Third Grade Thoughts
Welcome to Third Grade! We are off to a great start. Another summer has quickly passed, and another school year is upon us. We are looking forward to another exciting year.
Our first reading theme is "Back to School". We will focus on the following reading strategies: predict and infer, evaluate, question, monitor and clarify, and summarize. During these first couple of weeks, we will also be assessing the student's oral fluency, their word accuracy, and comprehension.
Personal reading is expected at school and encouraged at home. Studies have proven that a student's success in reading has a direct correlation to the amount of time spent reading as well as their success in school. Third graders should spend 20 to 30 minutes a day reading. Practice can only improve the student's oral reading and reading comprehension skills.
Spelling lists will come home Friday in the children's homework planners. A pretest is given on a Thursday and a post-test is given on a Wednesday of the following week. Students are given opportunities to practice their spelling words at school, but it will be very beneficial for the students to practice at home as well. This will help to develop responsibility and good study habits. Every sixth week, there will be a review / maintenance test. This test will include words from the previous five lists, but will NOT include any of the challenge words from those weeks.
Our first unit in math we will be working with place value and readiing and writing numbers through the hundred thousands. We will be writing numbers in standard form, expanded form, word form, and shortened word form. We will also be solving story problems by finding number patterns.
The new Social Studies curriculum is a hands-on program which focuses on exploring people and places everywhere. Our units of study will include geography, government, patriotism, economics, agriculture, and the study of Lincoln. The companion country that our third graders will study about is Japan.
Our science units will include the study of dinosaurs, energy, simple machines, and embryology. We will start off the year studying about dinosaurs.
Our new health series is called "Health and Wellness". We will be studying the following units throughout the year. Mental and Emotional Health, Communicable and Chronic Diseases, Family and Social Health, and Consumer, Community, abnd Environmental Health.
The children will be encouraged to share current events with their classmates when they are chosen to be the "Dino-Star" of the Week. Please help your child to choose an article that is age appropriate to share with the class. Students will also be asked to tell about the article that they bring to share with their classmates. This is one way we learn about local, state, national, and world news items.
Please read our monthly family newsletters to find out what we've been doing as well as important events that will be taking place. We look forward to a very successful year.