September 10-14

Hi Families,

The students did an awesome job last week as they completed their MAP tests!! I am so proud of the hard work that they put into them.  This was the first time these kiddos ever tested on computers for a long period of time over several days.  They did a great job concentrating, staying focused and trying their hardest on all three tests.  I will share and review their results with you at parent confences in a couple of weeks. 

Parent Conferences- Parent Conferences are a few weeks earlier this year, Sept. 26 and 27.  If you have not signed up for a conference yet, you will need to sign up for a conference time through our Prairie Ridge website.  Here is the link: http://www.usd232.org/education/components/form/default.php?sectiondetailid=33036&

Lap-A-Thon is this Friday.  Make sure your child wears tennis shoes.  The third grade will be walking/running from 10:50-11:30.  Feel free to join your child at this time if you would like to.

Book Orders-  I sent home a book order form in Monday folders last week.  I will be collecting orders until Wednesday.  I do not have an online code set up, so if you just fill out the form and send it back into school with a check made out to Scholastic Book Clubs, I will order them for you.

Reading- We will begin theme 2 today, Life in Many Places.  The reading strategy that we will practice for the next two weeks is 'Asking Questions'.  I will be completing benchmarking this week and will begin meeting with small reading groups next week.

Spelling- The spelling pattern this week are 'consonant blends'.  All of the words will contain one of these blends: cr-,dr-, gr-, pr-, and -st. The spelling test will be on Friday.

Math- We will take our first math test tomorrow on Topic 1, place value.  The students will have a review sheet for homework tonight.  On Wednesday, we will begin Topic 2.  This week the students will learn about the meaning of addition and subtraction, as well as, have the opportunity to practice using mental math to add numbers.

Writing-It took us a while to get our stories started, so this week we will be working very hard on drafting our stories and getting them ready to revise and edit.

Social Studies- We will continue learning about communities, specifically, the differences between the 3 types of communities- rural, suburuban and urban.

Science- Today we are making sun prints.  Later this week we will experiment with the temperatures between being in the sun and in the shade.  We will also determine the temperature differences between several earth materials, such as dirt and sand.

Have a great week!!