Chinese New Year

Gung Hay Fat Choy!  Today our classroom was transformed into the "House of Learn-ING."  We used the Chinese New Year to enhance our learnING.

Our morning work was learning to write the numbers 1-10 in Chinese characters.  Then the students completed a dragon dot to dot written with Chinese numbers.  Students even opened the app Sum Stacker and used Chinese numbers to solve addition puzzles.

We had our kinder buddies over.  We read our little friends a book about Chinese New Year and then helped them make lanterns for luck.

One of the favorite activities of the day was called "New Beginnings."  With this activity students had to pick a word card out of a Chinese takeout box...with chopsticks of course!

Then they read the sentence on the card.  There was a bold word in the sentence.  Students added a prefix to the base word in the sentence to make it true.  For example, "pieces cut before" would be "precut."  The students worked so hard sorting and building new words with prefixes.

The holiday gave us many opportunities to read folktales and nonfiction text surrounding lunar new year.  It was a terrific day in the House of Learn-ING.  Students earned a coin for luck and happiness at the end of the day.  Best to all in this year of the rat.

Boot Camp

                                                   

                                                      Left, left, left, right, left!

                                                      Right, left, right, left.....
                                                      Third Grade Boot Camp, here we go.
                                                      Come on y'all get in the flow.
We had the best three days reviewing skills...boot camp style.  Prepare for a long post because we have been busy.  We started the day with Enlistment.  Students learned the commands for the day and reported for duty.  They were put into companies: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot.  Students tried to earn points for their squad by showing the Army values of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and courage.

Basic training, of course, started with basic skills.  First, we began with identifying complete and incomplete sentences in solider sentence drop. Students had to find subjects and predicates then sort the sentences.We practiced this skill as a class, with our platoons, and in individual assignments.

Next, we worked on proper capitalization.  We had a cadence to help us remember what proper nouns to capitalize.  Next more PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE.



Between every grammar drill, we had some physical drills.  The cadets had stations for army crawls, tire runs, sit ups, push ups, and even trampoline jumping.  The students were exhausted by morning recess, in fact, they didn't want to go out because they were too tired. Ha!




So, it went...grammar, exercise, drill, drill, learn, sweat and smile.  The next grammar skill: sentence types.  We reviewed declarative, interrogative, exclamatory, and imperative statements.  We also practiced putting on proper punctuation.  Then, we reviewed simple, compound, and complex sentences.  Call in the coordinating and subordinating conjunctions! Last, we learned about choosing between there, their, and they're.  These recruits worked so hard.

Math went much of the same way.  Skill drills followed by LOADS of physical activity. Third graders had to really flex their multiplication and division muscles.  We also played some strategy games.  I love games that have the students practice their basic facts while they are problem solving and strategizing to win the game.

One of my favorite activities for math and language was the plank wars.  Students had to hold a plank and answer a multiplication fact or define a prefix/suffix or root word.  The soldier that answered last had to do a push up.  The engagement was top notch!  I'm pretty sure they all went home tired!

These students were learning and moving ALL. DAY. LONG.

Toast to 2020

It was so wonderful to see the Magic of Threes today.  I missed them!  I loved the break and time with my family....but I also have the best job in the world.  It was great to be back! We started 2020 at school with a toast....well, toast at least.  As part of our morning snack, we ate toast and "toasted" the new year!  We reflected on 2019 and discussed resolutions.  We, of course,  did some school 2020 goal setting.

In last week's Wednesday envelope, I sent your child's reflections and a 2020 foldable with resolutions.  They had to list 2 things they wanted to read, something to they wanted to stop (0), 2 classmates they want to get to know better, and something they wish others would stop doing to make our school even better.  Check out what they wrote.  Wishing you and yours a happy 2020!