We have found that there are a lot of important "3's" in third grade.  The three branches of government and the three parts of the water cycle will be lessons in the future.  But for now, we are learning about the three types of writing;  narrative, informational and opinion writing and how to skip count by three to help with our multiplication facts.  
Ask your child to sing the three's to the tune of Jingle Bells.  Also, ask them about the differences between narrative and informational writing.  

I'm often asked,  "What should we be working on at home?"  I will always always always suggest reading at home.  It doesn't matter at what level your child reads, reading at home will help all children; out loud, to themselves, with a family member, to the dog, in the kitchen, in a boat, with a goat, YOU GET THE PICTURE....also any kind of text; grandma's recipes, mom's " how to build a doghouse" book, Sunday school lessons, Greatest Basketball Moments book, anything.

The next suggestion for something to do at home is count money, real money.  When grandpa is emptying his pocket change, when mom is counting out lunch money, when getting money for the concession stand at the ball game, any time is a good time to count money.  It helps with the obvious lessons on money but also with skip counting (multiplication) and you can even squeeze in a lesson or two about responsibility.  Our next math unit will focus on two digit addition and subtraction and counting money.

Speaking of money...Don't forget our Willard East "Write a check campaign".  Click here for more details.

FYI: Field Trip to the Frontier Theater will be 10/18/12!
 (permission slip will be coming home soon)

We were introduced to blogging by Principal Miller this week.  She grabbed our attention with the concept of each child having their own blog site. Students then created their own "paper blog" to practice before starting the REAL deal. This safe educational site will be used to respond to reading, create poetry, write stories and more.  All blog posts and comments will come to me for approval before being added to the site.  You have already received a list of usernames and passwords for all the educational sites we will use this year.
Ask your child about their social studies pop-up book assignment.  Students that did not return their choices were assigned Willard East as their topic.  Miss Betty, in the office, is an excellent source of W.E. information.  Research is the only part of this project that needs to be completed at home.  We will use this research to create the pop-up book and write the report in class.  The completed projects will be displayed in the 3rd grade hall at Willard East. Click here for another copy of the "research worksheet".

Math "rounding" part two!  Our second strategy for rounding is looking at the number next door.  If rounding to the tens place, look at the number in the ones place.  If this number is 5 or higher, then round up to the next 10.  If the number next door is 4 or lower, then round down to the next 10. I was very impressed with how quickly our class took the two rounding strategies and used them to demonstrate their rounding abilities.  Try it out.  Ask them to round some numbers.  :)  
You are receiving this new blog post earlier than usual.  I will be out of the classroom on Friday and Monday.  We have two fantastic substitutes to step in.  Miss Bartels and Mr. Greenhaw will follow the lessons that I've left for the class.  Some of you have been so sweet to ask or send a note about my absences.  Typically, I never miss a day of school due to my own personal business.  Unfortunately this year I have had some unexpected medical issues.  I am fine and this will soon be behind me but when you add these absences to one day with a very sick toddler and two district meetings, it means SEVERAL days out of the classroom.  Thank you again for your concern and I look forward to many more days in the classroom with your wonderful children!

A few important papers are coming home today.  A "Weekly At-Home Reading" paper comes home every Monday, so I hope you are expecting that. Students have all week to finish this and return it to school.  If it isn't signed, I send it back home with them to be signed.  Also week #4 spelling list is coming home today.  Students have all week to practice for the Friday spelling test.  
Willard East Blogging Rules is another important paper in your child's binder tonight.  This covers the important rules that Principal Miller discussed with the class this morning about their own kidblog accounts.  Please read and discuss this paper with your child and send back to school as soon as possible.
Lastly,  you will find a paper about our current social studies theme project.  This project will be completed in class but some preliminary work needs to be done at home.  This paper will give you the information and asks you to make some choices.  
We are working at being responsible third grade students and part of that is remembering to bring our papers home and return papers to school in a timely manner.  But just in case someone forgot.....
links to all the above mentioned papers can be found below.
Weekly at home reading (front)
Weekly at home reading (back)
Week #4 spelling list
Willard East blogging rules
Third grade social studies project
Thank you for all you do.  You are your child's first and BEST teacher!

What a silly title. Every week is a busy week in third grade.  Ask your child about...rounding in math, "capture 5" game in math, reading stamina, writing stamina, long vowel sounds, weekly reader, using the language book, what makes a sentence, using grid maps, and so much more.

Rounding to the nearest tens:  This is often one of the most difficult concepts for third grade students in math.  We tackled one strategy for solving rounding problems on Friday and we will learn another on Monday. Please click on the link below for a quick tutorial highlighting  the basics of our first strategy.
Rounding Tutorial

Here are a few links to some rounding games as well
http://www.softschools.com/math/rounding/game/
 http://www.ehow.com/list_5903568_math-rounding-games-3rd-graders.html 

We also received our first Weekly Reader/Scholastic News paper this week.  It had a feature article about the Presidential election.  We discussed that people and families often have very strong opinions about who should be elected President and that it is great to have these discussions at home.  While at school we can still have our own opinions or that of our families.  But, we will always be very respectful of all the candidates and keep negative opinions to ourselves.  Thank you for helping to reinforce this at home.