned?	Other: Put on a play for your family or practice keyboarding on Typing Web.

Remember: Reading is just what we do. It is expected each night.