Library Field Trip

 

This past Monday we went to the Lewiston Public Library for a third grade field trip. All the third grades in the district make a yearly trip to the library to learn about how to find books in the library, how books are organized, and the summer reading program held there. We went with Mrs. Munsey's class this year. We had a scavenger hunt, played library Jeopardy, borrowed books, and were read to by one of the children's librarians. It was a very educational field trip and many of the students left excited about the new books that we had borrowed. Such smart third graders!!!

iPads and Math

Lately our students have been using the iPad a lot more in our day to day learning. Fardowsa is using the iPad to practice math skills on IXL here. We use the IXL website to practice math drills that are grouped by category. Lately we've been working in IXL fractions, geometry, and measurement.

Montello Studies Countries

 

Earlier this year teachers made a plan to study countries all around the world at the end of the school year. Each teacher chose their country in advance and my third graders will be studying Sweden! I am part Swedish and wanted to learn more about the country and am coming to find that has some things in common with Maine which makes it interesting to study with the class. For example the weather is similar, Swedish people eat a lot of potatoes while Maine has a lot of potatoes, and both Maine and Sweden think the moose is a pretty big deal. Other countries in our pod are China, France, and the Native Americans of America!! Keep looking back to find out what other interesting things we learn about the amazing northern European country!!

Writing our Pen Pal

Abdi continues to write to my sister Sammi about the Roald Dahl books she got for us this Christmas. We have read many of them during our read alouds each afternoon. We have covered Matilda, The Twits, The BFG, The Witches, and now George's Marvelous Medicine. In reading groups we have read James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We love Roald Dahl! Abdi just wanted to make sure that Sammi loved reading as much as we did and see if she reads as fast as we do. What a thoughtful third grader!!

Race Track Fractions

We have been practicing fractions in math for a few weeks now. Something we are working on still is adding fractions. One game we have played to practice that now is Race Track Fractions. In order to play this game you need to roll a die twice and make a fraction out of the numbers you roll. The smaller number is the numerator (top) and the larger number is the denominator (bottom). There are five race tracks a student needs to complete in order to win the game. The race tracks are split into half, thirds, fourths, fifths, and sixths. The first student to finish all five tracks is the winner!

Finding the Characteristics of Poetry

 

In writing students are learning about poetry. To start, we read and talked about poetry. Our focus was on the characteristics of poetry. We know that poetry often times rhymes, has repeating lines, discusses a single topic, sometimes looks like a list, sometimes looks like a shape, has imagery (the five senses), and has a certain feeling or emotion. We looked through a variety of our new library books to find these characteristics and when we did find something we added it to an anchor chart of that characteristic trait. At the end of our search, we went over our lists and reviewed our findings.

Mission Day After Party- Celebrating the 3 Bs

What seems like a long, long time ago our class filled our Monty Eagle on the front door. In order to fill the Monty eagle you have to earn Monty feathers. Monty feathers are earned for being safe, respectful, and responsible students. We filled our eagle with 377 feathers back in January but we didn't have our celebration because I was missing some of the equipment needed. Once I found what I needed, I didn't want to upset all our important space learning so I waited until Mission Day came and we celebrated afterwards. Our celebration of our respectfulness, safeness, and responsibility was an X-box Kinect party. We played Kinect Adventures and a dance game. It was so fun and who knew my class had so many amazing dancers?! We had our alien cupcakes and snacks from Sam's mom while we danced and played. It was a good way to end our space unit and celebrate being going Montello citizens. I'm very proud of my third graders. 

 Rukia, Gidhan, and Binti are cheesing it up for the camera with 
their minty alien cupcakes.

Abdi showing off his sweet alien cupcake!

Brady and Xavier are doing their best to beat this 
Kinect Adventures game! 

 When it wasn't their turn, students waited patiently and 
watched their classmates on the projection screen.

 Ryan is very concentrated playing 10,000 Leaks. He has to 
wave his arms and legs around to cover all the holes from the
fish and sharks swimming by his glass tank.

Now John and Kayla are trying their best to cover up all those 
leaks. You need to be very flexible to get this job done.

Mission Day, Part 3: Our Writing

 As you all know, there were two teams in this planet research extravaganza... the inner and the outer planets. Each team wrote a persuasive letter to a group of aliens looking to settle somwhere in the solar system. All of our Mission Day visitors voted on the letter they agreed with best during Mission Day and after counting the votes we found that Team Outer had won... Yeah Team Outer!!!

Team Inner's letter was very, very, VERY long and included arguments like the joys of acid rain, never ending amounts of cooked pizza without the oven to cook it, and Earth, a livable planet. Team Outer's letter advertised quite well if I do say so myself, as their team leader, with some sweet planet/student photographs. We argued that you would have more space to play, could enjoy never ending amounts of popsicles that don't melt, and hot, burning cores where you can still cook your dinner. Both letters were brilliant and very convincing if I do say so myself. The third graders should be very proud!

 Dalton and Trinaty

Brady and Xavier

 Binti and Sam

 Erin and Fardowsa

 Faisal and Tristan

 Amiira

 Rukia and Ryan

Sabrian and Yasmin

Abdi and Kayla

Gidhan and John