Welcome to Third Grade

Parent Night!

September 11, 2014

Organizational Books

Encourages communication between parents and teachers.

Helps your child stay organized and keep materials in one place.

Important information for students and parents.

Students are responsible for bringing these signed each day!

General Tips and Procedures

Late Arrivals and Early Pick-Ups: Students are missing critical instruction and practice for reading and math. School begins at 8:55 and ends at 3:20. Instruction begins promptly and continues until the day is over.

Excused Absences MUST have a note following the absence. If your child is absent…please send a note explaining WHY they were out. Principal approval will be needed for extended day absences.

General Tips and Procedures Our school is collecting Box Tops, Coke

tops, and Campbell’s Soup labels.

No toys should be brought to school.

Tennis shoes should be worn on days students go to PE. Students may bring sunscreen to put on before going to PE. Flip flops can be a hazard on the playground. Please do not send your child in flip flops or they may not be able to play.

Involving Your Child

Involve your child in your day to day activities, such as grocery

shopping, cooking, and gardening.

This will help your child to apply daily problem solving skills to real life. At the same time, it will help

to build independence.

Ask Questions

Ask your children questions to encourage them to build problem solving skills.

Encourage them to answer “How” and “Why?” questions.

Practice comparing two or more things.

Ask for your child’s opinion. Help them recognize when they are expressing opinions so that they begin to recognize what opinions are.

Help your child develop good answering skills. Avoiding answering questions with simple “yes” and “no” answers.

Questions for Inquiry…

Why do you think that happened?

What caused it to happen?

How could it happen again?

Can you explain that?

What are you thinking about?

What does that remind you of?

Can you find evidence in the text?

You can check your child’s grades!

You can check your child’s grades on FOCUS.

FOCUS can be accessed through the district website.

Reading

Reading is the focus of the majority of our day because it is the foundation for all academic learning.

Reading is taught across curriculum, including Science, Social Studies, Writing and even Math.

Reading- How to help! Monitor your child’s progress on meeting their

AR Goals each nine weeks and provide time for reading AR books at home.

Websites to Check:

www.wakullaschooldistrict.org

Useful Links for textbooks and AR, FOCUS

www.ixl.com/signin/wakulla

IXL has a language component

Writing/Language Strengthen writing skills in areas of

organization focus details

Learn new techniques such as similes dialogue onomatopoeias

Practice skills used to pre-write, edit and finalize writing. All writing is now text based. Types of Writing

Informative (Research based) Explains or tells something to the reader

Narrative Tells a story

Opinion Students must support opinion with evidence

from text.

Spelling Dictation

Students will be given weekly dictation sentences. These sentences will include their spelling words and will count as a language grade. Sentence dictation will be graded with a rubric, emphasizing conventions, spelling words and accuracy.

Handwriting

Legibility is important in student writing. Please help your child to practice his or her manuscript writing at home.

Students will be learning cursive writing this year. Please encourage students to practice only letters learned.

Writing/Language- How to help!

Keep a traveling notebook/journal.

Creating lists of details about places they visit encourages them to think on their own.

Focus on basic capitalization

and punctuation when writing.

English Language Arts Grading

English Language Arts

50% Reading

30% Writing

10% Language

10% Spelling

Math Your child will be introduced to

multiplication and division concepts.

Strengthen and/or continue development of skills in fractions, adding, subtraction, graphs, geometry and measurement.

Focus on using skills to solve real world problems.

Students will be learning a variety of strategies to solve problems.

Math- How to help! MEMORIZATION of basic addition,

subtraction and multiplication facts.

Use academic vocabulary: sum, difference, product, quotient,

etc.

IXL practice @ www.ixl.com/signin/wakulla

*Please limit practice to skills we have already discussed.

Florida Studies Weekly

Our Social Studies curriculum is called Florida Studies Weekly and comes in newspaper format.

Students will learn map skills, government, economics, history, civics and geography.

Curriculum-Science

Life Science

Plants and animals in

their environments.

Physical Science

Matter

Energy

Earth Science

Sun and Stars

Seasons

Inner Planets

Word Walls

Posting New Words to Enrich Vocabulary and Enhance Comprehension of Concepts

Formal Assessments DEA- This is a computerized assessment that

measures reading, writing, language, listening, speaking, and math skills. It will be administered 4 times throughout the school year.

WriteScore- This is a computerized writing assessment and will be administered 3 times this year.

AIR- This is a new assessment used to measure your child’s reading and math knowledge.

We are looking forward to an

A+ Successful Year!

Mrs. Allen Mrs. Bartnick Mrs. Bowen Ms. Gallamore Mrs. Hobbs Mrs. Whitfield