Report Card Envelopes/Next Few Weeks

REPORT CARD ENVELOPES

I am getting ready to send home trimester 3 midterm grades tomorrow. I noticed that I am missing a lot of the report card envelopes that have been sent home for each trimester and midterm. Please send it back if you happen to have it at home.

Please return the envelopes on Monday after you have seen the midterm grades as well. I will use them one more time this year to send home final grades. Thanks so much! I can't believe we only have a little over a month left to go.

APRIL 29-MAY 4

Our week of April 29-May 4th is going to be very busy. We talked about it today in class. We will be practicing for the Spring Concert (April 30th), May Crowning (May 2nd) and Confirmation/Holy Eucharist (Rehearsal May 2nd, BIG DAY!! May 4th). If you have any questions about any of things as they come, please do not hesitate to call or e-mail me. We will not have a spelling test or reading test that week.

BIKE RODEO

As of now, our bike rodeo is still planned for next Thursday, April 25th at 1:30pm. You can drop bikes off in the morning at the gym door. We will put them in the corridor between the gym and the outside doors. They will be locked in there when we are not using them. Please make sure your child comes to school with a CHANGE of clothes being it is a Mass day. I don't want them out in the wet parking lot in Mass uniform. We will change right after lunch into bike and weather appropriate clothing. We'll see if it actually gets into the 40's or 50's as we get closer to the date. Also, please be sure to make arrangements to pick up the bikes at the end of the day. The rummage sale will be set up that week, and I would hate for any bikes to be left behind and mistaken for sale. 

Trinity Youth Camp

A lot of you probably heard from your child that we had a visit from Trinity Youth Camp on Wednesday. A brochure should have come home with your child as well.

A few things about their visit:

**You can use their website to look for any extra information that you need.

**They mentioned the Red Willow Camp dates fill up quickly because it is the closest to Grand Forks, Fargo, Valley City, Jamestown, Grafton... If you are interested in this one, they asked that you get your registration in as quickly as possible.

**If you are looking for more information on any of the listed camps, you can search any of them and they have their own websites as well.

Spelling Tests

We are going to be changing our format on our spelling tests for the last 6 tests of the school year. I will test them on the first 15 words for our pretest on Mondays. If they get 0-3 incorrect they will get the 5 challenge words at the end of our spelling list.

If they get the extra words:
The spelling test on Friday will be out of 20 possible points. We will no longer have bonus points on tests.

If they do the regular 15:
The spelling test on Friday will be out of 15 possible points. I won't have bonus points for this test either.

I will enter the tests as two separate assignments in the grade book, so your child will only have possible points for the test he or she has taken.

I like to change it at the end of the year to show a more accurate grade in spelling. If you have any questions after you see the first test come home this Friday, please let me know. Thanks!

Ecosystems

I loved seeing all of the wonderful ecosystem projects in our classroom. I especially loved how well each student presented his or her work to the other classrooms. Everyone was very prepared and educated on their ecosystems.

I am in the process of finishing grades on the projects. I will be sending them home by Wednesday of next week. I was out sick and then out with a little one who was sick. I feel like I need to get back into school mode! Thank you for your patience.

The projects are awesome. It is making my grading pretty easy! Thank you for your support at home with the projects as well.

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).

Ecosystem Projects

Today we began a chapter on ecosystems. We discussed the definition and what makes up an ecosystem (living and non-living things). Our ecosystem chapter leads us to our BIG third grade project on ecosystems. Your child will be bringing home a packet of information about the project today. We discussed all of the guidelines and they asked some great questions. If you find they, or you, have other questions as you are working on it, please do not hesitate to call or send an e-mail.

You will see a sheet of paper about food chains and food webs attached to the guidelines. We have not learned about those in class yet, so I asked the class to work on that part of the project a little later.

Your child will choose one of the listed ecosystems and create any type of poster board that illustrates the animals, plants and landscapes of that ecosystem. I asked them to do most of the work on their own (drawing, coloring, writing), but feel free to help where needed (internet, spelling).

They will also have to write a paper about their ecosystem including the weather that is found there. On the packet website page I attached, you will find a website for average yearly temperature for each ecosystem. It is a NASA website, but I found that it may be under construction or temporarily deleted in the next few days. You may have to do some other research for the weather and precipitation. Let me know if you are having a hard time with that part. Otherwise all the other websites should be working sites. Just be careful typing them into the search bar.

Take a look at the guidelines and expectations. If you have any questions please let me know. Your child should have a pretty good idea about what to do, but sometimes information gets lost between school and home!

Have fun with the project, and please let your child do most of the work!

PROJECTS ARE DUE MONDAY MARCH 4th! We will present them to other classes beginning on MARCH 5th! 

This is the cover page of the information that was sent home. If your child misplaces any parts of the packet, please let me know and we will get another one sent home. 

Ecosystem Project

3^rd grade

Here are the guidelines for your ecosystem project

1.  You may choose one ecosystem listed on the next page.

2.  You need to design that ecosystem on a poster board or tag board.

3.   Include the animals, plants and landscapes that would be found in that ecosystem.

4.   You will also need to write a short report (3 or 4 paragraphs) about your ecosystem. When you write the paper, please include your favorite animals and plants from the ecosystem and what type of weather (temperature and precipitation) would be found there as well. Make sure to do your writing in your own words and use what you have learned in writer’s workshop about how to write a paragraph.

5.   Your poster and report are due on March 4th. All work should be completed at home. We will have other classrooms come to visit our classroom, so be prepared to answer questions about your ecosystem.

6.  You may use any resources you would like, but the websites included would be very helpful. Some websites will take you directly to the animals, weather, plants or land description. Some websites will take you to a homepage and you will have to look around for your information.

7.   Have fun and I can’t wait to see your projects!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Thank you to all of the family members who came to our class Ash Wednesday Mass. We didn't get a lot of time to practice with a snow day on Monday and a funeral in the church on Tuesday, but the kids did an amazing job! I was very impressed with how well they kept it together when we practiced in a somewhat loud and crazy environment in the church after the funeral. Awesome job 3rd graders!


We enjoyed a small Valentine party this afternoon in the classroom. We had 3 stations. The first one was Punny Valentines. You will see it come home. It has 6 pictures and silly puns written under each valentine picture. The 2nd station was a Bible verse written out with the letters VALENTINE. Our 3rd activity was an ending project to our life cycle/living things chapter in science. They had to make a life cycle of a butterfly using shapes of pasta. They did a great job on all stations, and it was fun to hear them doing science review without even thinking about it at the butterfly station.

A few reminders and upcoming dates:

Friday February 15th-Stations of the Cross in the Church 8:45am, Science test in class as well
Friday February 22nd-No School, teacher in-service day, end of 2nd trimester
March 5, 7- Parent/Teacher conferences You will get a notice from the office as this date approaches.
Friday March 8th-No School (Conference Trade Day)

I will hand out report cards during conferences, and I will also be discussing your child's scores on the ND State test we took in October. We are mapping the results and will have them ready for distribution during conference week.