September 16th Update

Hope your week was as wonderful as ours in class! We continue to get to know Mr. Knight, to get more accustomed to reading & writing routines in Treasures, to get better acquainted with our kindergarten buddies in Mrs. Childress' class, and to get better focused on quality learning in the classroom. In language arts, we practiced our weekly spelling routine, learned new vocabulary words, started guided (small group) reading, wrote to a prompt and reviewed some grammar. In math, we continue to review concepts and skills in unit 1 of Everyday Math and practice telling time in partners. In social studies, we discussed the different types of communities (urban, suburban, rural) and new vocabulary (citizen, population, climate, compass rose, cardinal & intermediate directions). We also established our morning work routine of Morning Math Minutes & Revving Up with Reading, which reviews all of the reading comprehension skills. Starting this week, the kids started getting a sheet of language arts homework along with their math and reading. The language arts homework consists of activities in spelling, vocabulary, grammar & reading comprehension practice. It reinforces our language arts learning in class. As you can see, we've had a very full week of learning.

Here's what you can ask your third grader about this week:

* Fun Run Assembly (letters & pledge forms went home on Wednesday)
* Telephone game during morning meeting
* POD time - our current location on the "Read Across America Map" (We skipped an entire state!)
* "First Day Jitters" - our first story in Treasures
* "Give Me Normal" - poem read aloud
* "Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key" - our new chapter read aloud book
* Our vocabulary words for the week - chuckled, fumbled, nonsense, nervous, trudged
* Getting used to our spelling routine with pretest & practice activities in class
* Reading a "Time for Kids" article relating to poverty in Bangladesh
* Drawing a Compass Rose with Cardinal directions (N,E,S,W - Never Eat Soggy Waffles) & Intermediate directions (NE, SE, NW, SW)
* Making a bar graph in math
* Writing Equivalent Names for numbers in Name Collection Boxes - we shared our thinking with our classmates by going from desk to desk
* Reviewing money and coins, place value, time

Please remember that the best way to contact me is via email (vrajashekar@op97.org). Thank you for your support and partnership. Have a nice weekend!