1. W ELCOME TO 3 RD G RADE P ARENT N IGHT Mrs. Clifford Mrs. Prestel Mrs. Bass

2. We’d love to have your help this year. Please sign up in your child’s teacher’s classroom. You will need to fill out a volunteer form from the office. Honestly, we couldn’t do it without you! We’ll be contacting you soon. Thanks!

3. H OMEWORK A homework sheet will be sent home at the beginning of the month and it will be due back at the end of the month. On three day weeks, there will be no assigned homework beyond reading and math facts. Homework will focus on word study/spelling practice, reading (both fluency and comprehension), and additional math fluency and computation skills. The 3 rd grade teachers all like to include technology as much as possible. The integration of keyboarding skills at home could also be beneficial for your child. In addition to the monthly homework sheet, your child may occasionally receive a timed-math or timed-reading sheet. Please have your child read aloud and to themselves from a book at their level and discuss it with you. Keeping a reading journal could also be beneficial. Your child’s teacher may also need to send unfinished class work home to be completed and returned to school.

5. R EADING Within our reading program we will teach grade level curriculum as well as differentiated material that will expand your child’s reading skills. Areas of emphasis include, but are not limited to: Literal comprehensionPredicting Interpretive Persuading/Arguing (inference) comprehensionVocabulary SummarizingAuthor’s mood and purpose FluencyTopic/Main Idea/Details Gathering InformationAnalyzing NonfictionStory Elements Phonics Novel reading

6. F LUENCY Idaho Reading Fluency 3 rd Grade Goals Fall77 Winter96 Spring110

7. L ANGUAGE A RTS The language component of our curriculum covers:  Parts of speech  Sentence structure  Types of sentences  Complete sentences  Capitalization  Punctuation  Grammar  Phonic  Figurative Language  Phonemic awareness  Prefix/Suffix meanings  Multiple Meaning Words  Dictionary Skills

8. W RITING Your students will have many opportunities throughout the year to practice writing for different purposes. The following are some examples of types of writing students may be doing in third grade. NarrativeJournaling Informative Autobiographies Paragraphs Research papers Descriptive Poetry Note takingEditing Process writingPersuasive/argumentative

9. W ORD S TUDY /S PELLING A spelling pretest will be given at the beginning of each week. Based on the pretest, students will be assigned a list. Spelling tests will be given on the last day of the week. Your child will be spelling test words in isolation and in sentence dictation. When studying the words at home, please group them and study the word families and the rules for adding endings onto the base words. Spelling practice will be a part of your child’s 30 minutes of homework each night. Spelling homework will include a writing activity that needs to be completed and returned to school in Thursday Folder.

10. M ATH Our math instruction is aligned to match the National Common Core Standards. As a result, students throughout the district will be taught the same instructional concepts within the same trimester. Third grade has three Big Ideas that are tied to other instructional concepts. This helps students develop a deeper understanding of math notions and their interrelationship. Other math concepts and skills will be taught in addition to the “Big Ideas”.

11. Unit 1--Multiplication & Division Computation I can understand multiplication by thinking about groups of objects. I can understand division by thinking about how one group can be divided into smaller groups. I can use what I know about multiplication and division to solve word problems. I can multiply and divide within 100 easily and quickly because I know how multiplication and division are related. Unit 2—Number Systems, Relationships, & Representations I can understand that fractions represent part(s) of a whole, part(s) of a set, or distance(s) on a number line. I can use models of fractions to represent numbers equal to, less than or greater than one. I can order, identify, and measure fractions (halves, thirds, fourths, sixths and eighths to solve problems that involve comparing, ordering and identifying equivalents. Unit 3--Dimensional Measurement Relationships I can recognize and measure the area and perimeter of two-dimensional shapes. I can understand that rectangular arrays can be decomposed into identical rows or into identical columns. I can decomposing rectangles into rectangular arrays of squares (multiplication). 3 rd Grade Mathematic “Big Ideas”

12. S CIENCE Four science units will be taught:  Reason for the Seasons  Living Things in their Environment  Force and Motion  States of Matter

13. S OCIAL S TUDIES Our Social Studies curriculum is developed around the concept of working together in a community. We will learn about:  Where/Why communities are started  Types of communities  My personal ethnic heritage and how this connects me to my community.  How communities change over time  Community Structure  People in communities  Community leaders/Laws  Goods and services  Supply and Demand  Geography/Landforms/Maps/Directions

14. O THER I MPORTANT I NFORMATION A healthy snack at recess helps a student focus during the day. Headphones are helpful for our computers and iPad devices. We have several nut allergies in third grade. Please take this into consideration when sending snacks or providing treats for classroom celebrations. Please send clear water for your child to drink in class and be sure they bring their container home and wash it. In third grade, students will participate in several district and state tests. These include; IRI, MAP, Universal Screeners, and SBAC test for Common Core State Standards had been renamed as the ISAT test.