Motsenbocker

Weekly Plans

Below you will find what each teacher/subject is focusing on.

Responsive Classroom: During Responsive Classroom next week, we will focus on learning all about identifying feelings by developing self-awareness and self-management skills to achieve school and life success.

Third Grade Math: We are wrapping up our geometry unit and moving into Chapter 1: Addition and Subtraction Strategies. In this chapter, students will learn rounding, estimating, and multiple strategies to use while adding and subtracting.

Literacy: We are continuing to work on Unit 1: Classic Tales. Students have been learning about literary tools in fiction writing as well as reviewing their short and long vowelStudents are also reviewing how to organize their writing with a traffic light and t-charts while discussing the writing process. We have also introduced students to cursive writing.

Shaw Science: This week we gathered together on the playground and released our ladybugs and butterflies into the wild. It was such a fun experience watching them develop through each of the lifecycle stages. Next week we will move away from engineering for a bit and dive fully into learning about life-cycles and animal adaptations.

Thielk History: We will be finishing up our learning over World Geography. Students have been working on their end of unit project in class this week. They are making their own globes out of balloons. I cannot wait to see how they turn out and for them to show me what they have learned in this unit.

Thielk Accelerated Math: We have finished Chapter 2 already. We will be making test and quiz corrections next week to both chapter test and the vocabulary quiz. We will be starting Chapter 3: Multiply by 1-Digit Numbers on Monday, this chapter will take us longer to get through as there are more lessons.

Your Third Grade Team,

Ms. McMorrine

Ms. Newman

Ms. Pumphrey

Ms. Shaw

Ms. Thielk

Upcoming Events
September 20	Teacher Work Day – No School
October 8	60 minute start
October 9 and 10	Conferences
October 14-18	Fall Break

Friday, September 6, 2024

Dear Third Grade Families,

We are wrapping up our third week with the kiddos and we have had so much fun getting to know them this year! Thank you so much to the parents who came to our Back to School Night last night. It was wonderful seeing all of you and we really enjoyed sharing all about 3rd grade with you. If you were unable to come, please see the attached Back to School Night PowerPoint.

Student Planner Reminder and Homework

We have noticed that some students are not bringing their planners with them to school everyday. It is important that they do bring their planner every day as this is where they are recording their nightly homework. This is also where we keep their badges for their online skills and testing platforms that we use throughout the day. As a reminder, is your student’s responsibility to write down their homework for each class period (or note if there is no HW). If your child’s planner has been coming home incomplete, please remind them to fill out their planner daily for each class. Math homework is typically nightly and reading homework is as needed per individual class. In science and history, homework will mostly consist of studying for tests, however if a student did not use their class time wisely, they may have to bring an assignment home to complete and return. We will not have homework on Fridays. Thank you for your help with this.

Go Math Home Access

-Make sure you are logged out of your personal google account at home as your child will need to log into their clever account and will not be able to if you are in your personal google account.

Go to the AA Website-www.aak8.org
At the top, in the blue bar, students will click the CLEVER-AA tab
This is where they will log in with their personal google account (this info can be found in their planner if they have forgotten).
Once logged in, students will click on the HMH ED Learning app. This is where they will be able to access their Go Math Student Edition for you to follow along with.

Water Bottles- Please Label

Snacks

All Things Hero

Specials Information

Extracurricular Activities

Looking for something for your student to do after school. Check out all of the ECA opportunities. (Ms. Newman is even teaching Rebel Drama for K-5.)

Motsenbocker ECAs

Weekly Plans

Below you will find what each teacher/subject is focusing on.

Responsive Classroom: During Responsive Classroom this week, we focused on learning all about the power of yet. The power of yet teaches the students to replace phrases such as “I can’t”, with “I can’t YET”

Third Grade Math:We are still working though our first unit of geometry. Students have been learning about angles and quadrilaterals. At the end of the unit, students will be taking a chapter test and vocabulary quiz.

Literacy: We have started our first unit, Classic Tales. Students are also reviewing how to organize their writing with a traffic light and t-charts while discussing the writing process. We have also introduced students to cursive writing.

Shaw Science: We will continue learning more about the engineering process with the main focus on criteria and constraints. By the end of the week we will begin moving onto our unit on life cycles.

Thielk History: We are continuing our learning about World Geography. We have taken our vocabulary quiz and will be making corrections to it in class. We have shifted our focus to geography about the United States. We will then have an end of unit project to show their learning from this unit.

Thielk Accelerated Math: We have finished our first chapter already! I am so proud of all the hard work the students are putting in during class during our learning time of the fourth grade content. Our next chapter will be addition and subtraction within 10,000.

Your Third Grade Team,

Ms. McMorrine

Ms. Newman

Ms. Pumphrey

Ms. Shaw

Ms. Thielk

Upcoming Events
September 20	Teacher Work Day – No School
October 9 and 10	Conferences

Friday, August 30, 2024

Dear Third Grade Families,

We have made it through another week of school and cannot believe we have a long weekend! We have been busy finishing up all of our testing and even getting into more content in all of our classes.

Student Planners

We have noticed that some students are not bringing their planners with them to school everyday. It is important that they do bring this everyday as that is where we are writing homework and their badge needed to get onto a testing and skill platform that may be used during classes that day.

Water Bottle

Back to School Night

Back to School night will be on Thursday, September 5th. This is for the parents only and you will hear a presentation from the teachers in each subject about what they will be learning about and expectations in third grade.

Cell Phones/SmartWatches

Make sure if your student brings a cell phone or SmartWatch to school for communication to let them know they must be powered off and in their backpack from 7:35 - 3:35.

Snacks

All Things Hero

We will start using Hero on Monday, August 26th, to reward and remind kids about appropriate behavior choices.

Positive Start: each day, your student will start the day with 20 Hero points. They will keep these points unless behavior choices are made that don’t reflect good character traits and manners. Make sure to look at your child’s Hero account to see how they do each day.

Paydays and Purchases: On Mondays, your child will receive their points earned for the previous week in the form of play money that they will keep in their “wallet” (they decorated these this week). They will be able to spend their money each Tuesday on special coupons with different values for things like stuffy passes, socks of choice, or even lunch with the teacher. Students do not have to buy each week. They can save up for anything they would like to buy.

PG Movie permission forms

If you have not turned in your PG permission form yet, please be sure to get that to your child's homeroom teacher so we can determine who is allowed to watch PG movies. This half-page form was provided during Open House, so, if you don't have the form or don't remember if you turned it in, please contact your child's homeroom teacher to get another copy.

We are responsible third graders and keep track of assignments with planners

We will be using daily planners in each of our classes starting Monday. Your child will put important information into their planner each day during class. If you are interested in what homework might be due, please ask your child to see the planner each night.

Daily schedules

In third grade, the students rotate between the different classrooms for math, literacy, science, and history, as well as specials. So your child will have classes with at least three of the third grade teachers, and possibly all of us. Your child's daily schedule is inside their planner if you are interested in seeing what classes he/she goes to each day.

Important student uniform reminders

Students MUST wear approved Dennis/Tommy Hilfiger Uniform shorts, pants, and tops.

Elementary Students MUST wear (Monday – Thursday) an American Academy Dennis sweatshirt if they want to wear a sweatshirt in their classroom.

Middle School Students are allowed to wear any American Academy sweatshirt throughout the week. The sweatshirt MUST be from Dennis/Tommy Hilfiger, the spirit wear store, or a school sanctioned trip that the host company sells a sweatshirt for (i.e. Nature Bridge).

Students MUST bring a change of shoes to wear throughout the day when they enter the building in snow boots. Students will be asked to call home if they do not have a change of shoes.

Students are NOT allowed to wear long-sleeved undershirts under their American Academy short-sleeved uniform shirt.

On dress-of-choice days, students MUST follow the guidelines of the uniform policy. Students cannot wear tank tops or any shirt that does not cover the shoulders. Students CANNOT wear jeans with holes of any sort (even ones with material behind them) and shorts/skirts MUST extend past their fingertips.

On dress-of-choice days, students who choose to wear leggings MUST have shirts that are the length of their fingertips when their arms are placed down at their side.

Students are NOT allowed to wear smart watches, including Fit Bit, Gizmo, Apple, Garmin, etc.

Students are NOT allowed to wear shoes that light up.

Students CANNOT have any colored hair dye in their hair. We understand that some sports teams have their players color their hair to rally for a big game; please be sure to have this dye washed out by the next school day.

MAKE-UP: Sixth, seventh, and eighth grade girls may wear lightly-applied mascara (brown or black), blush (pale neutral or pale pink), and lip-gloss (clear or pale pink).

Students who arrive at school outside of uniform will be asked to call home for the appropriate attire.

Specials Information

Extracurricular Activities

Looking for something for your student to do after school. Check out all of the ECA opportunities. (Ms. Newman is even teaching Rebel Drama for K-5.)

Motsenbocker ECAs

Weekly Plans

Below you will find what each teacher/subject is focusing on.

Responsive Classroom: During Responsive Classroom this week, we focused on learning all about third grade expectations and getting prepared for the school year. In the weeks ahead, we will start focusing on self-awareness.

Third Grade Math:We have completed our beginning of the year testing, and we will be working through our first unit on Geometry. In the next couple of weeks, students will be learning about angles and quadrilaterals. At the end of the unit, students will be taking a chapter test and vocabulary quiz.

Literacy: We are wrapping up our end of year testing, and we will be starting our first unit, Classic Tales, next week. We will also begin learning cursive and reviewing the writing process.

Shaw Science: This week’s focus will be on learning about the engineering process and using CER(Claim, Evidence, and Reasoning) to begin critically thinking like scientists.

Thielk History: We continued our learning about World Geography with coloring a world map and focusing on the compass rose and scale of a map. We also created a map of the classroom or our bedroom. We will be having our first vocabulary quiz next week. Please don’t stress as we will take our time and work through this during our class time and do it with my help.

Thielk Accelerated Math: We have finished two math tests. Next week we'll take our iReady Math test before we start our first chapter in the 4th grade book! Our first chapter will be over Whole Number Place Value.

Your Third Grade Team,

Ms. McMorrine

Ms. Newman

Ms. Pumphrey

Ms. Shaw

Ms. Thielk

Upcoming Events
September 5	Back to School Night
September 20	Teacher Work Day – No School
October 9 and 10	Conferences

Friday, August 23, 2024

Dear Third Grade Families,

Welcome back! We have had a great week to kick off the year as the kids seem very excited to get to work. We will be providing weekly newsletters to keep you updated about all things third grade. Please make sure to read this in its entirety. There is a lot of information that we want to share with you.

What we did this week

We had a great week and are so excited for how amazing this year will be for your child as well as the teachers. We introduced the class schedules and began rotating to classes on Tuesday. Students began their beginning of the year testing and have been doing such a great job.

Back to School Night

Cell Phones/SmartWatches

Make sure if your student brings a cell phone or SmartWatch to school for communication to let them know they must be powered off and in their backpack from 7:35 - 3:35.

Snacks

All Things Hero

We will start using Hero on Monday, August 26th, to reward and remind kids about appropriate behavior choices.

Paydays and Purchases: On Mondays, your child will receive their points earned for the previous week in the form of play money that they will keep in their “wallet” (they decorated these this week). They will be able to spend their money each Tuesday on special coupons with different values for things like stuffy passes, socks of choice, or even lunch with teacher. Students do not have to buy each week. They can save up for anything they would like to buy.

Beginning of the Year Stuffy Pass

To start the year off, we gave all students a stuffy pass coupon. This coupon allows them to bring a small stuffy to school as long as they have their coupon with them. They can always save up their cash to earn more stuffy passes too.

PG Movie permission forms

We are responsible third graders and keep track of assignments with planners

Daily schedules

Important student uniform reminders

Students MUST wear approved Dennis/Tommy Hilfiger Uniform shorts, pants, and tops.

Elementary Students MUST wear (Monday – Thursday) an American Academy Dennis sweatshirt if they want to wear a sweatshirt in their classroom.

Middle School Students are allowed to wear any American Academy sweatshirt throughout the week. The sweatshirt MUST be from Dennis/Tommy Hilfiger, the spirit wear store, or a school sanctioned trip that the host company sells a sweatshirt for (i.e. Nature Bridge).

Students MUST bring a change of shoes to wear throughout the day when they enter the building in snow boots. Students will be asked to call home if they do not have a change of shoes.

Students are NOT allowed to wear long-sleeved undershirts under their American Academy short-sleeved uniform shirt.

On dress-of-choice days, students MUST follow the guidelines of the uniform policy. Students cannot wear tank tops or any shirt that does not cover the shoulders. Students CANNOT wear jeans with holes of any sort (even ones with material behind them) and shorts/skirts MUST extend past their fingertips.

On dress-of-choice days, students who choose to wear leggings MUST have shirts that are the length of their fingertips when their arms are placed down at their side.

Students are NOT allowed to wear smart watches, including Fit Bit, Gizmo, Apple, Garmin, etc.

Students are NOT allowed to wear shoes that light up.

Students CANNOT have any colored hair dye in their hair. We understand that some sports teams have their players color their hair to rally for a big game; please be sure to have this dye washed out by the next school day.

MAKE-UP: Sixth, seventh, and eighth grade girls may wear lightly-applied mascara (brown or black), blush (pale neutral or pale pink), and lip-gloss (clear or pale pink).

Students who arrive at school outside of uniform will be asked to call home for the appropriate attire.

Specials Information