Newsletter Week of September 18th

Week of September 18, 2017

Hello 3AH parents, here is this week's newsletter. It was wonderful getting back into a full week of learning. Thanks to Zara’s dad and Ms. Joan’s son for being great guest speakers about landforms. The day on Friday was fun and educational. The students loved cooking, watching the dancers, and eating new food. Please check your class blog for pictures. It is helpful if you review with your child their ASA each morning as we get used to these new routines.

We begin this week on Day 3.

Parent Teacher Conferences in the ES are October 9 and 10. Your third grader will attend this conference with you. Please let us know if you prefer one day over the other and we will do our best to accommodate you.

Reading In reading this week we continue to work on using contextual clues to read through difficult words. We look at the clues authors may include, such as using synonyms, antonyms, or explanations and how we can determine the gist of the word meaning. Students are encouraged to take note of new words or new meanings for familiar words and start using these words orally and in writing. We are also looking at figurative language, such as “crying over spilled milk”.  You can help by talking about such phrases in your home language.

Writing The students begin a new writing piece with more independence. This allows us to review the many tools they have to help, such as the narrative writing checklist and anchor charts made in class. Revision continues throughout with another look at “showing, not telling” as a way to be more descriptive in writing. We also look at irregular past tense verbs.

Math We will be looking at liquid volume and weight as we finish up this math unit. Elapsed time is still difficult for some students, so look for opportunities to practice this at home (“If we need to be at soccer at 10:00 and it takes 17 minutes to drive there, what time should we leave home?”).

Social Studies This week we begin looking at the specific uses of different kinds of maps (focusing on landform, resource, climate, and population). We are looking at how the place influences the people and their lifestyle.

Have a great week ahead and remember that Friday there is no school due to another holiday, Awal Muharram. By the way, did you know you can translate Google docs into the language that you read best (not perfect, but…)? Go to tools and then to “translate document”. You could have this whole blog post in your home language! If it doesn’t work within the blog, copy and paste the text into a Google doc and then go to tools.

Week of September 18, 2017

Choose 2 to complete and return on Thursday.

Math: Use dice or cards to make up 5 different 4-digit numbers. Put them in order from least to greatest.	Language arts: Plan a book talk for a book you have read this week. If you want, you can create a video.	Language arts: Free choice writing.
Math: Practice math facts.	Social Studies: Draw a resource map of an imaginary land.	Other: Teach something you have learned at school this week to an adult.

Remember: Reading is just what we do. It is expected each night.