On Thursday evening, these students attended the Poetry Slam held at the Candy Kitchen. These four students from our class attended with Ashlyn and Makenzie reading poems they had written and Cam reading a poem by Shel Silverstein. Madison was there to cheer them on! Congratulations to the three poetry readers! I am so proud of them!
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On Monday, we talked about the importance of taking care of our Earth and ways that we can make our Earth a better place! What a better way to send that message than by watching The Lorax. Dr. Suess knew what he was talking about way back in 1955!
Congratulations to Alex for earning a Good News call from Mrs. Torbit! We are so proud of him!
Tomorrow we will begin our final six weeks of the school year! Where has the time gone? Tuesday is Earth Day! We will be doing activities all day long that pertain to Earth Day. I hope the students walk away with a better understanding of how important it is to take care of our Earth! Biography presentations will begin on Wednesday and continue through Thursday. I am really looking forward to seeing the hard work of the students and their final product! We will begin decimals in Math and study immigration in Social Studies. Science will continue with the study of the Earth/planets/phases of the moon. We will continue writing poems in English and we will begin our first novel "Chocolate Fever" on Wednesday! There is not be a spelling unit this week due to biography presentations and a shorter week. It is a week of new beginnings for several subjects and I am excited to begin! Congratulations to Alex for being our orange card winner of the week! Way to go, Alex!!
This week will be a short week and bring a welcome break for students and faculty alike! (: We will be taking a unit test in Reading this week and then begin our novels after Easter. We are so exciting to begin reading our first novel, "Chocolate Fever" next week. Math will wrap up another unit on tally tables, frenquency tables, surveys, and pictographs. In Science, we will begin studying the moon and all of its phases and Social Studies will provide class time to work on biographies. Biography presentations will be held on April 23rd and 24th of next week. I would like to see all rough drafts of the written report by Wednesday, April 16. The students are doing a fabulous job with the poetry unit that Mrs. Simpson is teaching this quarter! Some students have even changed their mind about how they feel about poetry! The students also have the opportunity to read any of the poems they have written at Poetry Night to be held at the Candy Kitchen on Thursday, April 24 at 6:30. This is not required, but I encourage the students to attend if possible. It will be a fun evening of listening to original and published poems written by locals writers and well as famous ones. There will also be opportunity to purchase ice cream, which is always a plus! Have a wonderful and happy Easter! We are keeping very busy around here these days! Dioromas were brought in at the beginning of the week, and I must say, we have some very creative students in our class. I will be posting pictures of the dioramas soon! Everyone did a fabulous job!
Next project will be the biography reports and presentations. I hope everyone has had the chance to read over the information and understand what is expected of the children. They will be getting class time to work on their written part, but they will also need to work at home. Please let me know if you have any questions about the assignment. This week in Science we are finishing up our unit on rocks, volcanoes, eathquakes, weathering, erosion and recycling and will begin a unit of study the planets and the moon. The students love this kind of chapter! We are also finishing up fractions in Math and beginning surveys, charts, and pictographs. Social Studies will also be finishing up a chapter on the early settlers, Oregon Trail and the rise and fall of boom towns! Writing had become a part of our everyday routine. The students write in their journals every day, and are becoming quite good at it. They are also beginning a poetry unit and will begin writing their own poetry soon. They continue to practice writing essays. Writing is no longer a scary topic. The students are learning to type this year. With the help of a program called" Dance Mat Typing", the students are enjoying the typing practice. With the new PARCC assessment beginning in the 2014-2015 school year, the students will need to be able to type to take this new assessment. Several of them are beginning to type really well! I can't believe we are in the month of April already! Time flies when you are having fun! Congratulations to Dannie for being our orange card winner this week! We are so proud of you!
Exciting things are happening in third grade this week. You may have noticed our pictures in our surgical gear this week. The class got a chance to operate on contractions, cutting the two words apart and putting them together as a contraction with a band-aid. The class had a blast! Now that we are in a routine again, we have been extremely busy!! In Math we have been studying fractions and comparing them. (very hard) In Social Studies, we are studying the East Coast and the settlers who arrived there. In Science, we completed a chapter on volcanoes, earthquakes, weathering and erosion and will begin studying rocks next! Mrs. Simpson will be starting a unit on descriptive writing and poetry this week. The students are loving writing in their daily journals, so I am so excited to see how they will take to writing poetry! A new story about Benjamin Franklin is up next in Reading, as well as more work with summarizing and deciding between fact and non-fact. The students are always fascinated by all of the works of Benjamin Franklin! Be on the lookout for lots of exciting things to take place this spring. Mrs. Simpson and I are planning lots of fun activities for the fourth quarter! Congratulations to Cameron! He was the winner of one of the bikes donated by McDonald's during McTeacher's Night. Cameron's name was drawn out of a group of third and fourth grade boys! He was one happy little boy!
Congratulations to Mason for being our orange card winner of the week! Way to make good choices, Mason!!
Mrs. Simpson, our student teacher, will be taking over teaching duties for the next few weeks. She is required to have a "full" experience in the classroom where she plans and prepares, teaches, and grades...all of the responsibilities of a classroom teacher. I will still be present daily during her "take over" time to do some individual help, planning, and organizing for future lessons. I am sure this will be a great experience for both her and the students. She will be sending home a letter in the near future explaining exactly what she will be doing while in the classroom(: We will begin a new unit in Math on data and graphing. Social Studies will begin a new chapter on life after the Pilgrims and the Settlers in the beginning of our nation. In Reading, we will be working on the skill of fact and opinion, and continuing to refine the skills of summarizing and context clues. Volcanoes, Earthquakes, Weathering and Erosion are the topics for Science, with a test on Friday over Volcanoes and Earthquakes. In case you haven't heard, the children are increasing their writing skills daily! They are doing a wonderful job at learning how to write! They are writing in their journals daily. They are learning how to write in Social Studies and Science by using information from the text and answering questions. They are learning how to write summaries. They are learning that writing can be done in any subject. I've even has some students proclaim they love to write!! On Friday, I sent home an assignment for the Indian Dioramas. They will be due on March 31st. Please let me know if you have any questions on how to help your child with this project. They are allowed help from an adult, but please let the child do as much of the work as possible. I am seeing more and more signs of spring! Congratulations to Ashlyn, our Golden Paw winner for 3rd grade this week!! Excellent job on making good choices!
This is a week of new beginnings. We are starting new chapters in several subjects this week. We will be studying volcanoes and earthquakes in Science, beginning a new unit in Reading starting with a story that is a Japanese version of Little Red Riding Hood, testing on Navajo Indians later in the week during Social Studies, finishing up probability in Math and adding journal writing into our Language Arts curriculum. Now that the ISATS are over, we can expand our horizons and take on a few more projects. We will be putting together our Snow Days essays/videos and working on summaries for the book "Mr. Popper's Penguins". We have many more projects in the planning stages for the coming weeks. Starting next week, Mrs. Simpson will be taking over the teaching duties for a few weeks as part of her student teaching responsibilities. I will still be present every day, helping individual students and doing a little "guest" teaching once-in-a-while. (: I plan on being a very active participant. We are all very excited to be having recess outside again. Please dress your child accordingly, as the weather is changing and the students will be going outside when possible! Hooray for spring! ISAT week is here! We will begin our testing on Tuesday morning and continue testing on Wednesday and Thursday completing one Math and one Reading test per day. The students have worked so hard and they are more than ready! We are wrapping up our unit on Measurement this week and will also test on Chapter 4 of Science on Friday. In Social Studies, we will begin our studies of the Native American Tribe, The Navajo Indians. In Math, we will be studying probability. We will not have a spelling test this week, nor will we be starting a new story in reading. We have had such a busy week full of activities that I have created a slideshow for you to view to see just what "A week in the Life of a Third Grader" looked like this week! OUR WEEK IN REVIEW It is always fun when I can share work done by the children that was not even an assignment! (: This poem was written by Ashlyn and shared with her permission
School School is fun! School is cool! School is for learning and we like to learn! School can be hard and school can be easy but the best part about school is when you show kindness and you know it! In the morning we did our lunch count. Today we went to PE. We are doing Jump Rope for Heart. We did three stories on the Unit Reading test. We talked about summarizing. We worked on our sand paintings in Art. In Math we talked about angles and segments. In Science, we did an experiment with water...and I got wet. We went to Tiger Time. We worked on homophones and finished our day doing Math centers.
First, we did Morning Math and learned about pictographs. Then we went to PE and learned about Jump Rope for Heart. Next, we watched JJ get released. We did a bar graph and an extended response in Reading. Then, we went to Art and did sand paintings. In Math, we did solid figures and an ISAT sheet. Last we had a brain break. We acted out Bob's story!
The students in my class have made me one proud teacher this week! They have decided to make and sell rubber band bracelets while donating the profit to "Locks of Love". Their goal is to raise $50. By the looks of their profits from the last two days, they are well on their way to reaching and surpassing their goal! These students came up with the idea all on their own! What a selfless and compassionate act! I am so blessed to have these students in my class! Congratulations to Hunter for being our orange card winner of the week! Also, congratulations to Dannie for receiving a good news call for his efforts in making good choices and for being such a hard worker!
Our Spelling Bee was a big success! The students really enjoyed the format of the Bee. To go along with our study of the Olympics, everyone was rewarded a medal for their efforts. The students all agreed that they would like to hold another Spelling Bee in the future! We are making our final preparations for our ISAT tests which will be administered the first week of March. I will be sending home the testing schedule and an explanation of our week on Monday. There is also a list of our testing schedule on the Coming Attractions page of this website. Please make every effort to make sure your child gets plenty of rest and a good breakfast the week of our testing. Please assure your child to do their best and not to worry. It will be done before we know it! We will be finishing up our unit on measurement next week in Science. In Math, we will be covering several topics that will need to be learned before the ISATS. We will have a unit test in Reading on Wednesday to complete the first unit in our second book. We will taking a "mock" test on Friday to show the students what the actual testing will be like. It will be timed and cover all the concepts in Math that we have covered so far. I hope that this will ease some of the worries that some of the students are experiencing. Today was fun at Tiger Time. We did math and Mrs. Taylor was helping us to prepare for the ISATs. Earlier in the day we were seeing how long the blue whale actually was. We measuri in feet using the tile squares on the floor and laying down on the floor with our class. That was our math lesson. Then at the end of the day we did fun, cool, awesome math games. At the very end of the day Mrs. Bergner signed our assignment notebooks.
We are on a streak! We have now officially attended school for seven days in a row. Of course, President's Day will break that streak, but we will gladly start another one!
Congratulations to Mia, Ella, Mason, and Kaci on being our orange cards winners this week! Love to see the students making good choices! Check out our writing on our favorite Olympics Sport! Click on the link below to see a preview of our writing! Don't forget to come to Open House on February 25 from 6 to 7 to see our work up close and in person. Our Favorite Winter Olympics Sport This week we will begin our measurement unit in Science and solid figures and congruency in Math. Reading will be a review of skills including figurative language, cause and effect and sequencing. In Language, we are still learning different kinds of suffixes, which is also the skill we are covering in Spelling. Sharpening our writing skills is also preparing us for the ISATs. We have done so much writing lately that some students have had "writer's cramp." (: Our Spelling Bee will be held on Thursday, February 20. We are not following a tradition Spelling Bee "style", enabling all the students an equal shot with multiple chances to practice spelling. It should prove to be a fun and exciting event! The Spelling Bee will replace our spelling test for the week, but we will still take our dictation sentence test on Friday. In a few weeks we will be taking our ISAT tests. More information will be following in next week's blog! Students found that practicing their multiplication facts became just a little more fun using QR codes! The object was to answer the problem then scan the QR code using iPads to check their work. Challenging problems were thrown in the mix to test the students' ability to problem solve. The conversations overheard and the "meeting of the minds" were fabulous! Four days this week!! Woohoo! Let's hope we can make it 5 next week!
Congratulations to Mason for winning the Red Ribbon week coloring contest! Great job! We are working hard to get ready for our ISAT tests! We have been working on our extended response writing piece as well as finishing up our 5 paragraph essay. Don't tell the kids, but I think they are starting to enjoy writing! This week will be spent on writing and more writing. We will finish up our study of suffixes in Language and begin place value in Math. In Social Studies, we will take a short break from the Native Americans and discuss the history of the Olympics, including the tradition of the flame, and the background of Olympic rings. There might even be a writing activity involved. (: In Reading, we are working on cause and effect and author's purpose. We have also been studying figurative language, which has been such a fun concept to study. We will wrap up our Science unit this week on environment and endangered species and begin our customary and metric units next week. Our Valentine's Day party will be held on Friday at 10:10am. You may begin sending valentines in this week. The students are super excited. We will also be dismissing at 11am on Friday for School Improvement. There is no school on Monday, February 17 for President's Day. Have a great week and stay warm!! |