WES Third Grade

At some point over the next few days you should be receiving your child's report card in the mail. We suggest you read over and take time to digest the information contained in the report card prior to sharing it with your student. When reviewing the scores with your child it is our hope you will identify areas they have had success with. Maybe ask them why they think they earned the scores they did by asking him or her to say, "I got a ___ in ___ because I ___." Additionally, students often have room for growth in academic disciplines or personal development areas. These will most often be represented as 2s on the report card. A 2 is interpreted as a student who inconsistently meets the third grade standard or needs adult assistance to do so. If your child receives a score of 2, help him or her understand that this is simply an area where there is room for improvement in the coming quarter. We look forward to see you all for conferences next week. Here is the link, Conference Sign-Up, indicating the time you have signed up for.

WES wrapped up its schoolwide Everybody Engineering Week challenge with a whole school assembly. Your child worked on a student team and was instrumental in the design, construction and presentation of a popsicle stick tower. Teams were comprised of seven or eight students from grades 1 - 6. The towers are on display in the lobby if you want to have a look.

During math class we have been working on area (the amount of space a shape takes up) and practiced measuring using square units. The class is also exploring the attributes (characteristics or traits) of squares, triangles, and rectangles. We'll begin looking at different angle sizes and categorizing them as right angles (90 degrees or square), less than 90 degree angles, or greater than 90 degree angles. This unit should wrap up by the end of next week.

We've begun our next reading unit, Reading to Learn, focusing on reading non-fiction texts. Many of the skills associated with this unit will be applied in our writing as we embark on our Art of Information Writing unit next week. Students are energized by the opportunity to read a different genre and learn something along the way. So far we've looked at what text features are (the elements that are not part of the main text) as well as searching for examples in classroom books: table of contents, glossary, bold words, images, captions, etc. When students begin writing their own informational texts they will be expected to include many of these text feature elements in their personal writing.

Our Student Council is sponsoring a Food Drive to restock the community food shelf. Any contributions your family can make are appreciated. The most needed items are: