Field Trip: Tuesday afternoon we will head downtown to visit our local community. If you are a parent volunteer, please be at the classroom by 12:35. We will return to school about 2:45. Students and adults need to wear comfortable walking shoes. Feel free to send a disposable water bottle with your child for the day. Please label with your child's name. The kiddos will not need a lunch for this trip as we will have normal lunch that day. If it is raining the trip will be cancelled and will not be made up.
MAP Testing: This week we will be administering the MAP (Measures of Academic Progress) assessment. This assessment is unique as it will start all students at the same level and will adjust according to their ability. If they get a question correct, the next question will be a little more difficult. If they miss a question, then they will get an easier question. This test will be able to help us as teachers really pinpoint areas where your child needs help or areas where they excel. It will help us to plan and see growth. The test will be given 3 times a year in the fall, winter, and spring. I am excited about this assessment as the data it will give will be reliable and useful for instruction. I will be sharing results from the testing during our conference time. The office sent home a more detailed explanation of the MAP Test on Friday.
Conference Schedule: Conference sign-ups went home on Friday. Please fill those out and return to school as soon as possible as time slots are filled on a first returned basis.
Math: This week we finished up our addition unit and tested on Thursday. Some of our class is still struggling with rounding and adding accurately. We will be addressing this in the first few days this week and students will get the opportunity to retest for their final grade.
I will send home both tests once we are finished. Please review rounding with your kiddos. This is a new concept in third grade and it can be tricky. Over the last several years I have noticed that all third graders struggle, but by the end of the year, they get it. So, if your child is still struggling, know that we will continue to work on the concept in small groups.
Our next chapter in math will be working on subtraction 3 & 4 digit numbers with regrouping. In this chapter we will work on using rounding to estimate differences, subtracting, finding the missing addend using fact families, and determining if an exact answer or an estimate is needed when working word problems.
Language Arts: Due to our testing and field trip this week, our teaching team has decided to not have a new reading story or spelling list this week. Our class will be focusing on our Tonganoxie brochure project that is tied into our community unit. Students have started research about our awesome community, it's history, current attractions, government entities, and quick facts. We will be creating a colored brochure highlighting the research that we are doing. I am hoping to have all the writing, editing, and publishing done by conference time so they can be displayed for all to see.
We have also been learning about sentences, identifying the subjects and predicates. This past week we learned about proper and common nouns and that nouns make the simple subject in a sentence. We will continue our work with grammar, looking at plural nouns and how to form those plurals.
Missing Assignments & End of quarter: We are quickly approaching the end of the quarter. You can always check your child's grades and assignment through Skyward. If your child has an asterisks for an assignment there are a couple of things you need to check...is the assignment being counted as a no count or is the assignment missing. If it is a no count, then your child does not need to make that assignment up. I give no count assignments when they have been pulled out maybe for speech, or another activity and the work does not need to be made up. If the assignment is missing, then they will need to get it turned in as missing assignments will become zeros as we near the end of the quarter. If your child is missing assignments, then I have or will be giving them extra copies and it is there responsibility to get it turned in as soon as possible.