Mrs. Halimi

Good evening Haigh families.I hope you had a great time enjoying family time with the refreshing sunny weather we had.

Important dates:

This Thursday, September 29th we will be attending the Dearborn firehouse for a presentation on fire safety from 12:30-2:30. This field trip is provided to us free from the city of Dearborn. Permission slips will be sent home tomorrow, so please sign and return if you would like your child to attend this trip. Also, this field trip will not require any parent volunteers. However, Next week on Tuesday October 4th we will be attending the University of Michigan Dearborn Nature Center. Parents chaperones are encouraged and must drive their child to the field trip. Permission slips will be sent home this week. The cost is $3.00. If you want to chaperone, please make sure you have an updated background check on file through the district. The process to do this is simple and easy and can be done through the Haigh front office. It usually takes about two weeks to clear and is valid for three years.

This week we will continue to complete our NWEA testing in all areas.

Students took their first spelling and academic vocabulary test on Friday. They did a pretty good job for their first academic vocabulary test. Please look for their test in their owl folder tomorrow to check out their grades.

Our new academic vocabulary words are:

1. Elapsed time- the difference between the start time and the end time.
2. County- a division of a state. Michigan is divided into 83 counties.
3. Geography- the study of places.
4. Geographer- a person who studies places.
5. Moral- a life lesson.

We will continue to work on fables as we review our CAFE strategies this week. We will be looking deeper at the characters in the stories we have read and work on selecting traits to describe our characters based on evidence from the text.

We will focus on elapsed time all week. This is usually a tough concept for students of all ages so your support at home helps tremendously. We will begin our math rotations this week so students can review telling time, addition concepts, and work on elapsed time in small groups. Last week students practiced logging in and taking a pretest for frontrowed.com. This is an excellent website for students to practice math concepts as well as fact fluency practice. Multiplication facts are never to early to begin mastering! Students are able to sign in at home. The class code is: halimp

Thank you for your support. The classroom routines are going smoothly and our daily schedule is working well. This year is looking to be GREAT!

Hi Parents,

We started talking about elapsed time today in class. This is a big concept for third graders and can be very tough. We will be working on this over the next few weeks and I wanted to give you the opportunity to see one of the strategies that we use to teach this skill. Please take a minute to view the video link. It may help you tonight as you help your child with their math homework.

Elapsed time on a time line:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUmdJElng1M

Here is a link to some additional games your child can play to help them with telling time.

https://www.homeschoolmath.net/online/clock.php

Thank you for you support!

As we continue NWEA testing, students are going to be coming home and sharing their scores with you. I am attaching a document to this email that should help you get a feel for what the norm score is for this point in the 3rd grade year. When you open the document, scroll to page 3 where you will see the reading, math, language, and science norms for the beginning of the year in 3rd grade.

Please do not panic if your child is scoring lower then they did at the end of the year last year, as they are taking a different test and they are not having the option of having the test read to them. Students will be recording their NWEA scores into their data folders so they can track their progress through the year.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me

2016-nwea-test-grade-level-norms

Just testing my blog to see if email alerts are working.

Happy Sunday Haigh parents! I am looking forward to the first full week of school. I really enjoyed meeting all of the families at open house last week. Many thanks for taking the time out of your busy day to make my day and come and “Meet the teacher!” This year is sure to be great!

This week we will begin taking our fall NWEA assessments. Please encourage your child to do their best. We will be taking our scores and graphing them in our data folders and have many conversations about setting goals and working hard to show improvement through the year. You can help me out with this by encouraging good work habits at home.

We have just started working on our daily five expectations as well as working hard at building our reading stamina. Our goal is to work on their language arts choice for 20 minutes without interruptions. So far we have achieved 7 in a half minutes. I am certain that we will be at the 20 minute mark in no time! This week we will work on reading and analyzing characteristics of fables.

In writing this we week we will set up our writing binders as well as listen and engage in stories that help us define what is included in a personal narrative. Your child will create lists of topics to help them brainstorm a plethora of ideas for their own personal narratives.

In math we will be working on telling time to the minute as well as solving elapsed time word problems. Your child will learn how to solve elapsed time problems on a number line. We will also begin to set up our expectations for math workshop rotations and practice working and moving between rotations. Math homework will be coming home each night to reinforce the concepts learned in class.

In social studies we will begin with discussing the geography of Michigan. We will be working with desk maps as we explore the unique qualities of Michigan.

This week your child will be bringing home their spelling words/academic vocabulary words and homework. Please make sure your child is doing at least 3 of the activities on the choice board. Please note that your child also has 5 academic vocabulary words that they are responsible for knowing the definition and the spelling for. We do a variety of activities to reinforce these words in class but often times parents help their child create flashcards and give mock spelling test in the home. We will also be tracking our progress of these weekly tests in our data folders.

The academic words this week are:

1. analog clock- a clock that has hands that move to tell the time.
2. digital clock- a clock that uses digital numbers to tell the time.
3. stamina- the ability to something for a long time.
4. fable- a short story that has animals as the characters and teaches the reader a lesson.
5. compassion- showing and feeling kindness for others.

Your child will also have a reading log to complete each week. The reading expectation is that your child is reading for at least 25 minutes each night. Their is also a question that they must choose and complete their answer with evidence from the text.

Looking forward to a GREAT week!

I apologize for the long post and promise that they won’t be this long each week. If you have any questions or concerns, please e-mail me at: halimia@dearbornschools.org

Our classroom has been up and running now for several days and we are ready for visitors!

Please come to Room 33 from 6:00-7:30 on Thursday, September 15.  During the Open House, you will have a chance to go on a scavenger hunt with your third grader.  There will be things to see, tasks to complete, and fun to be had!  If you finish the hunt and turn it in, there is a prize for your third grader!

See you in Room 33!