Saturday, August 18, 2012



Hello May Watts families and welcome to the 3rd Grade Blog!!  The third grade teachers work together to maintain this blog and give you all the information you will need to have a successful third grade year.  Check back often for weekly curriculum updates and important May Watts news.

We have a terrific year of learning planned for all of you and can't wait to get to know our new students. This year, there are 5 sections of 3rd Grade with Miss Carrie Pedersen joining the team.  As most of you know,  Miss Pedersen has been a 5th grade teacher here at May Watts and is excited to make the change to 3rd Grade! We are very happy to have her on our team and looking forward to a productive year of collaboration.

Third Grade is also proud to announce our newest little Wolverine!  Mrs. Brayton had her 3rd baby girl this summer, Leah Madison Brayton.  Mom and baby are doing great.  Mrs. Brayton will  be away on maternity leave until  the beginning of October.  Filling in for Mrs. Brayton while she is on leave is Mrs. Kimberly Adams.  We are happy to welcome her into our building and looking forward to working with her for the next six weeks. Mrs. Adams is very excited to start the new year in 3rd Grade  at May Watts!  The other 3rd Grade teachers are Miss Anco, Mrs. Baumann and Mrs. Kiselyk.  We are five strong and love what we do. Third Grade Rocks!

Here is what's happening the first couple weeks of school...

Citizenship- The May Watts citizenship program has undergone a transformation!  After eight years of Respect YOE, our core values have changed to...

May Watts Citizens are
 Respectful,  Responsible  and Safe

Respectful means treating people with care and kindness.  We are respectful when we...

Use good manners
Use expected voice levels
Show Empathy
Treat others the way you want to be treated 

Responsible means doing the right thing and making good choices.  We are responsible 
when we...


Follow directions
Treat materials appropriately
Are ready to learn
Do our personal best

Safe means engaging in activities that are not harmful to other people, property or the environment. We are safe when we...

Walk
Keep hands and feet to self
 Ask permission to leave




With the change in core values, also comes a change in incentives and rewards.  Students will still receive a paw print for displaying good individual citizenship, but redeeming will be a little different. Each week students will take the tickets they earned and go "reward shopping".  A fancy reward cart will come to each grade level once a week and students can redeem their tickets for a cool reward! Extra tickets? No problem, students can toss them in the monthly raffle jar for a chance to win another fabulous prize!! Whole class rewards are changing too. Classes will no longer receive gold tickets. Each class will now have a marble jar.  A class will receive marbles throughout the day when they work together to follow the core values of our school.  Once the marble jar is full, the class will decide on an extremely awesome class reward!!  It should be very motivating to watch the marble jar grow:) It might take some time to get used to the new system,  but the increase in great citizenship will be well worth it. Go May Watts!


Reading- We will start the year acquainting the students to our class libraries and discussing good fit books.  Each students will set-up their reading boxes and reading notebooks.  The first story we read is called  Officer Buckle and Gloria  by  Peggy Rathman.  The story is about a police officer and a dog named Gloria who give safety talks at schools.  Things go wrong when Gloria no longer helps Officer Buckle with the talks.  In the end, Officer Buckle learns a valuable lesson about teamwork. 

Vocabulary - department, audience, obeys, commands, expression, accident, noticed

Learning Target- Students will learn to use context clues (pictures and text) to figure out the meaning of the story.

Students will also read about Labor Day and why it's an important holiday for our country. 

Writing - In writing, we will be setting up our writer's notebooks. Students will be asked to bring in some pictures from home to decorate the cover of their notebooks. In  addition, we will review basic grammar rules, good sentence structure and good paragraph writing. Students will learn about "quick writes" and how to respond to a prompt. 


Learning Target - Students will review the basics of good writing  and begin writing to a prompt.

  
Spelling -List #1.  The test will be Friday, August 31st. All the spelling lists for the year are located at the top of this blog under the Spelling Lists tab.  Students may practice their words on Spelling City. There is no test the week of Labor Day.

Learning Target- students will lean how to spell words with the short a and short e pattern.

Social Studies- We will be alternating between Science and Social Studies.  We start the year with a unit on Communities.  The 3rd Graders will be creating their own school community.  We will review the three types of communities; rural, suburban and urban, as well as discuss Labor Day and kinds of community worker.  We will discuss how good citizens five back to the community.  Good citizens do their part by volunteering, helping neighbors and taking care of the environment.

Learning Target- Students will learn about communities.  Who are our community helpers? Why do we celebrate Labor Day. How to be a good citizen.

Math- We will start the year by dividing the students into their various math classless.  Beginning in third grade,  there are both Accelerated Math and Third Grade math classes.  Mrs. Brayton and Mrs. Kiselyk teach Accelerated Math and Miss Anco, Mrs. Baumann and Miss Pedersen teach third grade math.  Each class will be going over the structure of math class and laying the ground rules.  Everyone will be starting the New Common Core math curriculum.  While you will see familiar homework pages from the Everyday Math Program, we will not be using EDM exclusively.  Expect various kinds of homework and some skipping around. The Common Core Math Standards philosophy is to teach deeper.  We will be going more in-depth with our teaching and EDM will be supplemented.
Third Grade Math - Unit One is a review of number grids, patterns and time.  Students will be doing number grid stories, recognizing number patterns and solving elapsed time problems.


Take a deep breath and let the air slow. Yes, summer is really over.  We will all miss the freedom summer brings, but there is always a lot of excitement about the beginning of a new school year.  So say good-bye to summer and hello to a great new year!