Third Grade
Wickham Elementary
March 2017
Dear Parent(s):
It is hard to believe that spring is just around the corner, bringing with it "spring fever".
However, the children continue to be productive learners, working on new skills and
units. The children did a wonderful job accomplishing their goals for the Optimist Good
Reader Program. We will be having our awards presentation soon; so look for cards,
ribbons, and pins coming home.
Dr. Seuss’s Birthday/Read Across America
Read Across America Day is a celebration of literacy, sponsored by the National Education
Association (NEA) that takes place each year on March 2nd, the birthday of Theodor Geisel (Dr.
Seuss). Each classroom will be reading five Dr. Suess books this week. Each student will submit
a vote for their favorite of these five. On Friday, we will have a Drop Everything and Read time
as a whole school.
Spring Picture Day
Friday, March 3rd, will Spring Picture Day. Only students with picture order forms will have
their pictures taken on this day.
Subject Update:
Reader's Workshop:
We continue with small group reading instruction. All students are working in a
group, and groups have a consistent schedule each week. We begin the week with a
vocabulary reader. We use the reader to reinforce the vocabulary words from our whole
class main selection. The purpose of multiple exposures to these words is to increase
the chance that students will internalize them, and use them when they speak and
write. Students in each group will receive differentiated instruction and practice. The
strategy focus will be linked to the reading strategy used with the whole class story.
For example, if we are focusing on summarizing with our whole class story, small
group instruction will also focus on this strategy. During independent work time (when
other groups are meeting) students will reread passages to practice fluency, continue to
work with vocabulary activities, and complete activities related to our reading skills.
We have begun Theme 5, Going Places. The big idea for this theme is: There are many
reasons to take a journey. During each week of the theme, we will read two paired
readings as a whole class. The main selection features an excerpt from a larger piece of
authentic literature, along with a non-fiction selection that connects to another subject
area, such as science, social studies, poetry, etc. This format provides students with
direct instruction of reading strategies to improve their understanding of fiction and
non-fiction passages. The paired readings during this theme are: “Two Bad Ants” and
“Poems About Bugs“; “The Journey: Stories of Migration” and “The Grasshopper and
the Ant”; “The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman” and “Moving the U.S. Mail”; “Dog-ofthe-Sea-Waves” and “The Land Volcanoes Built”; “Mountains: Surviving on Mt.
Everest” and “The Big Cleanup”. Continue to look for the weekly reading letters for
information and suggestions for at-home activities related to each week’s topic,
vocabulary and skills.
The target skills and paired strategies for our Going Places theme are: Story Structure
and Monitor/Clarify; Compare and Contrast and Visualize; Sequence of Events and
Analyze/Evaluate; Author’s Purpose and Question; Text and Graphic Features and
Infer/Predict.
Each week, we also work with strategies geared toward helping students expand their
vocabulary. During this theme, we will practice using: Base Words & Prefix non-;
Prefixes in-, im-; Suffixes –er, -est; Words from Other Languages; Analogies. Each week
there will also be a focus on fluency and decoding strategies.
Throughout the theme, the students will also be reading their own just right books.
This time allows students extra independent practice with the skills we have been
working on in the classroom. Students should be reading at least 100 minutes weekly at
home, as well as a way to continue practicing reading strategies. If you have a few
minutes to interact with your child after they get done reading, it would be beneficial.
Spending time with your child and allowing him/her opportunities to discuss what
he/she has read is a helpful way to develop stronger comprehension skills.
Writer's Workshop:
Students have been working on a country research project. They each have chosen a
country and used AEA resources and books from the library in order to explore and
record information about it. A technology element will be implemented by creating a
Google slide presentation. When the students are finished, they will be able to access
their presentation in their school google drive account.
To aid in the continual improvement of our writing, we will be studying and practicing
the grammar skills of: Possessive Nouns and Possessive Pronouns; Using Proper
Nouns; Abbreviations; Adverbs; and Prepositions.
Spelling:
The focus for spelling is the rule of the week. Each list has a principle to be taught. All
of the spelling words for the week reflect this rule. It is important for the students to
learn this rule and apply it to the spelling of additional words throughout their school
day. If the rule has been taught, then student should be able to apply this rule in their
written work. Therefore the point is not to have difficult words to be learning for the
week, or even many unknown words, but to learn and apply the principle.
During our Going Places theme, we will learn to apply the following rules: Words with –
ed and –ing; Changing final y to i; Suffixes –ful, -ly, and –er; Prefixes re- and un-; and
Suffixes –less and –ness.
Math:
In March we will begin Topic 13, “Fraction Equivalence and Comparison”, where we will
continue to learn about fractions. Students will learn to find equivalent fractions, which
are fractions that name the same part of a whole and to compare and order fractions by
using models, number lines, and number sense.
Social Studies:
In March we will work on, Lesson 7, How Are We Alike Around the World?, it will help
students learn how their lives compare to the lives of children in other countries. We
will work in pairs to read about and study ‘artifacts’ belonging to six children from
communities around the world. Students will note similarities and differences between
their lives and those of the other children.
During Lesson 8, How Does Our Economy Work?, students will learn about supply and
demand and how it relates to their lives. They will discover what happens to prices
when demand exceeds supply and when supply exceeds demand. Finally, they will
predict what will happen to prices as they consider hypothetical situations that affect
supply or demand.
HAVE A MARVELOUS MARCH!
Stacy Gray
Jessica Gardner
Colleen Krei