September 19-23

Community Walk field trip is on Wednesday!  Make sure to get your child's permission slip signed and turned in by Wednesday morning. (They went home on Friday- if you did not recieve it or do not have one, just write a little note, and sign it, that gives your child permission to walk with us).

Reading
We will be starting Theme 3 this week titled "What is Light?".  During this theme we will be practicing the reading strategy of "making inferences". 

We will also continue to practice "asking questions".  We will begin to develop two types of questions this week, "on the surface" (the answers to these questions can be found directly in the test) and "under the surface" (the answers to these questions need to be thought about). 

Reading Logs will come home again tonight in Monday folders.  Send them back next Monday or Tuesday.  This is a school-wide reading program, so please make sure your child is reading regularly.

Spelling
Spelling this week will be the "long vowel" pattern, OR the prefix "poly-" which means many.

Math
We took our Topic 2 test on Friday and will re-test today. 
We are beginning Topic 3 this week and will cover the following lessons:
   * Adding with an expanded algorithm
   * Models for adding 3 digit numbers using place value blocks
   * Adding 3 digit numbers
Science
Our Solar Cookout was postponed until tomorrow!  There was NO sunshine on Friday, therefore we will cook our bagel pizzas and smores all day tomorrow.  The students will still be eating their normal lunch at school.  The cookout will count as their afternoon snack.  We will set out the cookers in the morning, check them periodically through the day to make sure the sun is hitting them correctly, and then eat our snack in the afternoon.

Social Studies
Learning about the community is an important part of the 3rd grade curriculum.  We would like to take the students on several walks throughout the year to help them learn about different parts of the community.  So, we will have our first walk on Wednesday to the local McDonalds.  We will be eating lunch at school and then leaving for our walk shortly afterwards.  Please send a small amount of money to school with your child that day if you would like for them to be able to buy a treat.

Writing
The class is just about finished publishing the stories that we have been working on.  The students will begin writing a technical piece later this week, that will show a sequence of events.