Important Dates . . .
Thursday, November 11th -- No School - Veterans Day
Friday, November 12 -- End of Trimester
-- 3rd Grade Downers Grove Field Trip
Tuesday, November 23 -- Report Cards
-- Picture Retake Day
November 24, 25, 26 -- Thanksgiving Holiday -- No Schoool
IMPORTANT NOTE:
Tuesday, November 23, 2010 will be picture retake day. Any student that did not have their picture taken prior to this date may do so. They will be required to have a picture envelope with money to have a picture taken. Any student wishing to have a picture retaken will have to return the original picture packet for a retake.
Language Arts
We are beginning on to a new unit this week on Capitalization.
Reading
This week we will begin a new comprehension program called Soar to Success. We will read a new story each week and focus on comprehension skills in small groups.
We will continue working on phonics, decoding, encoding, and comprehension throughout the week through direct instruction, Lexia, and hands on materials.
Please keep reading 20 minutes a night for the Independent Reading Program! You may just note the time read in increments of 20 minutes in the pages read section. Please sign on the date the reading was accomplished. This red folder should be turned in every Friday to make sure they are staying on track. The Independent Reading Folder should be turned in for a grade at the end of the month. Keep reading!
Spelling
This week we will begin working through a list of the top 100 words. These l00 words as listed in the "A.B.C. Language Arts Bulletin" Educational Research Service, American Book Co., account for 65% of all running words in the writing of adults. We will continue to work through the list of these words for the next few weeks. Reading and spelling skills will be built at the same time through this list.
Practice pages will be assigned for the upcoming week's list on Friday to give additional study time. Over the weekend would be a good time to discuss the meaning of the words. Although we work on meaning typically on Fridays and Mondays, help from home is greatly encouraged! They will be receiving them daily as an assignment. A test over the lesson will be given this Friday.
Please try to help your child study if you see they are not performing as well as you'd expect on the weekly test. One strategy you can use to help is: Fancy Letters - Use old magazines, catalogs, or newspapers to cut out letters and glue them down to spell your words!
Social Studies
We will review the first few lessons in Unit 4 this week. Also, we will connect our study with information on Downers Grove.
Students are to research a current news event or report. The 5Ws are found in most news stories. Often, the five Ws are introduced in a story's opening paragraph. First of all find a news story that interests your child. They should either find it on the internet and print it out or cut out from a newspaper to bring into school at the beginning of the week. They will be asked to discuss this current event with fellow students throughout the week. In order to do this it would be good to ask your child to talk about the who, where, when, what, and why of the story. Circle, underline, or highlight the areas of the story that tell each of the five Ws. At school each student will be asked to report to the class the who, where, when, what, and why of the story.
(Online resource suggestions: Time For Kids, Learning With Newsweek, Weekly Reader Feature Zone, & National Geographic Kids )
Math
We will be wrapping up the chapter on basic addition. The children have enjoyed working through this chapter, especially when they are able to have hands on materials with problem solving!
Daily Homework
Reading - 20 minutes and complete Independent Reading Folder Log
- weekly turn in on Friday
- practice reading poems given to work on fluency
Spelling - Practice Page nightly to be turned in & study words for test
Social Studies - current event newsclip
*Please check your child's homework and sign assignment notebook when complete.
**If your child is having difficulties with their homework please send a note and I will help them during free time.
