Welcome to 2019!

Dear Families,

Happy New Year!  I love the first couple of weeks back to school after break. The kids understand our classroom routines, are excited to see everyone,  and they come back ready to go! We will do big things in the next 6 months!  :-) 

Congratulations, again, to our 2019 Spelling Bee contestants.  Maya, Elana, Evan, Kaltan, Hannah, Kara, Ada, Annelise and Ashlyn practiced at home and participated in this year's "bee".  Annelise and Kara earned second and third place medals for all of third grade!  Way to go!

We started learning cursive letters!  My goal is for the kids to be able to read cursive and practice fine motor skills. They will learn to sign their name in cursive too!  I do not expect them to write papers in cursive.  There is a lot to learn before anyone is ready for that!  :-)

Curriculum Update:
Math: We completed Unit 4 which covered area and perimeter of rectangles and measuring. Unit 5 begins this week with fractions.  
SS: We have been learning about economics: goods, services, opportunity cost, human - natural - capital resources and more.  They will be designing a business this week and writing a commercial to advertise their products. 
Reading: We are studying informational text for the next few weeks.  Text features, main idea and details and summarizing are big work!  We will continue to practice learning those skills in addition to reading various non fiction text structures. 
Writing: We are writing persuasive opinion essays.  They include an introduction, 3 supporting paragraphs and a conclusion!  

I Ready - The students will be taking round 2 of the iready test in Reading and Math.  They will take the math portion this week and the Reading portion next week.  There is no studying that can be done for this test.  Kids are encourage to take their time and do their best, as they would on any assessment.  :-)  

The kids did GREAT on their first week of homework assignments!  The pictures are taken while they played the multiplication games created by students for an assignment.  :-) 

Have a wonderful week!