Papier Mache Planets

I know we have postponed Mission Day for an incredibly long time at this point, but trust me the wait will be worth it. And to keep you waiting at the edge of your seats to see all the amazing learning we've done... here is a preview of our gorgeous papier mache planets during the painting process. 

Classroom Laptops

Because of all this crazy literacy blogging we've been doing, students are on the blog throughout the day. The problem is that we only had 4 classroom laptops available for student use. I let students use our classroom computer and the SmartBoard laptop but even still we're quite a few computers short. Luckily, the district's tech support is going to be able to give our students three more laptops and I took my old laptop from home to help the students get as much access to the blog and other internet learning as possible. So we're up to 10 classroom computers. That's half of what we need to get a 1:1 ratio... not bad for 118 days of school this year! But with these new laptops, comes new desktop backgrounds... and with 19 students comes plenty of opportunity for photo shoots. Below are a few of the desktop backgrounds we have been able to come up with as of right now. They're pretty awesome!!

Inner/Outer Planet Tie Dye

Well last Monday was quite the crazy night for me. I stayed up making tie dye shirts for the entire class in my kitchen! Who knew boiling water was such hard work! 

The reason I rushed to tie dye these shirts before Mission Day was because it was Dr. Seuss week this week and Thursday was tie dye day. That's right! My third graders and I all walked around in matching tie dye uniforms on Thursday. I led the outer planets in our "cold" blue, teal, and green shirts while Mrs. Turgeon led the "hot" inner planets in their red, pink, and yellow ensembles. AMAZING!!

Editing and Revising

In preparation for Mission Day students are working to edit and revise their writing and publish stories for the big day. On Tuesday this week, students worked on editing and revising Faisal's Mars story. We found that Faisal had a great beginning that really hooked his readers. That onomatopoeia really got us excited to hear more! Then we found Faisal is really good at sounding words out so that his reader knows what he means but sometimes he gets his letters confused. We helped him fix some of his suffixes and reminded him that /tr/ can also sound like /ch/ in words like introduced and trapped. Last we helped Faisal fix some of his sentences so the words made more sense by rereading with him. 

Because of exercises like this students are able to work on editing and revising skills while also knowing the difference between the two:

• When we edit we fix spelling, grammar, punctuation, and capitalization.
• When we revise we use juicier words and add or take away sentences and phrases to make the story stronger.

Class Literacy Blog

I have developed a second blog for our class that will be run mostly by the students. I am taking a course towards my Masters degree called Digital Literacies and I am learning about new ways to incorporate technology into the classroom and I have learned so many new things I want to practice with my students.

The most interesting thing I have learned so far is how to use blogging in the classroom, with the students, to increase literacy learning. The blogs can be used for reading responses, publishing writing, and keeping families informed and involved. I would love to try working with my class for this last trimester of third grade in developing our literacy skills even further using the literacy blog. I think that they will be very excited about it and I think the blog has the potential to rejuvenate our reading and writing workshop time. 

I encourage you to participate in our class literacy blog as well as your children. In my course work we have discussed the idea of the authentic digital audience and I know your children will love having parents and other family members, as well as their classmates reading and commenting on their writing and reading thinking. Also no need to worry about strangers or outsiders getting into the class literacy blog, I have set it to be password protected so that only family, friends of family, and school staff will be able to participate in our online learning. 

 

Math Centers

Each morning from 8:30-9 AM students work in math centers on various skills. Different math strategies are covered in each center and students rotate through the five centers, one each day. Math centers are differentiated to meet different student skills. They can be independent or group activities but students know that no matter what they can ask one another for help and work together if they want to. The centers are usually run for 2 weeks so that students have time to work towards mastering the skill and could be extended if students need more time to work. 

Geometry and Measurement: Symmetry Sort; Students cut out a variety of shapes, draw lines of symmetry (if there are any) and sort them into a t-chart of symmetrical and non-symmetrical shapes.

Numbers and Operations:
Multiplication Facts; Students use numbered bottle caps to create multiplication facts and ones cubes to create groups of numbers if they need help solving. They record all number sentences they solve. 

Statistics and Probability:
Money Math, Counting Change and Rounding Monetary Sums; Students practice counting groups of change and recording money in dollar value and cents value while also rounding the amount of money to the nearest dollar.

IXL: Multiplication 
This is a website the school has a membership to that gives students different math strategies to practice. We align center IXL strategies to whatever we are learning in the classroom at the time, which right now is multiplication.

Functions and Algebra:
Multiplication Flash Cards; Students practice memorizing multiplication facts by running flash cards with a partner.

NWEA Winter Growth

It has taken a long time to post this tree, but I wanted to give you all a visual of the amount of growth your students have made in the first half of their school year. This tree is a representation of our NWEA growth over the course of our third grade year. It is a Spruce tree that we add needle bunches to for every child who makes growth on their NWEA assessments. 

You may not be able to tell but there are two different shades of green on the tree, the first shade represents the 23 students we started the year with. Each student got a pine needle bunch to begin the year with.

The second shade of green shows our Fall NWEA growth. There are three assessments and each student had the opportunity to earn a needle bunch for each one if they made growth over the summer in reading, math, and language. This is not common because in the summer students aren't in school full time as you all now. 

The blue pine bunches are the coolest part of the tree. They are our winter NWEA growth. Students again had the opportunity to earn 3 needle bunches, one for each test, and almost the entire class did. We had 90% growth on all three assessments this winter and are very excited about it. Look how blue our tree is!

As for our spring NWEA goal, students are aiming for that 100% growth this time. We talked about the 90% and we are determined to get all 100% there this time. Wish us luck and help us work hard to get there! What color do you think our spring needle bunches should be??