Welcome to a brand new school year! It was wonderful to see the enthusiasm and bright, shining faces of our 3rd graders as they entered the building on the first day of school. They are genuinely excited to be back and eager to begin learning new things.
This will be a very busy and exciting year. We are going to be learning a variety of things in some new and challenging ways. Hands on learning will be a standard part of our classroom experience in all subject areas. Students will also learn valuable study techniques such as SQ3R, story mapping, and the use of a variety of graphic organizers. You will be familiarized with some of these techniques at Parent Night, so please mark your calendar, and plan on attending!
This month, we are covering a variety of topics in our curriculum. In Religion, we are learning about how the Church is one. Our focus is on how the Holy Spirit helps us live our faith through the sacraments, prayer, and love of others. Reading finds us centered on the theme of how friends and family help us to grow. In English, we are learning about sentence structure, punctuation, combining sentences, and time order words. We will be immersing ourselves in the writing process and creating personal narratives as well. A general manuscript review and beginning cursive readiness are being covered in handwriting. We are reviewing Midline Guidelines and the four basic strokes of cursive writing.
Math finds us developing place value skills, comparing and ordering whole numbers, reviewing how to round numbers, and estimating. Counting money and making change are also being covered. We are completing Lessons 1 through 5 in our spellers. In Science, we are learning how plants and animals live, grow, and change. We are discovering how life cycles work and the role the environment plays on adaptations. Social Studies finds us focusing on geography and map skills. We are reviewing how to use map keys and a compass rose as well as lines of latitude and longitude. We are making our own miniature globes to help us locate continents, oceans, hemispheres, the equator, and prime meridian. From there, we will move into the concept, geography, and history of communities.
This year will be an exciting educational experience for our 3rd graders as they move from dependent to independent learning. I am looking forward to guiding and supporting your children on this journey and working with you as we strive for academic excellence and spiritual growth.
