Dear Parents,

Welcome to third grade. I am very pleased to be your child's third grade teacher. My first teaching experiences were in Waterbury and Middlebury teaching special education. I also did some part time teaching while my boys were younger. For the past fourteen years I have been teaching third grade. The first six were at Baldwin and the last eight at Judson.

I reside in Watertown with my husband John. I have two sons aged 24 and 22. My oldest, John, is in Dominica in medical school and my younger son Christopher is studying for his masters in anatomy and neurobiology at Virginia Commonwealth University. I enjoy reading, listening to music, cooking, gardening, and using the computer.

Among some of the things the students learn in third grade are reading strategies, multiplication, cursive writing, and more developed writing skills.

I hope you will find this web page helpful. This is a way to keep you informed of assignments and other happenings in the classroom. I generally update it weekly. Students are still responsible to record homework assignments daily in class in the agenda and to get it signed.

Please feel free to contact me with any concerns or questions. I will get in touch with you as soon as possible. A note or phone call should be used for anything that needs immediate attention.

Patricia Chipko                                                         

What We Are Learning 

This year I will be using this section to let you know what skills and areas we are studying in the different academic areas. I will update it periodically.

The students will be using the Storytown Reading Program.  Our first theme is School Days. We will be learning and expanding on many skills including:  finding the main idea, characterization and setting, and using vocabulary in context. They will be asked to answer questions about what they have read and use details in the story to justify their answers.   Also, we will be working on writing sentences using proper punctuation, capitalization, and grammar. They will be asked to identify complete sentences with subjects and predicates. Students will learn about different types of sentences. They will be putting sentences together to form paragraphs.  We will be looking at sound patterns to help them spell their words correctly.  It is important that they apply their spelling skills to daily work.

In math, we will begin exploring place value. We will learn how to write numbers in four ways:  standard form, expanded form, pictorial form, and word form. We will begin to create story problems using addition and subtraction number sentences.  The students will learn key words that will help them decide which operation to use to solve a word problem. It is very important that students know their basic addition and subtraction facts.  Please review facts to 18 orally with your child.

In Social Studies we will be studying about communities and then maps. They will be learning about different types of communities.   This year we will be alternating between Social Studies and Science.