THIRD GRADE NEWS –SEPTEMBER 22-26

• Thanks to everyone who brought their child to sing in church yesterday. They were a blessing to the service.
• Please add Jordan Geiss' family and his new brother to your prayer list. The last I heard, Mom was in the hospital with very high blood pressure and the doctors were expecting the baby to come earlier than what was hoped.
• Tools for School-PTL at Work—Sept. 23—6:30—Come see how some of our new technology tools can be used to enhance our learning at Salem. Every child who is represented gets a free dress pass. Childcare is provided.
• Our offerings this month are going to our two adopted children from Africa and South America. Chapel is on Thursday this week.
• Group pictures will be taken on Thursday, Oct. 2. Choose your favorite uniform to wear.
• Don’t forget Fun Friday games on Fridays.
• We have spent the last couple weeks practicing our reading, writing, Christian Living, penmanship and math procedures. This week we are going to begin practicing our spelling procedures. Research has shown that personal spelling lists benefit the learner more than words from lists published by textbook writers. Because of this research, our spelling practice this year will look a little different. On Monday we will be creating an online spelling wiki. While we will be learning and practicing specific spelling strategies in class, each student will also be learning how to recognize words he/she is misspelling during our writing times and those words will become part of his/her personal spelling list as well. I recognize that this will be a challenging concept at first, both for the students and the parents. Because of the added challenge, to begin we will be spending two weeks per spelling concept rather than just one. Once we have the wiki set up completely, I will post a link to our blog for you and your child to access. Give us a couple weeks to become familiar with this new practice and then let me know if you have any questions.
• I saw some real examples of metacognitive thinking last week! (Hopefully your third grader has shared our new vocabulary word with you.) A little heads up: As we are getting more used to the routine of third grade our adrenaline is beginning to wear thin. This may result in tired and grumpy as a way of life for a while.

Have a great week!
Mrs. Rumsey