GRADE 3 MAY NEWSLETTER General Information It’s that time of year again when children have an opportunity to share their yearly goals with their classmates. Each class will be setting time aside during the month of May and June for students who would like to present their goals. Please contact your teacher if you have questions regarding times and dates. Gr. 3 Community Service Project ACS Heroes: On May 9th, the third graders will kick start their community service project “Raising Environmental Awareness as School Heroes.” The School Heroes project is an initiative started by Heroes of the UAE, a conglomerate of various environmentally conscious companies. The Gr. 3 students have designed posters to promote and raise awareness for environmental conservation. Part of raising awareness is to take the School Heroes Pledge. During the weeks of May 2th to May 13th students will be actively mobilizing students, friends, and family to voluntarily take a pledge.  The ACS School Heroes campaign will run from May 9th to May 13th. People can pledge online in the Elementary School Atrium from 3:15 to 4:00pm everyday. More information on the School Heroes initiative is available on www.heroesoftheuae.ae. Our goal is to get at least 200 people to pledge their support to the ACS School Heroes project. Reading We are beginning an exploration of poetry in reading and writing. As part of this work, students will be reading and identifying poems they really like. They will collect these poems, illustrate and interpret them, and use them as inspirations for their own writing. Please try to tuck in a bit of time to read poetry to your child this month. Ask your child to read aloud to you from poetry he/she loves. Oral poetry reading is a great way to build fluency and language development, and it is also just a wonderful thing to do! Enjoy! Writing Our final unit of study in writing, “Memoir: The Art of Writing Well” will start in May. In this unit, students will write memoirs; drawing on all the writing strategies they have learned during the year. They will also learn to create strategies to help themselves and each other. The focus will be on writing in depth. They will read published texts from other authors and learn new ways to structure their memoirs based on these texts. Students will continue the process of drafting, revising and editing to make their memoirs more powerful and graceful. Social Studies We are learning about countries in the Gulf Region. Our focus is on the physical geography, history, culture and economics of these countries. The cross-curricular project with Mrs. Willis has started and each child is working in a collaborative group to research a selected country and produce a Keynote presentation on that country. Look for our  “Country Keynotes” in June! Science     Third graders are investigating the growth of a bean seeds. Next month, they will continue to monitor this growth by recording their observations about the changes in the seed over a period of time. They will make connections to the life cycle of other living things, comparing and contrasting the life cycle of a plant and an animal. Math In Unit 9, children will develop a variety of strategies for multiplying whole numbers. They will begin by using mental math (computation done by counting fingers, drawing pictures, and making diagrams, as well as by computing in one’s head). Later in this unit, children will be introduced to two specific algorithms, or methods, for multiplication: the partial-products algorithm and the lattice method. May Events Here are the events for May, the last full month of school. Wow! Time has gone by fast. May 4    Board Meeting May 6    Early Release Day May 9    ES Science Fair May 9-14        Grade 3 Service Project (after school) May 10        Parent Coffee May 11        PTA Meeting May 13        Last Day For Library Books             Early Release Day             ES Spirit Day May 16        4th Quarter ASRP Ends May 20        ES Spirit Day             Early Release Day May 26        ES Assembly             ES Spirit Day May 27        Last Day For Library Class Tech News for May The third grade students are working on a social studies project pertaining to the countries in the Gulf region. The students are learning how to access a school subscription for Culture Grams. This site has some kid friendly information to help the students with their report. The students can access it at home as well as school.  The user name and password are:                 user name - 200005454                             password - dhabi     In the computer lab the children will use a presentation software to make a slideshow about their country. Mrs. Willis Technology Integrator P.E. Newsletter April has come and gone and the third graders are almost done with their first month of our swimming unit.  I along with two other swimming instructors (Ms. Tanya and Ms. Nadia) have been working with your sons and/or daughters teaching American Red Cross swim lessons.  The swim lessons have brought a nice change of pace from being in the gym or outside on the fields, and the students definately seem to be enjoying themselves.  Along with the swimming instruction, students are also learning what it means to be safe in and out of the water, as well as healthy tips when outside in the sun.  I would just like to remind parents or guardians to remember to please make sure your son and/or daughter has everything they need when they come to class (i.e., swimsuit, goggles, swim cap, towel, and bag to carry everything in). Arabic Conversation and Culture class  Gr.3 In the month of May students will continue learning more common Arabic greetings. After reviewing the previous letters, we will continue learning more letters in the Arabic text book "Arabic Alphabet" repeating simple words related to the letters Na, Ha, Wa, Ya as well as distinguishing beginning, middle, and ending sounds in single-syllable words. Students will learn and practice vocabulary words related to "Music" and  "Desert animals". Please check your child's vocabulary words booklets. From: Ms. Fadia, Mrs. Mina & Ms. Maha Gr. 3 - Arabic Language for Native Speakers        It’s May already..  We will continue working in the second part of the book and hope to cover all of it by the end of May.  In these lessons, the focus will be on the verbs in the present tense, also students will acquire more vocabulary words, reinforce word structure (nouns, verbs and adjectives) and form verbal clauses as well as write short paragraphs.  Kindly encourage your kids to work more independently in their workbooks and provide assistance whenever needed. Music News In May we will review songs we have learned this year and prepare a small in-class presentation for parents to show you some of the things we have been learning this year in music. We will also include something from our recorder unit, our rap unit and something from our opera unit. Our presentation will be May 17, 18 or 19th during your child's music class time (12:00-12:40 pm) in the ES Music Room. We hope you can join us! Recorders: Our recorder unit will end on May 13th. From now until then, students will work towards completing their recorder prectice bug and the pages included in their packets. We will have some in-class written exercises and students will practice writing music of their own. The unit ends with both a written exam and a playing test. There is a rubric in each student's packet for the playing exam. We will practice for this in class. Recorder Club: Meets on Sundays and Mondays during lunch recess and after school from 3:15-3:45. Students who need extra help or students who need to make up a Zero grade for daily points are welcome to attend. Recorder Karate: Will run from Sunday, May 16-Thursday June 03. This is a game and a friendly competition among students to continue to improve their recorder playing skills. Students are NOT required to participate. Interested students will receive a Recorder Karate packet from me beginning on Sunday, May 16. Students ready to earn a Karate belt can sign up for a time to test with me outside the ES Music Room. As students earn a belt they will receive a piece of yarn to match the belt color they have earned to put on their recorder. Belts will also be displayed in the ES Music room on the bulletin boards. Those who earn black belts will be recognized at at special gong ceremony at the assembly in June. Seminar Day: Our last Seminar Day of the year will be May 25, 26, or 27 during your child's music class on the day he/she presents. I am confirming with students this week who will present and will send the final list next week. Parents are of course welcome to attend but this is not a requirement. Student Recitals: Do you have a student who takes music lessons and is looking for a performance venue? Did your student have a music-related goal this year to present? If so, we will be having 2 student music recitals in May for children who are taking private lessons or have a music-related goal. They will be held on Wednesday, May 19 and on Wednesday, May 26 from 3:30-4:30 pm in the ES Multipurpose Room. A sign-up sheet will be available outside the music room starting Sunday, May 02. Students may sign up to perform on 1 recital. There will not be auditions but students and parents will need to fill out a form letting us know what piece will be performed, the composer and the performance length. There are a lot of ARTS events happening in school and in Abu Dhabi before the end of the year with some great opportunities for your children to attend. A few of note are: Wed     April 28        HS Band/Choir "Pops" Concert Wed    May 05-May 08    Disney's Beauty and the Beast Fri    May 14        Dame Evelyn Glennie - Percussionist Beauty and the Beast will feature a lot of people from the ACS community from students to parents as well as ACS staff members. Our very own Katie Pritz (Mother of Eli &Joy Pritz) will be performing the lead as Belle. Mr. Pavlos (HS Drama) is Gaston, Ms. Banu (Ms. Mary's assistant), Ms. Salminen (ES Librarian) and myself will be playing cello, oboe and flute in the orchestra. There are 6 performances including 2 afternoon matinees and ACS receives a discount on tickets! Tickets will be on sale every day after school in the middle school courtyard until next Monday. Evelyn Glennie is a musician we have studied in class this year and she will be coming to Abu Dhabi. Evelyn Glennie is not only the first female percussionist to make a solo playing career for herself but she herself is also 90% deaf. Tickets are available for children and adults ages 3 and up. Child tickets are only Dhs. 30.00. Visit www.abudhabiclassics.com for more details. Ms. Brooks ART 3rd grade Fish: The students practiced making several different patterns and designs before drawing out two large fish templates. They were asked to step it up a notch and really be detailed with their designs. Once the fish are painted, we will be stapling both sides together, stuffing them and hanging them as mobiles.