Iditarod

The 3rd graders will begin a reading unit on the Iditarod this week. We will be reading the short story The Bravest Dog Ever, The True Story of Balto. We will have a spelling test this week with words from the story. We will not have a pretest, and there are only 15 words again this week. We will focus on them more as vocabulary words as well. I will also have them do a written test at the end of the week about the story.

We will also do a couple other projects throughout the week that have to do with the Iditarod. We will be heading to the computer lab a lot over the next few weeks. Today each student will research and choose a musher (racer) in the actual Iditarod race that begins Saturday March, 2nd. They will research the date of birth, why the musher got into racing, what accomplishments the musher has made and why they chose this musher.

After the race begins, we will head to computer lab daily or every other day to monitor the progress of our mushers. We will keep track of their times, number of dogs they have when they get to each checkpoint and how many dogs leave each checkpoint. We will also monitor each mushers' place in the race.

The website we will be using is iditarod.com  There are a lot of really neat free features on the site. Your child can watch the beginning of the race for their musher over the weekend if you would like.
We will also be learning a lot about Alaska and its history.


*Please remember that the Ecosystem project is due next Monday, March 4 with presentations beginning March 5th. Let me know if you have any questions. We will be going over food webs and food chains today and tomorrow in science class.

*Parent-teacher conferences are March 5th and March 7th.

*There is no school on March 8th (conference trade day).