<p> Atlas Elementary</p><p>Dear Families, September 30, 2013</p><p>We are working hard here in the third grade! Our reading program is off to a great start; your child has reading class twice a day using our Houghton- Mifflin reading series for support. Every child is instructed on the “theme” of the week in their homeroom. Also, each child attends a smaller, break- out reading group that addresses their particular needs. We are monitoring the progress of each child to make sure they are in the proper break-out group. We hope to see lots of progress in their reading abilities, as we did with our last-year’s classes, using this program!</p><p>We also have some children going to core math instruction in a different class than their homeroom. But all children learn the basic math curriculum, we just pace the groups to meet the needs of our learners. We are following the Idaho Core Curriculum, which is focused on number sense, graphing, and addition and subtraction. We will be moving into multiplication and division very soon, though, and this is a big change from our previous curriculum. We will be supporting students with a lot of conceptual and manipulative-based learning to help them understand “why” we use multiplication and division before moving into teaching them the facts.</p><p>In our next newsletter, we will have information about the upcoming Halloween activities at Atlas Elementary. Halloween falls on a Thursday this year. Traditionally we have held a costume parade in the morning, followed by classroom activities, and then return to a regular day of learning after the 10:45 recess, but we will let you know what we are doing in each classroom as we get more information from our principal as to how it will look this year.</p><p>Enjoy the fall colors!</p><p>Your Third Grade Team Spelling List # 4 Review week – these are ALL the words we’ve had so far…</p><p> last mix stick lot sock hunt wide grade thick spend class pond luck drum save cube smile left smell thin drop shut huge note life *glance *empty *dusk *slope *escape </p>