Third Grades A Hoot!

Whats Happening In Our Class?

Hello everyone. Its hard
to believe that October is
over! I loved the Halloween
party and seeing everyone
in their costumes. We have
been working very hard in
class on listening and showing respect for one another. This goes back to the
Social Contract that the
students made the first
week of school. Three days
a week, Monday, Wednesday and Friday we hold our
morning meetings. Morning
meetings are led by our
Owl of the Week and we
discuss our social contract,
share good things, and answer an question of the day.
After that we get a new
vocabulary word and go
over our schedule.
In math we are finishing up
on Unit 2. This unit covers
fact extensions, solving
number stories for addition, subtraction and division as well as multi step
stories. You will see a practice test come home tomorrow. We will be starting
Unit 3 soon. Unit 3 will be
covering rule boxes, addition, subtraction, graphs,
multiplication and equiva-

lent names. I will have mad

minute packs for addition/subtraction practice
available at conferences.
If you would like your child
to have a multiplication
and/or division mad minute
pack, I will also have these
available. I have also given
everyone extra challenge
packs to work on when they
finish their journal work.
In addition, I have a fourth
grade math pack that is
available for parents. This
is a take home pack to complete at home for an extra
challenge. Many of these
concepts may be new and
will not be taught during
the school day. Please let
me know if you are interested in this.
Please go over your childs
homework with them and
have them correct any
errors. This will help to
reinforce concepts learned
in class. Thanks!
In social studies we are
learning about Michigans
geography. We are looking
at maps and discovering
that Michigan has a little
bit of everything in its
landforms! We have lakes,
rivers, bays, sand dunes,

Mrs. Bates
3rd Grade Class

mountains, hills, islands and

October, 2015
peninsulas! We will learn all mbates@rockfordschools.org
of our states symbols, natu- 863-6363 ext. 4707
ral characteristics as well as
looking at the human characteristics that Michigan has as
well.
If you ever need to
contact me with quesIn language arts we are work- tions, please dont
ing hard on our word jourhesitate to call or eneys. Word journeys is a pro- mail me. Together we
gram where students are
can make this a great
working on words and how
year for your child!
they sound, how many syllables they have, their vowel
patterns, their meaning, their
parts of speech and much
more. This is much more in
depth than just learning 20
words for a test. You can
help your child by making sure
that they complete their
word study homework, look it
over to make sure it is correct, and then sign their
homework. We are also working on monitoring our comprehension while we read. We do
this by showing our thinking
on sticky notes. When I confer with students I love to
hear what they are thinking!
We are also working on writing
our true stories or personal
narratives. In addition we
wrote a Halloween sense poem.