Weekly Wrap Up

We are just a few weeks away from starting multiplication! What that means is that your child really needs to know his/her addition and subtraction facts. Once we start multiplication, they’ll need to start focusing on memorizing those facts. A couple of months after that we start division, and then they have to learn those facts. That gets tricky if they’re still working on addition and subtraction. Third graders should know their math facts with immediate recall. This means no longer than about 2 seconds per fact! As fast as a child knows that 1+1=2, they need to know that 15-9=6. Thanks for making sure your child is practicing their addition and subtraction math facts at home, five nights a week, for at least ten minutes a night, and recoding it on their math fact log.

The final copy of the contact list is coming home today. If you move, change your phone number, or email, and want it updated on the contact list, please let me know, and I’ll make a new one to send out.

This morning I ran across an article on the free app, Bedtime Math. I briefly looked at the website, and thought the app looked promising. I haven’t used it yet, but wanted to share it with you in case you might be interested. If you do use it with your child, please let me know what you think about it.

You know from our class Twitter that I take a lot of pictures in class. But, I don’t post all of them on Twitter, just a select few. All the rest of the pictures get posted in the photo album page of our class website. All of the pictures from September will be posted by the end of the weekend. Stop by and take a look!

Here's what we're learning about next week:

• Reader’s Workshop: Strategies to read and understand tricky words and phrases (including figurative language)
• Writer’s Workshop: Review using storyteller voice, not reporter voice.
• Math: Review and test Topic 2
• Science: Matter

Please remember that my door is always open if you have any questions or concerns. I also check email frequently. Together we are partners in your child’s education!