Dear Third Grade Parents and Families,

During the first weeks of school, I chose to keep all Accelerated Math work in the classroom. This allowed me to see exactly where each student is in terms of his/her math skills and has informed my teaching and grouping. Now that we have these systems in place, I’d like to start sending Accelerated Math home for in place of the daily math homework. Therefore, starting this week, students will be taking home their Accelerated Math folders every evening and returning them each day for scoring. Students should complete a minimum of two practice sets or tests each week.

Attached with this week’s homework packet you will also find a permission slip for our November field trip to the Santa Barbara Sea Center. Please take a moment to fill this out and return it along with the homework. Now that our bus is reserved, we know the total cost. Each child will need to contribute $21 in order to pay for the trip. I will begin collecting this as early as this week. Please send the exact amount.

In more news, we are off to a running start in Religion. Now that we’ve learned all about the rosary, we are finally going to start saying a decade or two in class a couple of times a week. The Religion Notebooks are looking so great that we’re going to start using them for our in-class studies. Therefore, no need to look for them on Mondays anymore, as they will no longer be coming and going every week.

Finally, this Tuesday your child will be taking home his/her Progress Report for the first trimester. This is meant to be a very general indicator of your child’s progress thus far. Reports will break down each subject area into “Excellent,” “Good,” “Average” and “Below Average” and are reflective of all the graded work your child has been taking home in his/her work packet each week.