Magic of 3s Bakery

The day before Thanksgiving break was the perfect day for mixing up the learning.  Our classroom was transformed into the Magic of 3s Bakery.  When the chefs arrived, it was time to cook up the days objectives.  What is a thesaurus's favorite breakfast?  Synonym rolls, of course ! We started by putting on chef hats and coats.  Then, we read a recipe for synonym rolls.

First, the students had to sort synonym pairs in baking teams.  Then, each student picked a word on a blank synonym roll.  The students had to use the thesaurus to come up with several words to go on the bun.  They had to navigate their way through the thesaurus using guide words.  The chefs really did some excellent work.  We celebrated their successes with tasty cinnamon rolls.  Thank you to the Grahams for the delicious treat. 

The afternoon brought more bakery learning; however, this time the focus was on author's purpose.  The chefs learned the ingredients that help us determine whether the author wrote a piece to Persuade, Inform, or Entertain....PIE!  We had 24 slices of text.  One student would make a selection. They read the text to the class and had to sort the pieces into Persuade, Inform, or Entertain pie tins.  They worked so hard.  We had great discussions of the author's purpose for each piece of text.  Students had to justify their selections.

And....why were the students so engaged?  Because every six text pieces that the group sorted correctly meant they earned something. At six, the students got a fork. Then for 12, they earned a plate and napkin.  After 18 cards, a piece of pie.  And, at 24 a la mode....ice cream.  Author's purpose has never been so delicious!

Last our bakery got a bunch of orders for a variety of pies.  The orders were put in a graph.  The students analyzed the data and solved several math problems related to the graph.  The students were adding, subtracting, and really practicing their multiplication facts for three.  These chefs are pretty special.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

50 Days Smarter

The 50th Day of school started out in style.  The students and teachers looked like cool cats!  The room looked like a diner and the music was rock'in!  We even danced the hand jive and the twist!

We looked at books, articles, and photographs from the decade.  We did a lot of comparing and contrasting then and now.  We also learned some 50s vocabulary and used context clues to put the words in sentences.  During math, we did some graphing and analyzing data.  

Since the 50th day was a half day, it flew by. The next day, we continued to celebrate being 50 days smarter with a mystery.  Mrs. Hornby came in with a really interesting case.  Someone had stolen another boy's microphone.  She had six suspects and a description of each.  We had to be her detectives to solve this 50th day mystery.

We solved reading and math puzzles to get evidence.  Then, we used the clues with the descriptions to help us solve the mystery.  Students had to read passages and infer, solve math word problems, practice rounding, and balance equations.  It is a good thing Mrs. Hornby asked these third graders to solve this mystery because they have the skills!

We did it!  These super sleuths cracked the case and delivered their findings to Mrs. Hornby.  The students certainly earned "50 days Smarter" award and some bubble gum.  We also celebrated with root beer float popsicles and more hand jive!

Halloween Learning

 Students entered a dark classroom on Halloween.  The "Undertaker" music played in the background and candles flickered under two headstones at the front of the room.  Sadly, we had a couple words come to an untimely end in our writing.  The two words have died from extreme over use.  Said is dead and fun is done. We said our good-byes and tried to think of what to do next.  The students were able to brainstorm tons of words to use instead!

Our writing is really going to be filled with great word choice in the future.  After we brainstormed as a class, the students added the dead word synonyms to their writing journals.  We also played a game called spin a quotation.  Students had to spin for one of our said synonyms and then for a character.  Last, they made up a quotation and put in proper punctuation.  They worked so hard.

One of our fabulous parents made the cutest "make-a-monster" kits for every child. However, during lunch we had a Zombie take-over and our awesome kits were locked up.  The students had to solve all sorts of rounding and multi digit addition and subtraction problems to find out the combination to the lock box. 

      

 Just in time, the students were able to break out! Phew! The last activity of the day dealt with making a monster, but we didn't use our new kits.  We used our knowledge from our science unit on genetics.  We looked at a fictional phenotype of two monsters.  Then, we were given the genotype of three traits: fur color, teeth shape, and eye placement.  The students took the genotypes of the parents monsters and used a Punnet square to figure out the possible genotypes of their offspring.  Finally, the students picked a possible genotype for the traits and then illustrated the phenotype. So smart!  Check out your child's SeeSaw journal to see their excellent work.

The best part of Halloween was the kids! It was a blast to dress up for Halloween this year.  The costumes were terrific.  Here are just a few.  Happy Halloween.

Reading is ALL!

These third graders are ROCKING the October RAZ Reading Challenge.  I am so proud of how hard they are working to make the 300 minute home reading goal.  More than half the students have already met the goal and I just love that they are still going!  Our reading leaders (jarls) change almost daily.  The students are just minutes apart, it  is fun to see them using the competition to lift each other up!  Reading is ALL!

Keep reading this last week! While the challenge is fun and motivating, the true goal is building the learning habit of reading 20 minutes every night at home.  The research is clear, reading at home makes a HUGE difference for students at all levels.  Thank you for supporting your child's reading by encouraging this learning habit. 

The October challenge ends on the 31st.  In November, we have a new challenge.  Students will be choosing a chapter book at school.  They will also be bringing home a response notebook.  For each home reading session, students should read between 20-30 minutes and record a summary sentence in their notebook about what they read.  More directions will be coming home and we will have a chance to go over the challenge during parent teacher conferences.  Stay tuned!

Franken-Friday!

Friday was all about Frankenstein!  We celebrated with silly poems, great stories, fun drawings, and freaky math games! We started the day with a video/story of Frankenstein (kid appropriate).  We used the story to discuss the physical and personality traits of this famous monster.  

Then we practiced writing a RADD response to the question "What is an important personality trait of Frankenstein?"  The  RADD writing response is a way to organize children's thinking and effectively and completely answer questions about text.  This is a test taking strategy for short answer and essay questions.  RADD stands for restate, answer, detail, detail.  Together we wrote a very complete answer using evidence from the story to support our thinking.  

Like Dr. Frankenstein combined parts to make his monster.  We practiced using coordinating conjunctions to combine simple sentences into compound sentences.  This is a third grade standard.  See if your child can name the FANBOYS, coordinating conjunctions.

Next we learned a silly song/poem about Frankenstein to put in our fluency binders.  We did a guided drawing to put with the poem.  The students loved drawing him so much, many students made another drawing to put in their SeeSaw journal.  Check them out!

We read a fractured tale of Frankenstein called Porkenstein.  The children LOVED it!  It is such a joy to share a story with students and listen to their giggles and squeals of delight.  Then, we wrote our own fractured tales with Frankenstein.  We have ben working with narratives this month.  In narrative writing, the story needs a beginning, middle, and end.  We made trifold Frankenstein stories so that the students could really focus on the parts of a narrative.  Students chose their Frankenstein adventure.  They could write what would happen if Frankenstein game to school, if Frankenstein came to dinner, went trick or treating with them, or played on their sports team.  The stories were very entertaining.

In math, we had a Frankenstein relay.  Students had to walk like Frank, fill in a missing number on the number "scars" and send up another team member.  The number line scars skip counted by 10s but started at numbers that were not multiples of ten.  For example, 112, 122, 132, 142, etc.  We continued working with number scars by illustrating what a multi digit subtraction problem might look like on a number line.  It was messy math....but a lot of excellent thinking.  Happy Franken-Friday!

Typing Club

Did you know third graders take their tests, including writing pieces (essays), on the computer? They must know how to type! This week we started a free online typing tool called Typing Club.  The students worked so hard. The room was silent because they were concentrating so hard. We are going to strive for weekly typing practice.  I already heard that several children want to get on the blog at home and practice typing! They are loving it...and what an important skill!.  Here are two great (FREE) sites for teaching and enjoying practicing typing.  Happy typing!

Typing Club

Dance Mat Typing