Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  Esprit Third Grade has welcomed the year 2016 with some new and different learning experiences.  We are all settling back into school routines and happy to be working together again.

We began our first week back learning about cursive handwriting.  We have been talking about good posture when writing, pencil grip and letter formation.  This week we practiced forming L, E, H, B and F.  Next week we will learn how to form letters K, I, J, P and R.  In a few weeks we will have learned enough letters to start writing in cursive for some of our work here in school.

This month our team will be reading the 2015-2016 Red Clover books nominees.  Red Clover books are books that have been nominated by the Vermont Department of Libraries for Vermont's Picture Book Award for grades K-4.  Each year thousands of Vermont school children read the 10 nominated picture books and vote for their favorite.  The award has been handed out annually since 1997.  You can check out the nominees by clicking on this link 2015-2016 Red Clover Books .  Be sure to ask your child about the books he or she heard this week and about the activities that accompanied the books.

We also began a new writing unit this week.  For the next two months we will be writing persuasive speeches, petitions and editorials.  We have begun this unit with a focus on our school community. This week we learned that speech writing is a kind of opinion writing through which the writer puts forth a thesis statement and then gives reasons, details and examples that support his or her opinion.  We learned that writers of persuasive speeches come up with their ideas by seeing problems and imagining solutions. Writers change the world not just by looking at what's broken, but also by looking at what's beautiful.  They get others to pay attention to people, places, things, or ideas that they might otherwise walk right past.  We will continue with this work for the next couple of months.  What did your child write about this week? What change does he or she want to see in our school community?  A few ideas that were written about were changes to the lunch menu, longer recess, longer lunch, bigger cubbies for 3rd graders, and having more school assemblies.

This week students were introduced to the standard algorithms for both addition and subtraction in math.  We have spent the week reinforcing and practicing these somewhat tricky algorithms. Along with learning the traditional way to add and subtract numbers the students also modeled their thinking with base ten pieces.  This visual model helped them to see what was really happening when they were regrouping.  Next week we will begin a new unit with a focus on measurement and fractions.  We will begin this unit learning how to measure both time and mass, and will then move on to volume.  Students will then be expected to use their learning to solve story problems involving time, mass and volume.

On Monday we will have our Literary Lunch for those students who turned in their December reading logs and met the 500 minute requirement.  Please strongly encourage your child to keep track of his/her reading time.  It is the expectation that all students will read at least 500 minutes each month.
Have a terrific weekend!