Class Photo

DeSoto Caverns

 

We had a great time at DeSoto Caverns! Our students explored a "Cave Crawl"(and saw Ms. Gorman and Ms. Brown painstakingly make their way through), traversed a maze, and saw a really cool lights show in the cave. Needless to say, we were pretty sleepy on the bus ride back!

Coach Wagner Visits Our Classroom!

And he's just a little taller than Ms. Gorman!

Reading to our class

 Being silly! We were blessed to have Coach Wagner visit, and we learned a lot about the commitments student-athletes and professional athletes make to achieve their goals!

Exploring Unknown Solids

I love chemistry. Right now, we are experimenting with five unknown solids and observing how they react with water. We are learning about the terms: dissolve, soluble, insoluble, solution and suspension. This is only the beginning of our lab experiments. Soon we will be exploring how these unknown solids react to liquids other than water... and the results are awesome!

5 Minute Science Experiments: Density

Why did one egg sink to the bottom of one cup of water while the egg in the other cup floated? Drum roll please..... It's all because of density! The egg in freshwater sank to the bottom because an egg has a higher density than freshwater. However, an egg has a lower density than saltwater, so it stayed afloat!

March Bulletin

In need of some flowers after all this rain with some fraction flowers!

Poetry Anthology Samples

In creating their poetry anthologies, students created some amazing pieces of work! It was so much fun to see what poems from other authors students chose to write and to read their own creations. Loved it! Thank you Beth Newingham from Scholastic for sharing the idea!

Valentine's Day Party

Some pictures from our class party!

Alliteration Leaves

We practiced alliteration by creating a phrase using our student numbers, so my student who is number 2 in our room might write "two tiny twigs twirling around". These were written on leaf cut outs that became a poetic number line outside our classroom. I loved seeing what these creative kids came up with!

Fraction Fun

This month, we are learning all about fractions. We had so much fun on our visit to CiCi's Pizza, where we enjoyed making AND eating our pizza! We talked about dividing a whole into equal shares and what we would do if, for example, 7 people wanted to share 8 pizzas equally. (Each person would get 1 1/8.) Thank you CiCi's for such a wonderful time... You were so generous to us!

I also enjoyed making fraction flowers (found on Pinterest, of course), where the students divided 3 circles into halves, fourths, and eighths to make leaves, tulips, and sunflowers. So cute!

Other games I like to play with my small groups to practice fractions include "I have... Who has..." with fractions in number and picture form and "Order Them!" where I lay out unit fractions for students to order least to greatest or greatest to least on a number line of 0-1. This game is ideally played first with fractions in picture form and then in numerical form. It can also be played for written fractions for students to practice reading fraction names.

Since fractions are a harder concept, particularly for third graders, I love hearing about other ideas!!!! Thanks for stopping by!

February Bulletin

In preparation for our Poetry Cafe, and to share in the spirit of Valentine's Day, we made "poetrees". Our students wrote similes and metaphors on hearts and these formed the leaves on the trees. The title is "Check Out"..... "Our Poetrees".

Poetry Cafe

I absolutely love February. No, it is not because of Valentine's Day. Rather, I love the fact that my students get to work during this month to create their own poetry anthologies. These are collections of poetry that they have both copied and created. These are the requirements for their anthologies:

My Poetry Anthology Checklist

ü  Decorated Cover Page

ü  Table of Contents

ü  Bio Poem

ü  Simile Sentence

ü  3 of my favorite poems written by other authors

ü  A Concrete Poem

ü  A Haiku

ü  A Free Style Poem

ü  An rhyming poem of at least 6 lines in ABBA or ABAB rhyming style

ü  4 out of 6 literary devices are used: onomatopoeia, simile, metaphor, alliteration, personification, sensory images

We learn all about different poetic devices through other poems, picture books, and songs. I especially love using tongue twisters to introduce alliteration. I can't wait to see my students' finished products!

Math Worshop Menu

Thanks for a great link, Ms. Brown! The students will use it to define math terms during their math workshop stations.

Math Dictionary

During our math workshop, students are responsible for:

- completing a paper worksheet
- practicing fluency with: flashcards, our Multiplication Mania game, or ipads (if we have them)
- meeting with me for small group
- defining vocabulary words
- Completing an activity to practice the math content we are focusing on. Currently, our focus is fractions.

At the end of the week, students pass in their completed work along with their Math Workshop Menu. We then attach a rubric to the completed menu. A point is taken off every time a student is seen off task. Between must do's and can do's there is always something TO DO!

Rocket Run

Finally....pictures!

We had such a fun time running to raise money for our school.

We got a little crazy...

And a little sweaty...

But sharing a good time with great friends made it all worth it!

A special thank to all the parents who helped out! It would not have worked without you!

Earth Materials

I absolutely love our AMSTI science kits. Next week, we will start learning about earth materials. To kickstart the unit, we did a word study using the prefixes bio-, zoo- and geo- and the suffix -ology.

Next, we dug through Chips Ahoy cookies with nails to simulate how we would break apart our mock rocks.

We had a blast checking out which rocks contained calcite based on our vinegar tests. Rocks that had calcite fizzed in vinegar.

The kids loved it! Might there be some future archeologists in this room?!

January Tidbits

WOW, we're already halfway through third grade! I can't wait for another exciting semester! Here are a few things have been doing since coming back:

1. comparing different types of communities
2. learning how to draw conclusions
3. learning how to multiply and divide fluently

Visit next week to view photos of different activities we have done to learn multiplication!
As we continue to work on multiplying and dividing, we will also be introducing money.

Some helpful websites to boost math fluency with multplication include:
http://www.oswego.org/ocsd-web/games/Mathmagician/maths1.html
http://www.factmonster.com/mathmoney.html
http://www.multiplication.com/games

To practice money, you can visit the following sites:
http://justkidsgames.com/play.php?MakingChange
http://www.hbschool.com/activity/counting_money/

These are just a few! To view more, visit our Dean Road Website!