During the month of November, we want to pay tribute to our military heroes - past and present. If your child could bring in pictures of any one they would like to honor, we are going to do a bulletin board by the Media Center with pictures of the service members. Please be sure that the picture is identified with your child's name and teacher's name (for ease of returning the pictures), the person's name in the picture and the kind of service he or she was/is in.
Operation Christmas Child is November 8th - 12th. Please send in a shoebox filled with wonderful goodies. This is great time to show our children the true meaning of Christmas. My two girls love going shopping to fill the shoeboxes. They love to pick out things they think the other children will like and enjoy writing a personal little note to include in the box.
The SCPS Chapter of the National Elementary Honor Society is hosting a dog food and cat food drive for Bryan Animal Caregivers during the week of November 15th through 19th. Please consider donating a bag of dry dog or cat food. The NEHS will be collecting the bags daily and tallying the pounds of donations for the class competition! The class with the most POUNDS of dog/cat food will win a special NUT card.
The new reading challenge is to get 150 Reading Counts points by December 17th, the end of the second quarter. Getting 150 points by this date will put them on the right track for making it to the end of the year sleepover. For those who meet the challenge, I will be providing pizza for lunch when we come back to school in January. If anyone could send popscicles and/or drinks, that would be wonderful too.
November book report: Please have your child choose a third grade level or higher chapter book that is also a Reading Counts book for the next book report. Your child should show me the book so that I can approve it. When he or she finishes reading the book, he or she should take the Reading Counts test. After that, I will give him or her the book report materials. The book report is due December 1st.
Reading: If your child has Mrs. Slaughter for reading, then you can go to her website at http://mrsslaughter.weebly.com to find out what they are doing in reading each week. If your child goes to Mrs. Chambers for reading, then you can go to her website at http://mrscchambers.weebly.com to find out what they are doing in reading each week. The accelerated group will continue reading The Mouse and the Motorcycle this week.
Cursive Handwriting: We have reviewed all the letters. Some students need extra practice at home as well. I will continue to write notes on the tops of paper for the children who are still finding it a challenge to form the cursive letters correctly.
Language: We are learning about plurals this week.
Spelling: This week we will learn the words in lesson 11. The test is on Thursday. You can go to www.spellingcity.com for online practice of the spelling words each work. Just go "Find a List" and then for the teacher type in "SCPS Third Grade." All the lists for the entire year will appear. Just choose the one for this week.
Writing: This quarter we will focus on organizing our ideas so that they flow together smoothly. Paragraphs should still be indented, have a topic sentence, three or more detail sentences, and a concluding sentence. We will continue to work on making sure all sentence are complete thoughts and not run-on sentences or fragments.
Timed Tests: Timed tests are on Wednesdays. This week will be 100 subtraction problems in 4 minutes. Students should be studying addition and subtraction math facts every night.
Math: We will begin Chapter 4 this week. We will cover lessons 4-1 through 4-4.
Social Studies: We will be creating a community booklet this week.
Bible: This week's verse is Psalm 118:1 "Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever."