3rd Grade Newsletter
Third Grade Newsletter
Volume 7, Number 24 sadkins@pennoyerschool.org May 1, 2009
Hello Parents! We are all sad to see Miss Wierzgac go, but we had a lovely farewell party for her yesterday. She came back this morning to join us for our group class picture, so that is nice that she will be included in that. She has been an important part of our school year! Thank you for sending in the money for her gift – several of you were very generous! We were able to get her a $100 VISA gift card to use at a teacher’s store, along with a bunch of “teacher items” in a nice teacher school bag. The kids also wrote her letters of advice and memories of our time together, which I then bound into a book. At our party yesterday we shared foods that reminded us of our time with Miss Wierzgac – pizza, popcorn, pudding, chips and salsa. Overall we had a terrific experience having Miss Wierzgac in our class, and we look forward to seeing her again for our big circus day as well as Field Day. We had a busy week, so here’s what’s been happening:
Reading ~ Our story this week was called A Castle on Viola Street, and it was a realistic fiction story. The connection that most of the kids had to this story is being able to relate to having hard working parents. It sounds like most of you are fortunate enough to own your own home, but you work hard for it, which was an important theme in this story. We can’t teach the importance of hard work too early for these kids! It was a nice community story that lent itself to terrific discussions. I’m glad to be back with these small groups as I had missed that intimate time we have together. The skills we focused on this week included descriptions, themes, and coming up with a title for a given passage.
Language Arts ~ Our grammar lesson this week was on adjectives, words that describe. We spent some time during our centers writing descriptions of pictures using as many adjectives as possible. They did pretty well with this, and they enjoyed the books I had displayed for them to describe. One of them, Sector 7, had no words in the book at all! There were just fabulous illustrations that the kids enjoyed interpreting. During our writing time, we have moved on to a new unit on fairy tales. This is a particularly fun unit, and I introduced fairy tales to the kids by acting out my own fairy tale for them called Moo Moo Cow. Ask your child if they can retell this story to you, or better yet, act it out for you themselves! Please look for your child’s narrative paper included in their Friday papers they took home today.
Math ~ We finished up chapter 10 on division yesterday, and the kids proclaimed that to be the easiest math test they have taken this year! I was delighted to see that they did indeed do very well on it, and it will be a nice boost for all of their math grades. Please look for this corrected test in your child’s Friday papers. Next week we will start on chapter 11, which is more or less a continuation of chapter 10 on division. This is all leading us up to chapter 22 which is on long division. There are still six children who need to pass their multiplication test. I have sent home a letter to those parents today, making them aware that there are only eight opportunities left in the school year to pass this test, and that I will be keeping their child in for recess to help them achieve this goal.
Science ~ We did not do a whole lot in science this week, due to Miss Wierzgac leaving. We spent Monday during this time writing out advice for her (it was hard to find time to do this when she wasn’t in the room with us!) and yesterday we watched a brief movie on forces. We did spend time during computer this week looking up bridges, and there is a really cool web site we visited that goes into how force works on bridges, and it shows all kind of examples of real life bridges. This web site is written at the top of the page the kids had to complete, and that has been sent home today.
Social Studies ~ This past week in social studies class, we learned that predictions may help people plan for the future. Students created a bar graph of some of the information they read about which included a chart form the lesson. We discussed the number of businesses, homes, people, and cars and how it will increase year by year. We also compared how people in different communities adapt to or modify the physical environment. We learned which community geographic locations affect the way people live and how such resources as minerals and fuels help people adapt to the environment. Last week we had celebrated Earth Day by going out and picking up all of the liter found on our playgrounds and the field area. Fortunately, Pioneer Press Newspaper wanted to write an article about the third graders honoring Earth Day. Please check out the upcoming issue.
Other Areas of Interest:
- Our new web site will be up and running as of Monday, May 4! I am so excited! I have spent much time on my web page in attempts to make it user friendly and helpful to you. Please see attached page for directions on how to access this information.
- We celebrated Jason’s 9th birthday this week! His real birthday was on Tuesday, and we were delighted to celebrate it with him. Happy birthday Jason!
- Today marks the mid term for the fourth quarter. I believe we have about six weeks of school left! I have sent home progress reports today for children who have a grade less than a C- or 73% in any subject. It is rewarding to see these progress reports grow fewer and fewer as the year progresses. Please look for this form, sign it, and return back to school as soon as possible.
That’s it for now! What a lovely weekend we are in for! We were fortunate enough to be able to take our class picture outside today, although we were a bit chilly at 9:00 in the morning! I wish you all a wonderful weekend, and remember to keep your child reading!
Mrs. Sarah Adkins
