The Ritenour Review
2015 - 2016 Third Grade Weekly News
Websites to Use at Home
Math Sites:
- khanacademy.org
- xtramath.org
Five minutes each night or morning - that's it! Super quick!
Xtramath.org
Login Info: critenour@zcs.k12.in.us
Student name and code
- Scootpad: go to zcs.k12.in.us -> login using username: first-last and password is lunch code -> click on scootpad icon
- office.com: We have used Word so far.
- Newela: Current Event Reading
**We will add to this list in the coming weeks.
Welcome to 2019!
I hope you all enjoyed your two weeks with your families. Two weeks off is a great time for kids to recharge and be kids for a bit. I look forward to seeing each of their smiling faces tomorrow and hearing about all of the adventures.
Genius Hour:
We will hit the ground running this week. Several of third grade classes felt the need to extend our Genius Hour project into the first week after break. We will work hard on our final essays and our final projects. Two weeks away will give a bit of a challenge, but they were taking wonderful notes prior to break, so hopefully a quick skim of their notes and they will all be right back to their genius status.
NWEA:
We will have our Winter NWEA this week. Our class will aim for testing Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday right after specials in the morning. We will be looking at a testing block from 9:00a - 10:30am. If you already have appointments or such scheduled, we can easily test during another time. We are flexible with this test session.
Word Study:
I will take our first week back to re-assess everyone's spelling skills. It takes about a week to finalize those assessments, so we will not be having a weekly sort this week. Look for that starting again next week.
Mentor Sentences:
We will get back into our grammar routine and will have a weekly sentence. This week's book will be Trouble with Trolls and we will focus on quotations and adverbs.
Math:
We will kick off our fraction unit. As always, building a sense of multiplication fluency will benefit all areas of math - especially fractions. We will initially build our understanding of fractions with hands-on manipulatives and will build into seeing standard forms and understanding the concept. I emphasize number sense greatly with each new concept and fraction is not different. We need to visualize the concept first. The fluency and level of difficulty will improve with a better foundation.
Science:
We will pack up our sound kit this week. Mr. Doublestein will continue the conversation with the physics of sound in their weekly music class. The recorder is a great instrument to address several concepts learned in the classroom. In the next week or so, we will welcome our newest science kit. The next two months will be focusing on Motion and Matter. As a culminating activity, we will hold our annual Rube Goldberg Extravaganza! It is one of my favorite projects in third grade. In the next month, you will receive more information on the fun project! Great news, too. It will all be built at school :)
New Faces
As many have heard, our third grade partner, Mr. Potaczek, left before break for a new adventure in teaching at the collegiate level. Our third grade team is excited for his new adventure and even more excited to welcome our newest teammate, Miss Casselman. Miss Casselman is such a bright light being added to our team and I know our third grade friends will enjoy having her on our team.
Another sad departure from our school was our beloved librarian, Ms. Leeds. Ms. Leeds was loved by all and was a vital person in keeping our school running smoothly and allowing us to get books into each and every kids hands. She will be sorely missed; however, I am happy to see her newest adventure.
Beginning tomorrow, Ms. Trostle will be our new librarian/media specialist. I know all of our kids will be excited to meet her and she is excited, too. Due to the mid-year change and entire library system to learn, we will have an altered library schedule for the next few weeks. The first week back will look normal for our class; however, the following week will be without library. I will encourage everyone to find three books in the library to help last through our missed week of a library visit.
Please, feel free to welcome both our newest teammates. We are the lucky ones gaining such wonderful new educators. I know you will all love them as much as we do!
Upcoming Dates
- January 7th - Students return to school
- January 8th - 10th: Our class' NWEA testing
- January 23rd - Family STEM Night "Cardboard Challenge" 6:00-7:30