What's in the Forsman Future?
I am very much looking forward to meeting with those of you who are signed up for the Fall Conferences. I do realize that some families have IEP meetings coming up that will take the place of the conference and I am excited to meet with those families at that time. It is a great way to touch base and check in on the progress of the students. Please note that conferences are only 15 minutes each so it is difficult sometimes to get through all of the points some families want to touch on. Know that my door is always open and I love to communicate with parents. As a parent myself with a daughter in preschool I understand how great it is to know what's going on in the classroom with my little girl. :) E-mail is always a great way to get a timely response from me as my phone doesn't ring during the day. I have truly enjoyed working with your students thus far and anticipate a successful and fun rest of the year with them. See you soon!
Reading
The new Common Core Standards that we as a faculty are learning so much about stress the importance of our 3rd graders working with literacy as well as informational text. Informational text refers to not just "non-fiction" but exposition, argumentation/persuasive text, procedural text, and documents. Please keep this in mind for home reading as well. The more exposure your student can get with this genre of reading material the better. Involve your students in reading directions on how to put something together, recipes, maps, guidebooks, current event/newspaper articles, etc. This is an exciting time for bumping up the "rigor" of literacy and the materials we use to teach comprehension skills!
I am very much looking forward to meeting with those of you who are signed up for the Fall Conferences. I do realize that some families have IEP meetings coming up that will take the place of the conference and I am excited to meet with those families at that time. It is a great way to touch base and check in on the progress of the students. Please note that conferences are only 15 minutes each so it is difficult sometimes to get through all of the points some families want to touch on. Know that my door is always open and I love to communicate with parents. As a parent myself with a daughter in preschool I understand how great it is to know what's going on in the classroom with my little girl. :) E-mail is always a great way to get a timely response from me as my phone doesn't ring during the day. I have truly enjoyed working with your students thus far and anticipate a successful and fun rest of the year with them. See you soon!
Reading
The new Common Core Standards that we as a faculty are learning so much about stress the importance of our 3rd graders working with literacy as well as informational text. Informational text refers to not just "non-fiction" but exposition, argumentation/persuasive text, procedural text, and documents. Please keep this in mind for home reading as well. The more exposure your student can get with this genre of reading material the better. Involve your students in reading directions on how to put something together, recipes, maps, guidebooks, current event/newspaper articles, etc. This is an exciting time for bumping up the "rigor" of literacy and the materials we use to teach comprehension skills!
Math
Miss Millbrandt and I are continuing with Chapter 4 this coming week with more practice in subtracting bigger numbers and across zeros. We stress how in mathematics there are often multiple ways of attaining the same answer but it is not about the answer as much as the mathematics behind the process of getting the answer. We are constantly asking the students how they got their answers and why they are choosing the steps they chose. This math reasoning will play a large part when we start teaching math T-charts. (More on that later). You can help at home by doing the same. Ask your student problem solving questions and have them think out loud about how they solved them.
Tune in next Friday for more Forsman Fun!