Goodbye! See you in the Fall!

Third grade was an amazing experience for all of us this year. I could not have had a better first year teaching and truly will miss my class as they move on to bigger and better things. They are so smart and so prepared for next year; and I am glad that they will only be across the hall so I can check in on them when I miss them most! So have a good summer and see you August 29th!

Quilting from Start to Finish

At the beginning of the school year students and I worked on a getting to know you quilting project where we answered a list of questions on  a variety of colored triangles. We then quilted the triangles together along with square photographs of ourselves. The class quilt has been hanging outside of our classroom all year and serves as a welcome sign to our many visitors. If they take the time to stop and read it, they will learn our favorite colors, foods, school subjects, and even names. 


To close our school year, we quilted again. The difference was that instead of mixing ourselves up throughout the quilt we each had our own personalized quilting block. Each student used tangram shapes to create a design unique to them on a 10x10" block. (Be sure to ask you third grader what " means by the way!) The cool thing about these designs is that each tangram shape has a meaning to your third grader. Each tangram is something they learned this year. The code was as follows: blue rhombus- human body, red trapezoid-biography, green triangle- reading, yellow hexagon- math, orange square- community, and brown skinny rhombus- what I like about third grade. 


This activity was really fun for our class because it gave us a chance during our last week to reflect on those things we had learned that were important to us and talk about our memories with our friends. And the end result was absolutely beautiful! 

Community Meetings

As I mentioned earlier in the post about ex-town manager Joe Derouche and mayor Robert E. Macdonald, our third graders have been researching communities this spring semester. Part of our studies was discovering the process and purpose of the town meeting. During the last full week of school, students hosted a set of four mock meetings following some basic rules of a typical town meeting.


Our first town meeting was actually a class community meeting discussing the class hallway expectations. Students had to debate the punishment for talking repeatedly in the hall because we had been having so many issues lately. We argued points saying all students would owe time for one student's talking and points saying that the student talking would be the student who owed the time. Everyone did a great job debating both sides and in the end we did a vote by hands to find that the student who spoke would be the student who owed the time. That argument won unanimously. Go figure!

The following three days and three town meetings were more directly related to the three communities we were studying: Gorham, Mexico, and Lewiston, ME. All meetings had to do with school issues that are actually relevant within the communities such as combining schools between districts, renewing schools with no budget, and moving the Pre-K students to a new building. Students were full of wonderful insights on each topic and really enjoyed the process of arguing an opinion and voting as a community. We also practiced skills such as secretary notation and moderator of the meeting itself. In the end, we learned a lot about what it takes to run a community and how things aren't always as easy as we think they are. 

Maine Wildlife Park

On Thursday, May 31st all of Montello's third graders went to Maine Wildlife Park and it rocked! Some of the field trip highlights as told by my students:

• We saw the mountain lion get up from a nap and it peed!
• The white peacock opened its tail and everyone who saw sighed "woahhh" at the exact same moment.
• Daniel and his dad accidentally squirted Yabeth with a hose.
• Ethen got some animal food stuck in the bear's fur- he missed his mouth.
• There should be more water fountains there because third graders are very thirsty people!
• There is such a thing as an albino porcupine and raccoon!
• Female moose look like camels and sometimes donkeys too.

Animal Research Projects

To prepare for the annual third grade field trip to Maine Wildlife Park my third graders did research on the various animals who live in Maine. Students were asked to think of four questions that would jump start their research. They needed to think of two thin questions (easy to answer/can find quickly) and two thick questions (harder to answer/use multiple resources); and then use books and websites to find the answers. After finding the answers and maybe even more, students wrote the information in their own words. They made posters about their animals to show the class the week of the field trip. On Tuesday, May 29th, we sat all day long and listened to each other present our findings. We learned so many new things and got really excited to go see all the animals that upcoming Thursday. One of my favorite things about presentation day was how responsible the students were when listening to one another, asking questions, and giving compliments on their friends' projects. They have all grown up so much and are definitely ready for fourth grade!

Green Thumbed Third Graders

At the beginning of the school year I had tried applying to a grant for our third graders to have their own AeroGarden. Since we did not get the grant our class had to wait all year until the spring time to buy and plant seeds. We have been growing seed for Coleus, Pansy, Impatiens, and Petunia plants. We watered them everyday and sat them in the sun and waited. After months of tender love and care our plants are HUGE!! We are donating them to the librarian Ms. Gibbons to plant in her garden at home. We hope they survive the summer! She'll have to keep us updated...

Hexagon Cookies

As I have mentioned in previous posts, students have been working hard to understand fractions in our classroom. When it finally clicked for many of us was when we started using the tangram shapes. We found that 6 triangles are equal to one hexagon. Three rhombuses and two trapezoids are also equal to one hexagon. We also learned that we can combine these different shapes to make the hexagon. We did this by playing a game called Fraction Cookies. Which I am sure you all saw come home a month or so ago. Students would roll a die that had different fractions on each side. The fraction that they landed on was how much they would put on their hexagon cookie. After rolling a couple times, students would try to adjust their fractions by using the least amount of fractional pieces. Once the cookie was filled though, they were not allowed to add any more pieces. The student who used the least amount of pieces in the end was the winner. Below is Devon's explanation for his placement of fractions on his hexagon cookie. 

NWEA Test Relief

As we all know students take NWEA growth tests three times a year so that our district can record student growth. Teachers use the data from these tests to modify teaching and best match student strengths and weaknesses to our lesson plans. At the end of the year these tests can be very stressful for students and teachers because of all the pressure to not only make growth but hit a projected learning target. In order to ease some of the student stress and anxiety about the test we took the half hour before the test to calm down and play like fun games We played Freeze Tag, Duck, Duck, Goose, and Red Rover. We had so much fun and laughed harder than we had all year. It really helped us to relax before the test. Just ask Mohamed and Eman... Mohamed made the most growth in reading for our class going up 21 points since this winter while Eman made the most growth in language and math going up 20 points in math and 15 points in language!

Mayor vs. Town Manager

While studying communities, students paid specific attention to the difference between the meanings of rural, urban, and suburban. In order to learn more about these words we are studying the three Maine communities of Lewiston, Gorham, and Mexico.

In our research, students had the opportunity to interview the mayor of Lewiston, Robert E. MacDonald, and the retired town manager of Mexico, Joseph Derouche. Mr. MacDonald came to our classroom and answered a list of questions that the students had created in preparation for his visit. Some important things they learned about him were that he cannot fire anyone because he has an elected positon and that about 100 people help him do his job. A few weeks later students interviewed Mr. Derouche by using Skype. We had to interview him using Skype because Mr. Derouche has MS and is in a wheel chair. It is difficult for him to leave the house because sometimes he gets tired and it is better for him to stay at home. (Some of you may remember us interviewing Mr. Derouche for our biography unit at the beginning of the year.) Some important things we learned about Mr. Derouche being a town manager was that he had 29 employees helping him and he was allowed to fire people because he was appointed as town manager instead of being voted in by the community.

After interviewing both men, the class made a venn diagram comparing and contrasting what we had learned about the jobs of running an urban and rural community in Maine. We talked about why we think there are differences between the two and what we thought it might have been like if we could have interviewed the head of Gorham. Would they be a mayor or a town manager? We weren't sure.

Map of Doinkville

As part of our community unit, students developed a town within our classroom named Doinkville. "Doink" is a game that we have been playing in our classroom that involves tagging one another and shouting  "Doink!" Because of desk groupings in the classroom, students were able to identify streets and name them in the town. We had six streets all named after things we had been learning this year or important school words like Monty, Spruce, and eagle. Students desks were a buildings in the community. They found out what building they were based on a drawing from a group of cards. They may have been a house, a library, a grocery store, a restaurant, or some other important part of the community. Students designed their building and added it to a town map. They also helped to design the map even further by adding in details like grass, forests, zoos, and rivers. They even ended up showing their map to the mayor of Lewiston, Robert E. MacDonald, when he came to visit us and talk about his role in the community. Other activities they did with regard to our community was create a list of demographics, nominate, vote for, and hire a chief of police, and develop a list of laws for the community to follow (mostly following the classroom expectations and 3 Bs of course).