January 30 - February 3

Welcome to another gorgeous week of "winter" weather!!

We will be working VERY hard as we enter into the month of February. As you know the International Festival is February 23rd, so the students will continue getting ready for that big event. The Valentine's Party this year is actually on February 14th. We also, have student-led conferences coming up on the 15th and 16th. And, we will end the month with our Reading State Assessments. Phew!! There is a lot to do this month!!

Reading
We will continue with Theme 8. Our strategy focus is still determining important information. We will take a theme test on Friday.

We are still using our small group time to practice strategies to help them take their reading state assessments.

Spelling
Our Rigby pattern will focus on word endings: -s, -ed, and -ing.  Our words are smiling, radios, jumped, pages, buzzes, grabbed, pushing, roasted, keys, patches, exploring, addresses, fall, close & blue.
Our prefix pattern is: circ-, circum-, which means round or around.  Our words are circumnavigate, circumvent, circumrotate, circle, circulate, circumference, circuit, circumspect, circlet & circumflex.

Writing
Along with typing their reports, the students will learn how to write a bibliography for their reports.
In grammar, we will focus on singular and plural possessive nouns.

Math
Division!! The students are very excited to finally be learning about division. During Topic 7 the students will learn that divison is the operation used to find how many equal groups or how many are in each group.

Social Studies
Students will continue working on their cultural research report. Thank you for spending your time editing them this weekend. That will help our class time focus on typing the reports in a word document.

January 23-27

Hello!
I hope that you had a wonderful weekend. 

Later this week, I will be sending home a literacy playbook that should be played each night in review for the Kansas Reading State Assessment. This should be studied as part of homework each night and brought back to school each day to look over. Here are some links to the study guide and some prefix/suffix matching and quizzes that should be practiced at home as well.
prefix/suffix matching http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/match/dragflip.asp?filename=bleggett
prefix/suffix quiz http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/quiz/mquiz.asp?filename=bleggett
reading state assessment video game http://classtools.net/widgets/quiz_2/Meg49.htm

Math
We focused on analyzing data last week (mode, median, maximum, minimum, and range). This week we will work on probability. We will take a test on both concepts Friday, January 27th. I will be sending home a review packet on Thursday for them to study at home.

Rigby Reading
We will begin Theme 8, Week 1 in Rigby. We will focus on determining importance (we will identify the main idea and details) and review fix-up strategies.

Spelling
The word study focus this week is homophones. The Rigby words this week are better, clean, done, hair, hare, maul, mall, paws, pause, raise, rays, sea, see, principal, and principle.
The challenge list is with the prefix intra- (within, inside) intracellular, intradermal, intragalactic, intramural, intranasal, intraocular, intrapersonal, intrapsychic, intrastate, and intravenous.

Social Studies
We will continue our study of celebrations of cultures by looking at traditions, holidays, education, foods, sports, and languages. We finished our research last week and will begin our rough draft this week.  Students will be bringing their rough drafts home over the weekend to edit with you.  Next week we will start typing our final copy on the computers.  MOST of this project is done at school; however, there may be a time or two that your help is needed at home.  Thanks for supporting your child with this big project.  The kids are doing a great job thus far.  Our third grade International Festival will be on February 23.

Writing
We will begin our rough draft on our ancestor's culture and country from which they originated.

Have an awesome week with some nice weather! :)

January 9-13

Welcome to the New Year!!!

It was so great to get back into the swing of things last week after having such a nice holiday break. I loved having the kiddos back and I can tell they are all rested and ready to take on the 2nd half of 3rd grade.  We were all anxious to meet Trey last week.  Trey was just as excited to meet his new Kansas friends; however, he said he'd still like to have some snow! 

Grace Riley and Kaiden Cook will represent our class in the school spelling bee this Thursday at 2:00pm.  Good luck! 

State assessments will be here before we know it!  We will be spending a lot of time over the next 2 months preparing for them. This will be the very first time these students take a state assessment, therefore we will be working very hard in order to get the students ready to take them.

Reading Assessments will be given to the 3rd graders February 28-March 1.
Math Assessments will be given to the 3rd graders March 27-29.
Please try not to schedule appointments for these days.

Report cards will be coming home today. Please sign the cover sheet and return it to school with your child.
Also, Mrs. Ronchetti has a fun field trip planned to the symphony with the 3rd graders. Please sign the permission slip and return it to school with $2.

International Festival:
Today in Monday folders you will find a letter that will give you some information about the International Festival. The boys and girls will be in responsible for researching and learning about their own culture and/or heritage. This information will be presented at our International Festival which will be held on February 23.

Reading:
We will be starting Theme 7, On Moving Ground, this week. Students will learn and practice fix-up strategies while they read. Small Group focus for the next month will be on state assessment preparation, rather than novel and small-book work.

Spelling:
The pattern for the week will be: synonyms and antonyms. The prefix pattern for the week is "-dis", which means not or none.

Math:
This week we will learn about "Time."

Social Studies:
We will begin researching for our International Festival. The students will learn notetaking skills and will gather information about the culture they are studying on notecards.