Open House

Please remember that Open House is Thursday, September 24, 2015. Please come to the classroom to listen to a short presentation on the third grade curriculum and our classroom procedures. Also, feel free to bring any questions you may have about our year so far. I look forward to seeing you!

New School Year

The new school year is off to an exciting and fast start. We have established our classroom rules and routines for the past two weeks, as well as spent a lot of time building our classroom community. We've shared our hopes and dreams for a successful school year. Please ask your son/daughter to share his/her hope and dream for the year with you.

Last week, was our first week with math homework. This week we will begin the routine of having both math and spelling homework nightly. This homework is designed to help reinforce the information learned during the school day. If your son/daughter is having a difficult time answering some of the questions, please feel free to send in a note to let me know this. By doing this, I can reteach lessons and/or key information that is not being understood. Also, please make sure that your son/daughter is reading nightly.

Friday was the first day that learning wheel journals went home. Please make sure to look in your son/daughter's backpack every Friday to see a small piece of what we've been working on during the week. Please don't forget to respond. Students love reading what you have to say.

We appreciate all of your support. Feel free to contact me at any time with questions and/or concerns: sdagostino@sau16.org or 775-8880.

This week we've been working with fractions. We've been learning about fractions as equal parts of a whole, how to put fractions on a number line, and equivalent fractions. One way to get some more information about these concepts, is through Khan Academy. This website offers free tutorials on fraction concepts and many other third grade skills. Look for the information about how to log in to Khan Academy with your student in his/her homework folder.

We also had a wonderful visit from author Cynthia Lord. As a class, we've read her book Rules and as part of the one book one school program at LSS we've read Half a Chance. Ask your student about these books and her visit.

Our multiplication ice cream scoop competition has begun! Please help your student master his/her multiplication facts for this competition. Students are asked to master all of their multiplication facts before the end of third quarter in order to earn their ice cream celebration. Students are asked to master x0, x1, x10, x11, x2, and x5 facts first. Students will move onto x9, x3, and x4 facts next. Students will finish up with x6, x7, x8, and x12 facts.

Happy New Year to everyone. Please remember the grades for quarter two close this Friday, with report cards coming out the following Friday.

This week we will focus our social studies learning of Black History on Martin Luther King Jr. We've been learning about the Civil Rights Movement and will continue to look at MLK Jr.'s impact on this movement.

Please remember to have students continue to practice their multiplication facts. At this point in the year, all third graders should have mastered x0, x1, x2, x10, x11, x5, and x3 facts. All of our math homework this week will focus on building our multiplication and division understanding.