Hello again,
Believe it or not, it is already report card time as we have completed one
third of our year! We are sending report cards home soon and they will look
different than report cards that you have received in the past. Hopefully, we
will all become more accustomed to them as the year rolls on. Should you have
any questions about them, please feel free to contact me via note, email or
phone message (although the first two methods are the ones that are easier for
me to respond to.)
As our new math program continues, students are working to learn the skills
needed in third grade. If your child is still working on addition "mad
minutes," they should be practicing nightly to move forward. After the holiday
break, we will be focusing on multiplication and basic addition skills will be
necessary to avoid struggling in this area. Please assist your child with
flash cards, adding games or some of the math websites that use
addition/subtraction skills in timed games. The ability to see an addition
fact and automatically know the answer is crucial to all upcoming math your
child will do.
Please continue to have your child be responsible for reading directions on
homework and explaining what they think the directions are telling them to do.
This skill must be utilized nightly to form the habit of good problem solving.
Also, it is not necessary that students produce all correct answers on
homework. I appreciate those of you who write notes to let me know how your
child did with the homework--understood it easily, had trouble with it, etc. A
perfect homework paper is great, but more important is the information that
errors can give me. What areas are harder for your child? Where in the process
of solving a problem did he/she go off track? Seeing the student's errors
tells me what areas I may need to reinforce; not just for your child, but
maybe for others as well. Please continue to work with them but do not
hesitate to let me hear your feedback of how the homework "went."
I hope that you will have safe and happy holidays. Please enjoy the school
break, but encourage your child to continue to read during our hiatus.
Continued practice in reading will help your child in ALL aspects of school
and help to build a life-long love of exploring books. (Books are GREAT
presents!) I look forward to the new year with your children. They have been
MY gift this year!
