Dear Parents and Guardians,

Last week we attended a performance at Mandel Hall. The St. Louis Quartet Orchestra played music from Beethoven and other composers that reflected the time in which the composers lived. It was a great performance and such a wonderful experience for our students.

The third grade will begin to practice for the third grade play based on Chicago. We have started to learn about important events in Chicago's history as well as it's present. We have started to learn the music to accompany the skits performed by the three third grade rooms as well as learn dance steps that help to make this a performance that incorporates all the modalities used by our diverse learners. We dance, we sing, we speak, we perform! The play is scheduled for the early part of June. A final date has not been set yet. I will keep you updated on the actual day and time.

I'd like to ask if you could send a box or two of tissue with your child. This is the time of year allergies and viruses invade. We run out of tissue quite quickly and it would be very much appreciated if you can supply a box or two to get us to the end of the year. Thank you in advance.

THIS WEEK WE WILL BE WORKING ON THE FOLLOWING:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

We will be taking a comprehension test on Kids Business, the nonfiction selection in our OpenCourt readers which tells us about the great business ventures of kids. We have been working on our business plans, complete with things such as materials needed, who our service our product will benefit, what we will do with our profit and other important features that should be considered when asking for "financing." We are making posters to advertise our business to others. Stay tuned!

MATH:

We will continue working on Unit 8, Fractions. We will be planning to use fractions as a part of our building project.

In Everyday Math we will continue Lessons 8.4-8.7. These lessons will include equivalent fractions and comparing fractions.

HOMEWORK: Home Link 8.4-8.7, Math Boxes as assigned. Please continue to make sure your child learns all their multiplication facts by recall. There will be a quiz on Wednesday involving finding the correct amount of shapes that fit into a larger shape, (fractional parts of a whole), and a test on Friday, including addition and subtraction.

SOCIAL STUDIES:

The  third grade Chicago play is really an integrated unit that includes Language Arts as well as Social Studies. We will continue to read our Chicago text. This week we will learn about Chicago's early days. Please ask your child about some of the facts they learn about this great city.

SCIENCE:

We will perform a Scratch test in Science to identify the hardness of a mineral.

<em>Have     A      Great      Week!</em>