Alien Invasion Postponed

While we have been working hard on researching our planets and writing our creative stories, students have yet to work on their planet posters or persuasive letters to the aliens planning to settle in the inner or outer solar system. We are continuing to work hard and prepare for our Mission Day but we don't think we will be able to get everything ready in time for our scheduled March 1st date. We will keep you posted on the future Mission Day date which will hopefully be within the next two weeks or so. Thank you for being so patient, the aliens... I mean students really appreciate it.

Writing Conferences

An important part of the writing process that my students have been working hard at this year is conferencing. We love to go to the teachers and share our hard work but we are working really hard to count on one another for the same writing support. There are lots of creative thinkers in our class, there are students who love collecting interesting and juicy words, and we all are practicing being good listeners! 

Right now we are working to write space stories that somehow incorporate our research planets. Gidhan was having a hard time coming up with a plot for her Pluto space story and once she finally got something down, she worked with Sam- our expert writer, to change a few things that seemed a little confusing. She read her story to him and while asking her questions and helping her out with some of those confusing parts, he also worked to give her praise for what she already had. Great work Sam and Gidhan!

Valentine's Day

We didn't have a special holiday party this Valentine's Day but a lot of our classmates brought in valentines for their friends and some students even brought snacks. We had an extended snack because of the amount of treats that were brought in and classmates had time to enjoy each other and all that sugar!

Timed Multiplication Tests Ahhhhhh!!!

It has been 2 weeks now since we started our unit on multiplication and we are wracking our brains for these timed tests! We already can skip count by 2, 5, and 10... multiplying by 1 and 0 is easy pea-zy, lemon squeezy, and we are working on our 3s and 4s. Students are given 50 question, 5 minute timed tests at least 3 times a week that focus on these facts so that we can keep track of the multiples we've mastered. There is a chart we graph our successes and track the multiples we need to be tested on. The 50 questions start on multiples of 0-2 and work their way up to 0-12. Once we master the 2s, we move onto 3s, 4s, and so on. Right now we have students taking tests at the 2,3,4, and 5 levels. The best part of these timed tests is that they always review and incorporate the facts we've mastered so that we don't forget. We love multiplication!!

Nonfiction Features

In a small reading group some students were focused on learning different nonfiction features and what their purposes were. Everyday we would begin our reading by skimming through the text on a scavenger hunt looking for those features. We would make lists and explain how each feature worked. By the end of the week reading and reviewing the text, we tested our memories and wrote the feature lists on our own. Some of the features we focused on were: the title, headings, bullets, captions, glossary, index, map, and table of contents.

Onomatopoeia

 Onomatopoeia is our new favorite word in third grade. We have been working on ways to hook our readers in the beginning of our stories and one of the strategies we have been using is onomatopoeia- sound words! Bang! Boom! Crash! Kapow in some cases... We like the word onomatopoeia because it's huge and makes us sound awesome when we say it. We like using sound words in our writing because they sound funny and are cool. 

"Badabing, badaboom," went the little old lady with the alligator purse.- Abdi H.

3D Community Map Completed!

We have finally completed out community map! We finished painting the last few buildings, drew in street lines, and parking spaces. We added the street signs that were once in the classroom and voila! The map is hanging awesomely in our hallway! It's really great because the guidance classroom is right down the hall and all the classes that walk by stare at our map on the way there. We have students and teachers who stop and point. They talk about how great our map is! The sixth graders next door really want to have a map like ours and their teacher is thinking about doing a 3D map of the China wall in April during cultural diversity month. We even have a second grade class who wants to schedule a time to come up and get a personal tour of the map from our class. It definitely is an awesome hallway display and I am so excited for my hard working third graders who spent so much time learning about what it means to be a part of a community and the difference between rural, urban, and suburban community set ups.

Manipulating the Skeleton

 

While cleaning the room one afternoon, I found that  our skeleton had been tampered with. He was chewing his phalanges in an oh so embarrassed way! "Who did this?!" I asked a group of giggling students. Well I found the culprit... it was Sam! Since then, Sam continues to pose our skeleton in awkward and amusing ways. I think someone has a future in comedy, or maybe mannequin design?