We made it through the first week of school and I can already see my class changing from end-of-year second graders into third graders! As I stated in my Welcome letter last week, 3rd grade is a year full of transitions. Students take on more responsibility for taking care of, and organizing, their materials and time.
Headphones/earbuds: We will be using Chromebooks in the classroom. Each student will need to bring their own earbuds or headphones to school. If you prefer, I have some at school that I purchased from the Dollar Tree, so you may send a dollar to school to buy one of mine.
Home/School folder aka Important Folder: This is one item that really shows how students are taking on more responsibility. Students need to remember to take these home each night and bring them back each day.
Homework: Your child works hard at school. I believe that children should have time to enjoy being a child, exercise, play, help with chores, and spend time with family. Newberg’s policy is that 3rd graders should have 30 minutes of homework a night. To that end, for the next couple of weeks your child will have basic homework with flexibility. However, homework is the student’s responsibility even though they may try to convince you otherwise. Here are some key things parents can do to help.
- Have a set homework time
- Have a place for keeping/doing homework
- Have a system for making sure the Homework/Important folder is returned everyday-especially on Friday.
Homework, for the next couple of weeks, consists of:
- Reading: students may read whatever they like, please have them record their efforts. See Ideas in their Important folder for ideas.
- Math Facts: I cannot stress how important it is that students know their math facts. For the first few weeks this is addition/subtraction fluency. We move quickly into multiplication, fluency in adding/subtracting makes fluency in multiplication/division. They may study using flashcards or on the computer. I have seen flash cards at Target and The Dollar Tree for $1.00. This past week I set up their new Mobymax. Username and password are your child’s first name. I will change this to their district username and password as soon as I have access to printing information cards for the class. I will let you and your child know when the change has been made.
- Spelling: For the few weeks students should review and study the most common English words list. The best way to do this is to give your child a pretest on the words and have them study any they missed. (I know it is a long list. Just do 10 or 20 a night)
