3rd Grade Sept. 1, 2011 Important Dates Parent Meeting Thursday, Sept. 1st from 6:30 - 7:00 Student paperwork Due - Sept 6th Labor Day Holiday - Sept. 5th Class Schedule 8:25 - 9:20 Literacy 9: :15 Fine Arts 10:20 -11:45 Literacy 11: :20 Lunch 12:20 - 2:00 Math 2:00 - 2:45 Science/Social Studies 2:45 - 3:00 Recess 3:00 - 3:20 Ready to go home Library - Thursday Computer Lab - Monday and Wednesday This Week’s Rebus: A rebus is a picture representation of a name, work or phrase. Each rebus portrays a common word or phrase. Can you guess it? Welcome to 3rd Grade! What a great start we’ve had so far. I’m looking forward to learning more about my new students and partnering with you to build your child’s knowledge and experiences. Science and Social Studies Notebooking New for 3rd graders is receiving number grades for their report cards this year. You will not see many Science and Social Studies papers coming home because we use notebooking as a learning tool. There are 5 Good Reasons for using notebooks: 1)To encourage students to use writing for thinking and become active in their learning. 2) To document students’ thinking and show them that information can be communicated in different ways (graphs, charts, tables). 3) Notebooks offer numberous opportunities to develop communication skills, written, visual and oral.4) Provides a structure and support for all students to achieve. 5) Fosters coordinated efforts and shows them that information can be gathered and organized in more than one way. These notebooks will not be coming home but you are welcome to come view them at any time.

This week’s very important Vocabulary: Responsibility Scientist Bar Graph Operation Even numbers Odd numbers Number Sentence (Equation) And (Number Strand) We have many 3rd grade challenges. As you will soon see 3rd grade is a huge change from the first years of school. Most important for me this year is to develop your child’s reading skills and their love for reading. One of those important components is vocabulary. With your help we can develop your child’s vocabulary together. Each week I will provide just a couple of the new vocabulary words we have been discussing in class. Please talk with your child about these vocabulary words and use them in your conversations together. SODA TABS This will be the 3rd year that my class has collected can tabs for the Ronald McDonald House of Ft Worth. Last year we collected with Mrs. White’s 2nd grade class and together gathered Over 48,000 tabs. So please start saving those tabs. SCIENTISTS This week we spent quite a bit of time talking about scientists. What a scientist does, wears, tools they use and where you might find a scientist. PBSKIDS.ORG has some great information about scientists. HOMEWORK: Your child has already received their first reading assignment. They are expected to read 20 minutes each night and write about it. With their reading log, I sent home a very interesting bit of information about our children’s reading development.