The Ritenour Review
2016 - 2017 Third Grade Weekly News
The Prep Steps
We are now into our testing window and we have started talking about ISTEP and IREAD. My main goal is to ensure the kids are prepared academically and emotionally for the tests they will face this year. We are looking at test formats, question styles and more! Mostly, we are focused on showing our talents, staying calm and rocking the test!
Last Week
- Reading: This week, we hit the ground running with out book clubs. The kids LOVE their groups! Each group is in a reading club and they are working together to read the books and have meaningful conversations. We are still working our way through Wonder and we are using this as our inspiration.
- Writing: Last week in writing, we are starting to find the meat to our literary essays. Each child has picked a short story and they are now find the "true meaning" behind the story and writing those thoughts down. This is still a tough concept for most, so we are taking this unit at a slower pace than usual.
- Math: Unit 6 is up and running! We are focusing on all of the operations and not getting tunnel vision on just the ones in our current unit. This is helping the kids to look outside the box and think about math differently.
- Spelling: We are still working on homophones. This week we finished our long /e/ sort!
- Social Studies: We kicked off our Economics unit! We have briefly talked about goods vs services.
Next Week
Language Arts: We are still looking at ISTEP prep questions for grammar and writing topics.
Math: Still in Unit 6, this is a great unit to revisit several topics touched earlier this year. We will hit geometry and subtraction methods this week.
Word Study: We will work on long /i/ and /o/ homophones.
Social Studies: Economics!
Valentine's Day
Your child brought home a pink paper for our newest project. For valentine's Day, we would like them to create their own box/container at home - using their animal from last quarter. This is a project that is very exciting, but do not feel you need to spend a lot on this project. We talked about creative ways to decorate with the things we already own at home. These boxes should be brought to school on Monday, February 13th.
We will have a celebration on the 14th and will explore everyone's boxes and enjoy the treats from each other. We will not have a bigger party - like Winter or Fall break - however, feel free to join us if you would like. I will send out a Sign Up Genius if anyone would like to send in treats or snacks.
Special's Schedule
- Monday: Art
- Tuesday: Wellness **bring/wear tennis shoes
- Wednesday: STEM
- Thursday: Music
- Friday: Library
Upcoming Dates!
- February 25th - Boone Meadow Blast - free event hosted by PTO
- February 28th: First day of ISTEP Part 1
- March 1: Second Day of ISTEP Part 1
- March 2: Last day of ISTEP Part 1