9 11 09 Newsletter

HIGH POINTE ELEMENTARY SPELLING LIST •

city

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many

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countries

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exciting

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to

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began

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camping

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nail

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holiday

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thank

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crayon

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laugh

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address

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DATES TO REMEMBER Open House 9/14

Book Orders due 9/18/09 Spelling Pre-Test 9/14 Study! Spelling Test 9/18

9-24 Character Assembly @ 2:30

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A Look Back Whew! We flew through this short week! We accomplished a lot of things during these furiously fast four days. We are really starting to get into the swing of third grade routine and I am truly enjoying your children! I believe we’re doing a great job! During math this week we continued to work on addition and subtraction strategies. We also worked on strategies to solve multi-step word problems. We have been working on figuring out how many answers a problem with have and how to determine what type of problem we are trying to solve. We also played a couple of math games that test our deep-

thinking skills. Close to 100 gives us six cards and students have to determine which four can be made in to two, two-digit numbers to give a sum close to 100. It’s a tough, but fun game! We also played a money game that allowed us to brush up on money counting and identification skills. During reading, we read non-fiction books that connected with our previous science unit on plants. While reading these books, students gathered interesting and new facts. We made a twist on the tradition KWL chart and called it our Smart Chart. We listed how smart we are (we already knew this information), how smart we

A Peek to Next Week Next week marks the fourth week of our first quarter in third grade. Although we have been reviewing a lot of second grade curriculum, we have also worked in quite a bit of new material. We are to the point that I will be in-

troducing a lot of new material to students. I encourage each of you to look at your child’s assignment book with them each night and ask about assignments. It helps your child recall the information that they learned during the

want to be (what we want to know), and how much smarter we are (what we learned). Dr. Kopp had the opportunity to come in and observe our class during one reading class. He really enjoyed seeing the students partner read and how well they can summarize after each partner reads a bit. He also enjoyed knowing that they are reading to find information which is a huge skill in third grade! We also began the first part of a big social studies unit that focuses on communities and Missouri. This unit will take a few weeks to complete. Right now the students are focusing on the three types of communities and what we will find in each. We also completed our All About Me papers; come check those out in our hall at Open House.

day. I need to apologize for forgetting to sign the assignment books on Thursday. I had a meeting and completely let that task slip my mind. Hopefully, I won’t do that too often. During math we will introduce multiple types of graphs and many that show more than one type of data.

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Next Week Cont. To ensure that students understand graphing completely, they will be required to make a graph of multiple data to report. This is always a fun unit to complete! In reading we will be reading the adorable story Tops and Bottoms. This story goes well with our science unit on plants and animals. To compliment this story, we will begin working on a science

unit about how plants and animals help one another. This will lead us to our habitat writing assignment and habitat diorama project. More information will come home about this soon. During writing we will focus our attention on learning how to write a five paragraph paper. This should take a couple of weeks to complete. We will be focusing on the plants, ani-

mals, climate, and interesting facts of certain habitats. These are great papers and help the students become strong researchers. Don’t forget Open House Monday night from 6:30 – 7:30. You’ll see lots of great work.

Ask Me, I Know! 'Don't go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.' Ralph Waldo Emerson

What are the three types of communities? What can be found in each community?

What are some of the word problem strategies that you learned?

Was there once an ocean in Missouri? (Technically, it covered Missouri and many other states!) What is one interesting fact that you learned from the non-fiction plant book you read during reading time?

Classroom Notes I will have a sign-up sheet for parent-teacher conferences at Open House. Please don’t forget to sign up before you leave for the evening. If you are not going to be there, please contact me so we can set up a time. Our conferences are student led. This means

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that you will bring your child with you to watch them do work and conference with me at the same time. This is by no means another Open House. Open House is simply a show and tell; parent-teacher conferences are a time for you to watch your child actually

work and assess what I see in the classroom. You will also have a time during that night to come and speak with me about concerns and grades. Currently, I only have three parents who have let me know that they can help in some way with our Missouri project. We will be making these the week of 9/20. If you can help, please let me know soon. Thanks you for your support!