End of Year Sillies

Forgot to post our end of year family photo! 

Miss these crazy kids!!! See you all in 35 days! Woah! Summer flew by :)

Weather RAN Sheet

Our class has been using the website www.padlet.com to help us record our thinking. One of the tools we have been using to record that thinking is called a RAN sheet. RAN stands for Reading and Analyzing Nonfiction. It is an updated version of a KWL chart (Know/Want to Know/Learned). The RAN sheet is more specific to our thinking processes over time because it asks students to categorize what they think they know first. Think is the key word because then students are asked to sort what they thought they knew into two categories- "Yes We Were Right" and "We Don't Think This Anymore". Two additional categories are "New Facts" and "What We Still Want to Know". The RAN sheet helps third graders to see how their thinking changes when learning new things. This strategy is called synthesizing information and teaches students to internalize new learning and mix it with what is already known. It teaches them that their knowledge is valuable and can be added to new information to develop their own points of view and understandings of the world around them. Anywho! This was a very teachery post explaining the reasons why we are learning the way we are... if you would like to see student thinking and the RAN sheet check the link below! 

Weather RAN Padlet

Measuring Weather

For the past week and a half our class has been investigating the process of measuring weather. We learned about four tools that are used to help scientists measure weather. An anemometer is used to measure the speed of the wind, a rain gauge is used to measure the amount of rain that falls over the course of a day, a wind/weather vane tells the direction the wind is blowing, and a thermometer tells you the temperature. 

Our class made our own version of three of the tools. From left to right, we have an anemometer with Jared, our rain gauge with Damario, and our weather vane with Thierry. For a week we went outside and used these tools to measure the weather in the back of Montello. Then we would come inside and use weather websites to help us check our data. The following is what we have learned:

1. Rain evaporates over time so sometimes we measure less rain than www.weather.com does.
2. When you are gone for a three day weekend and it rains the whole time, you do not have an accurate measurement of how much rain has fallen in the past 24 hours.
3. Using a tack to create a spinner on our anemometer was virtually useless, so we never once saw it spin and luckily we were right everyday that we guessed the wind was going 0 mph. 
4. Because we also used a tack to make the spinner on our wind vane, it was easier to just lick our finger and hold it in the air/look at the trees to help us find the direction the wind was blowing.

In the end, our class had a great time working with weather measurement tools. We looked forward to that part of our day for the entire week. Recording data we were able to check our accuracy against real weather measurements we found online. We also spent time graphing our data and analyzing results. We definitely learned weather is a tricky thing to measure!

Strings Performers Visit Third Grade

Each year Mr. Booardman and a few of his strings players come to show our class what it is like to be a strings musician at Montello. Starting in 4th grade, families can sign up for their children to be a part of the strings ensemble. You will learn more about this next year but there are instruments up for grabs in a lottery based system and there are also opportunities to rent and buy your own instruments. This year to girls from the Spruce pod, Erin and Taylor came by to play us some tunes. 

My third graders were very excited about the presentation and wanted very much to start playing their own violins right away! We got to listen to "Pepperoni Pizza", "Twinkle, Twinkle" and even "We Will Rock You"! These two girls were very talented musicians and it was a pleasure to watch them perform. I can't wait until next year to see if some of my third graders come back to play for my new class!

Check out this short video of part of their performance!

Class Poetry

Our class has been publishing poetry on the Little Bird Tales website. The reason we used this website is that it not only allows us to type our writing but also to illustrate it with drawings and/or photographs, and add our voice to it. The class has really enjoyed the process and they have created some beautiful poetry. Here are some of our completed works:

Sharks by Abdimalik
Sharks by Abdulahi
Rose by Anna
Dogs by Damario
Sharks by Elijah
Ninjas by Jameson
Feet by Kamil
Flowers by Suguy
Cats by Tyler

Plant Update

Newsflash! Mrs. Derouche is not an awesome plant owner. She tries very hard to remember to water the plants and sometimes they live a little dry for a while but luckily the sun and soil seem to be working wonders. Our class plants are growing in quite nicely if I do say so myself. Our best growing bin is definitely the mixed batch and the slowest are the African Daisies. I don't know much about flowers growing but we've had these since the end of March and there are no buds. I didn't expect there to be but I have a lot of anxious third graders... does anyone know how long it takes flowers to bud? Hopefully before June 19!

Character Traits: Good or Bad? Both?

Our class is learning to analyze characters using character traits. We know that based on their actions and words in a story we can tell what kind of people they are... or animals in some cases. After brainstorming a list of character traits we know, like honest, brave, heroic, selfish, bratty, kind, friendly, and many, many more we categorized the words into a list of good and bad traits. 

Since this activity, other things we have done using our understanding of character traits are:

• defined ourselves using character traits
• written character trait books using the iPad app, Storybook Maker
• read different stories and analyzed the characters within them
• defined a character's traits and supported our thinking using evidence from the text
• had class discussions about character traits we find in a text

We will keep you posted on our character trait study, so listen for more updates. And if you're interested in testing our knowledge, feel free to ask a third grader what kind of character they think you are!

Gifts from Aunt Cyndi

My aunt Cyndi and uncle Rich travel around the country and work in different national parks as park rangers. My aunt was living on Assateague Island where the wild horses live earlier this year.

 They always send us maps, pamphlets, books and other gifts from wherever they are. Recently they went to a rocks and mineral show and they sent us a bag full of gems. The kids LOVED it. We spent all morning exploring our new gem book and trying to find the names of all of them. We recently read Agate: What Good is a Moose? by Joy Morgan Dey and had learned about all the gems so we used that as a resource as well. We immediately wrote a letter to aunt Cyndi and Uncle Rich thanking them for our gifts and asking them questions about our new things. 

So here are some pictures of us exploring: