Humility

Hello Third Grade Families,

We hope that your  kids enjoyed their first few days back at school and that your families had a lovely weekend. We are ready to hit the ground running this coming week with fun-filled academic lessons. In keeping with our school wide theme of unity and hope from last week's t-shirt white out, as well as, keeping in mind Fr. Dan's wonderful homily at our our back to school Mass, we want to continue to encourage our students to not leave anyone "outside".

In third grade, we foster the idea of being "humble" and showing humility. We all know at times that life can be somewhat of a competition, but the third grade students will continually work as a team to achieve their goals throughout the year.  It's our hope to assist the children in looking out for one another, to take care of one another, and to live out their "Kids for Others" motto.  In "Team 3", kindness counts!

Upcoming Events:

• Wednesday, August 27th - Back to School Night at 6:00 p.m.
• Monday, September 1st - No School, Labor Day Holiday!
• September 8th to September 12th - STAR Testing
• September 22nd to September 26th - ITBS Testing 

Please remember to save this link and to open it each week in order to be aware of what is occurring in both the third grade and in our school wide community.

English Language Arts (ELA)

We will be diving deeper into the third grader's required summer reading book, Charlotte's Web. We will look closely at the characters, story structure, different types of spiders, and end the week with a compare and contrast activity.

With this being our first full week of classes, we will be easing our students into how spelling is practiced, developed, and mastered in the third grade. Our list this week, will consist of words from our story, Charlotte's Web. Students will be given a spelling pre-test on Monday and they will be assessed on Friday. Throughout the week, students will work with these words to create flash cards, place them in alphabetical order, and will demonstrate how to utilize the words correctly in neatly completed sentences.

**Nightly Reading Homework**
This will be the first week for reading homework. On Monday, students will be given the directions and a reading log where their homework will be recorded nightly. Students are required to read 20-30 minutes a night. Once they have finished reading, they are to write a summary of what they read on their reading log. Students will be need to read Monday through Thursday and will turn in their completed reading log on Friday. Student reading logs will be recorded as a grade. So, with that said, it is imperative that your child completes their weekly reading logs. We have experienced in past years, that the students who read every night and log their work, show the most growth in their reading STAR scores at the end of the school year.

Math
The students will begin their Singapore Math lessons on data analysis.  This concept is the skill of correctly reading graphs, creating graphs, and understanding the different types of graphs.

Social Studies
The students will begin a unit on geography titled, Where in the World is Phoenix, Arizona? By the end of our first Social Studies unit of the year, the students will be able to:

• identify and locate the seven continents
• identify and locate the 4 main oceans

• identify different types of land forms

•  read maps and follow basic map directions

• create a map
• identify and understand the key components of a map
• have a better understanding of how large the world is and how we are one part of a very big world

Religion 

This week, we will begin our Discipline with a Purpose (DWP) skill lessons.
The skill that we will be focusing on this week is the skill of "Listening."

Please remember to check in each night with your student by looking at their agenda for daily assignments as well as behavior points. Please initial your child's agenda nightly, so that we know your child has checked in with you. This is the beginning process of your child being independent and responsible for their own learning and behavior.