We had some classroom money to spend from our gracious PTO so the kids brainstormed some ideas, the most popular being a class pet! They really wanted a hamster, but I just couldn't handle the responsibility, so we settled on a fish! This morning at Morning Meeting we came up with some names and the kids voted throughout the day. So this is our newest edition, Bubbles! We went over the care and feeding of Bubbles and talked about how often and how much food he will need. We decided we'd leave him in his little cup until tomorrow morning to be sure the water is settled appropriately. We added a new job to our job chart, the veterinarian, who will be responsible for feeding Bubbles each week. We were even able to teach Bubbles how to take a selfie! We did our best fish faces, so he wouldn't feel awkward! And finally, what a spectacular day back at it today! Look at all these Super Stars OFF the chart! The clips that weren't off the chart were all on pink! Way to be focused and respectful kiddos!
0 Comments
Crazy...Socks and hair, That is!After 2 full evenings of conferences and 5 days of school this week, teachers around here might feel a little crazy, but we're looking a little crazy these days too! Yes, that's an actual Eagle's Nest in Mrs. Michels' hair! So awesome! We gathered up with some friends to show off our creativity for the crazy! Even the principal was a little crazy in the hair today! Reading buddies!We had another gathering with our reading buddies this morning too! It was a great day to cozy up with a friend and read a good book! Cause and effectThis unit in reading we're working on sequencing events in a story or text, as well as cause and effect relationships within text. Cause and Effect tends to be a challenging skill for 3rd graders so we started with an interactive activity where students wrote their own effect to six different causes that I put around the room on posters. It was fun to read the different effects they came up with for each cause! This was just so cute during Read to Self time, I couldn't resist snapping a picture! I don't think any of them realized I took it, they were so engaged in their books! Kick your feet up and have an awesome weekend!
Today we celebrated our Veteran's with our annual Veteran's Day Program. The kids sang beautifully and looked so patriotic! Caden and Emily had special solos at the beginning of one of the songs! They both sounded so awesome! Way to go! We've also spent some time this week digging a little deeper into what Veteran's Day is all about and how it became a holiday. Today the activities culminated with a reading about the history of Veteran's Day and then the kids made timelines with the facts from their readings. They were able to work with partners and spread out around the room to construct these large lines. It was very good practice looking back in the text to make sure they had the events in the correct order!
Pumpkins!We're trying our hands at some informational writing this October! Later in the year, third graders will do an independent research project about a MN Zoo animal, so this pumpkin research project we do as a whole class to get the gist of researching. We read a book about pumpkins all together and then took some notes in our flip books. We will write a few informational paragraphs from our notes later this week. As you notice, one of the areas of research is "What is it like on the inside?" so naturally we had to open up these pumpkins to investigate a little further! The investigating this morning was actually two-fold. I slipped in a little math without them hardly realizing it! :) First, students had to walk around and make some predictions about circumference, weight, and number of seeds. The kids also voted for their favorite looking pumpkin. Next, we did an accurate circumference measurement, weighed each pumpkin, and finally got to dig in and count the seeds! This was a huge job and these pumpkins held more seeds than the kids thought! We also took a moment to write descriptions on the board (later to put in our flip books) about our observations of the insides of the pumpkins! We grouped the seeds into piles of 10 so we could count them easily! This was voted the most favorite pumpkin! This was our largest pumpkin at 19.4 pounds with 631 seeds inside! This pumpkin had a little rotten spot, so they worked around the yucky part! Our data! Woo Hoo...New Selfie Stick! Buddies!We also got a chance to read with our Kindergarten Buddies this morning! The third graders were wonderful leaders and readers! We'll have a chance to read with our buddies a few more times this year. We also get to sit near them during all school assemblies! It's a neat way to make connections and friendships across the school! Happy halloween!Beautiful Fall weather!Friday afternoon we made the most of the amazing MN weather and went outside for our Friday Fun time! Kids are doing a great job of finishing their work by the end of the week! Please check with your child to make sure they are staying caught up on their math journals and their morning work (purple and yellow sheets). These can all come home in the evening for homework if they're running out of time to finish during the day!
Friday we had our first SOAR Celebration together in the gym! We do this to come together as a school and celebrate a number of things! Each month we sing Happy Birthday to all of the kids having birthdays in the month (and they get to stand during the song). The Eagle comes in and we acknowledge how many reading minutes we're accumulating for our 400 Club and hear from the PTO about upcoming events. One of the favorite parts of our time together is when we play minute-to-win-it style games, by grade level. This time Andrew was our class representative and he did an awesome job pumpkin bowling! He had a wirey pumpkin that he bowled into a tower of toilet paper ghosts! I think he got a top score for all of 3rd grade! Woo Hoo! Students are selected to be class representatives in the games several different ways throughout the year. They might be chosen because they were exhibiting SOARing behavior consistently throughout the month, or it might be because they had the top number of reading minutes for the month, or they might just have their name drawn from a hat! The end of today was a bit on the sad side for our class, as we said good bye and best wishes to our friend, Raniyah. She and her family are moving to Iowa. The kids have already caught on to the need for a class selfie on important occasions like this, so in the last minutes of the day we piled together to get one last picture with our dear friend! Finally, because I am proud, I will share a success from my weekend! I ran the Mankato Marathon 10K for the 3rd time! It is one of my favorite run courses of all time because of a few things. The fall colors are AH-MAZING, especially down Stoltzman Road hill. Stoltzman Road hill is number two for why this race is a good one...much of the run is downhill and that's always great. Running a local race is so fun to see familiar faces, not only on the side of the course, but running beside you as well! The community support for this race is truly awesome (all distances, not just the 10K). Lastly, the weather is usually beautifully cool and crisp. So, if you've ever considered doing a longer running race, think about it for next year (disclaimer: they did not pay me to write that, although I think maybe they should!) In the end, I was able to carry my summer fitness into this beautiful October day and got a 10K PR (personal record) with a time of 51:40, 2 minutes and 16 seconds faster than the last time I did this race! My body is ready for a bit of a break until the next training cycle begins in January! :) Looking forward to a fabulous three-day week!
Today was our big school fundraiser, the Eagle lake FunD Run! The theme this year was "GLOW For It!", so we were supposed to wear neon colors and glow all day! The kids cheered on other grade levels as they rounded out the last tenth of the mile-long run! This is a good spot to have a cheering section since it's right at the top of the big hill on LeSueur Ave! I'm so proud of our 3rd graders! They all did their BEST EFFORT for this event! We had to use GRIT, especially at the end! In the end, the important thing is that we did get a little bit of learning in today, but we also had so much FUN!!
What a blessing in the weather department for our fall Bike and Walk to School day today! It was a gorgeous fall day here in Minnesota! Although many of the kids in our class did walk and bike to school today, I wasn't able to snap any pictures of them on their way in today. Therefore, you'll have to look at teacher pictures today! I didn't actually ride my bike from my home to school because it doesn't get light out until 7:15 am, so 30 minutes isn't quite enough time for me to get the 21 miles in from home to school! I hitched a ride in the car to Mankato with my hubby and then rode my bike 4.8 miles to school from his work. After school a few of us teachers rode to Madison Lake for dinner. It was a marvelous evening to be outside! Mrs. Michels, Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Krook and I at The Landing in Madison Lake The teacher team who cycles together, stays together! I am so blessed to call my teaching partners my friends! We have so much fun together! For the record, I did actually bike home. It was 18 miles from The Landing in Madison Lake to my house (so a grand total of 29 miles on a school day! Woo Hoo!)! What a FABULOUS day! Look at all of that Bling around my neck today! We had a good chunk of our class "Off the Chart" today and the rest of the clips were hanging out right at the top on Pink! What a fabulous day! The kids are working so hard! Here's What We've Been Up To! We've been practicing our Read to Self every day of school so far this year. As we've been working, we've practiced building our stamina to work up to our goal of at least 20 minutes of silent reading time. We started with just 5 minutes at a time and have added a few minutes each day. During this building time, we have also discussed how to pick a "Just Right Book", as well as how to find a comfortable place in the room to read. Here is our reading time this morning. Side Note: Did you notice our Dream Catchers hanging from the ceiling? We made these the first week of school while we discussed our Hopes and Dreams for the school year. The kids wrote down a few of their goals and they are hanging from the bottom of the strings. We have also started our first reading unit focusing on finding Main Ideas and Details. Today we practiced finding the main idea of a group of pictures in a bag. For example, one bag contained pictures of a beach towel, sunscreen, waterbottle, cooler, and a pail and shovel so the main idea of that bag is "When you go to the beach there are several items you should bring with you to make it a great day". The kids worked in groups and rotated around to 10 different bags identifying main ideas. Keep reading at home! 400 Club Calendars came home in Tuesday folders today, so start tracking those reading minutes! A suggestion is to keep the reading calendar in the Take Home Binder and then you always know right where it is! Remember, if the students read 400 minutes in one month, they get a special charm for their backpack!
This has been a very busy week of learning in 3rd grade! We are starting to get into our daily routines each day! This week we looked at some big ideas as we read. We worked on making inferences, making connections, asking thick and thin questions as we read, and finally visualizing. For our visualizing lesson we read the following poem with the last stanza covered up. We drew self portraits and in our "visualizing sunglasses" about what the neighbor's dog looked like. Next, we uncovered the last stanza and then realized that sometimes visualizations change throughout a story. Lastly, we drew what the neighbor's dog REALLY looked like on the right side of the lenses. My Neighbor's Dog is Purple! By Jack Prelutsky My neighbor's dog is purple, it's eyes are LARGE and green. It's tail is almost endless, The longest I have seen. My neighbor's dog is quiet, It does not bark one bit. But when my neighbor's dog is near I feel afraid of it. My neighbor's dog looks nasty, it has a wicked smile... Before my neighbor painted it, it was a crocodlie! Today we celebrated Johnny Appleseed's birthday! We made homemade applesauce in the crockpot. We also tried a new Apple Pie Pizza recipe that was SUPER tasty! We worked on reading recipes, measuring, and following directions! This is us enjoying our pizza for snack today! Enjoying our applesauce while watching the 1948 version of Johnny Appleseed
|
HomeCheck back often to see updates on what we're doing in the classroom. Archives
November 2017
Categories |