Updated: May 11, 2010

3rd_grade

I am so excited and ready for the new faces! I enjoy meeting new "friends", learning, and mastering the third grade standards! We are going to have a wonderful year and incorporate the S.T.E.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) program into our learning. I would like to welcome all my new friends to third grade! I cannot wait to build a great classroom community in which we ALL participate and get excited about learning something new! THIS WILL BE A GREAT YEAR!

I want you all to know that I would like your input. My door is always open, if you ever any have any comments, questions, or concerns. Please do not hesitate to stop by, send me an email, or call my voicemail. My email address is nspencethomas@reyn.org and my voicemail number is 614-501-1089. (However, if you call my voicemail after school hours, I will not be able to check my voicemail until the following day. If you need to get a message to me quickly, I can check my email from home.)

For those of you who want to get a head start on practicing for the OAA, I have linked up to the OAA website. You can practice the types of questions that will be seen on the OAA. Click on the link below to be redirected to the webite.

BE A STAR AND PRACTICE FOR YOUR OAA!

We will be completing Accelerated Reader this year. For the first quarter you will need to earn 5 AR points. The more points you earn, the more prizes you get!!! We will have a thiry minute readin block everyday after lunch, when we can "Get Hooked on a Good Book." You may take an AR quiz on any book that is an AR book on YOUR independent reading level. To see if the book you are reading is an AR book please go to http://www.arbookfind.com/default.aspx, and type in the title of your book. I am a competitive person and I want OUR class to earn the most points! LET'S GET READING!!!

We have created our own spelling curriculum for third grade. The students will have 12 words a week (for the first three weeks of the month). There will be nine words that focus on a particular skill(s) or spelling pattern(s) as well as three words that are considered “content words”. The content words are words that the students are hearing and learning about in the classroom. During the last week of every month your child will take a “word wall word” spelling test. Word wall words are high frequency words that are used often in writing, but also often misspelled. Your child will be assessed on all 100 word wall words at the end of the year, as a review. We will have some spelling activities that that your child will complete in the classroom; however your child is responsible for studying his/her words nightly at home so that he/she is well prepared for the spelling test at the end of the week. Below, Iwill keep the spelling list and word wall word list current. You can click on the links below to see the words.

word_wall_words

A great way for your child (children) to student his/her (their) spelling words is to go to Spelling City. I have added a link for Spelling City below.

If you click on the link below you will be taken to a webpage that lists some great, fun, hands-on ideas for practicing spelling words. We will be using some of these ideas in class!

Parents, I am a SPORTS NUT!!! If your child plays a sport, please send in his/her schedule. I would love to come watch my students play their favorite sports! I have been to hockey games, football games, baseball games, t-ball games, softball games, soccer games and dance recitals! I love it all! (Except on Sundays in the fall... Those are reserved for the Dallas Cowboys!)

I have included some links below to online games and activities that go hand in hand with our Ohio Academic Content Standards. I hope that your children use and enjoy them!

This is a terrific game that I introduced in the classroom. It works on multiplication facts 2's - 12's. When you click on the link, you will have to download the "base" version (for free home use). Once you have downloaded the game, you should have an icon on your desktop that your child can click on anytime to play.

Here are some new Language Arts games.

These two websites help students with learning prefixes.

This game will help students practice suffixes.

In these games, students are working on common and proper nouns.

This is a new game that will help students work on synonyms and definitions.

This is a great interactive website to help with synonmys (words that mean the same as another word), The students get to create their own teacher and make him/her walk the plank by answering synonym questions.

Here are three games that I was able to find to work on antonyms. I thought that theye were all pretty cute. There are more of these types of games on the internet and I will keep looking to add more.

This is a game that helps children understand creating words using prefixes and suffixes. Then the created words may be used in a sentence.

Thank you Lindsey for telling us about this wonderful game called "Where's Buster?". Use clues that Buster gives to figure out where he is in the United States. This is great for building mapping skills, which we are woking on in Social Studies right now.

With Spelling City, your child can create ways to practice his/her spelling words.

We have been working on symmetrical shapes. On this webpage the students are able to create their own kaleidescope pictures and symmetrical figures.

These games focus on angles.

This game will help students make change. They have to see how many customers they can make change for. There are many different levels so that all students are comfortable playing the game!

This site walks the students through area and perimeter. Then has practice problems.

In this game students click and drag the Cyber bugs to the bar graph. They must change the graph's scale as more bugs are in each room.

We have been working on using coordinate grids. Help Billy Bug... find his grub!

These games will help your child work on time to the five minutes and reading time related words and finding them on the clock.

If your child wants a challenge, he/she should try "Stop the Clock 4" which works with time to the minute! Go ahead... Give it a try!

This game will help your child master place value concepts to 100,000

Here are some games and activities that go hand-in-hand with the lessons that will be taught throughout the year in Everyday Math. I apologize if some of the links do not work.

Ohio Treasure Chest activities correlate with the Ohio Academic Content Standards. If there is any area in which your child is struggling this is a great website for him/her to use. Your child can choose from many different games and activities.

Internet 4 Classrooms is another great website in which your child can work on certain skills through fun and exciting activities and games. This is another webpage that goes hand-in-hand with our academic content standards.

batterupgm

This game will help your child become faster with his/her rote addition and multiplication skills.

This a great interactive website that is colorful and fun. All of the games are for 3rd graders, but if you wouldlike your hild to have more of a challenge you can also change the grade level at the top of the page.

Subtraction With Rerouping and Across Zeros

This cute, interactive game helps students comprehend economics.

Some of you would like to work on your context clues and STAR. I have found a great website that will help you and challenge you to be better thinkers and readers (especially with context clues). Check out the newest game called "The Vocabulary Quiz" by clicking the link below.

Here is a great website that will help students will creating combinations. It is called IXL. This is a direct link to the combination game.

These a just a few of the many wondeful resources the world wide web has to offer. As I find more games and activities that the students would like I will post them. If you have found any great websites that I did not list, please let me know so that I may share them with everyone! WE WILL ALL BE SUCCESSFUL IN THIRD GRADE!!!

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