Valentine's Day Week!

This week was super busy!

We worked on idioms in skills block. The kiddos thought this was super funny! Figurative language can  be tricky, but not for my smart cookies! To practice, I gave pairs of students an idiom. Each pair had to think of the literal meaning, draw a picture, and then write the figurative meaning. They just couldn't get enough of this! Take a look:

 

In reading we are working on text structure. This can be super tricky.  Here is a chart we used to distinguish the different types:

We will be continuing with this again this week. Students should be able to read any piece of text and decide which text structure the author chose to show his/her information.

We also had a lot of Valentine's Day fun! We created love comics in the morning, did fraction conversation hearts in math, created fun owl Valentine bags, exchanged Valentines, had a heart stacking contest, decorated cupcakes, and made heart weavings! Phew, what a busy and memorable day!

This week's recap!

Even though there was only four days, we had a busy week!

In math we are learning to tell time to the minute and work through elapsed time word problems. We have a helper we call "Judy." This clock has become an old friend and the kids love when she comes out!

 We also did a fun scavenger hunt round the room practicing different elapsed time problems. They had to find all the numbers and then solve the problems. This was an awesome way to get the kiddos walking around and doing math at the same time!

  In reader's workshop, we were all moody! We learned how authors can create images and descriptive writing to create a mood for the reader. We used our learning scale to gauge where we are are and where we want to get to. Check it out:

 Then, we took a boring sentence and jazzed it up according to different moods. The kids did a fantastic job coming up with descriptive words!

To finish out our mood study, the students worked in pairs to read stories, find words that made them feel a certain way, and then color a mood ring according to the mood of the text. They had such a blast with this project and did a wonderful job! Here is the finished product:

We had a special birthday this week! He turned double digits and brought us some yummy cupcakes to celebrate!

 In skills block, we studied analogies and multiple meaning words. For multiple meaning words, we created "M&M's" with words and wrote a sentence using each meaning. We then of course ate M&Ms to celebrate our knowledge of multiple meaning words!

We had a great week and can't wait until Monday!

Playing Catch Up!

Yay! We are back and kicking on our blog! Happy 2014 from the Rock Stars!

The first few weeks of 2014 have been awesome! We hit our 100th Day on Thursday! Can you believe it? We celebrated by making 100th day hats, eating a 100 snack, doing 100 exercises, flipping a coin and graphing it 100 times, writing about what we would do with 100 dollars, conducting an experiment with 100 chews of a Starburst, and making 100 gumball art! We had a blast!

In reading we have been working on theme. This can be kind of tricky, but we have had perseverance and have gotten really good at it! We practiced using fables, tall tales, and even Disney movies!

In math we finished up fractions, had a quick unit on measurement, and now we are moving to time. Students should know how to tell time to the minute and solve elapsed time problems.  We will be working on that more this week.

I science we have been all about matter. We conducted experiments on how to find volume and mass. We loved getting those graduated cylinders!

We just finished our latest read aloud, "The Wizard of Oz." The kids loved hearing the differences between the novel and the movie. A lot of unexpected twists and turns!

We also are right in the middle of our class book "President of the Whole Fifth Grade." We chose this book because we are about to begin our government study in social studies! With a background in elections, the government study will come easy!

Happy 2014 and stay tuned for more insight into the lives of your third graders!

December 3

We are knee deep in shades of meaning! This term is used to describe words that are nearly the same, but have slightly different meanings. We have discussed connotations of words- meaning how a word makes you feel. Take the word smelly in the sentence "The flower is smelly." You can replace smelly to a word with a positive connotation "The flower is fragrant." Or you can change it into something with a negative connotation "The flower is stinky." Smelly, fragrant, and stinky all mean to smell, but have different meanings. This is what shades of meaning is all about!

Today the students worked in groups to determine where different words would be on a continuum. They were given three words and the students had to respectfully debate where the words fell on the arrow. Each group had different words. Here is what the work looked like:

 

Here you can watch a group as they are discussing their choices:

 

Here are some of our rock stars at work!

 

 

Our secret word is: "Shades." Please write this word in your child's planner!

December 1

Hey Rock Stars!

Can you believe it is already December? Where has this year gone?

We had a great time at our Thanksgiving feast! Thank you to all who donated or volunteered! A special thank you to our amazing room mom, Becky Zelanko, for putting it all together! We appreciate you so much!

We were so excited to write letters of appreciation to the staff at Cunningham Creek. We also had a lot of fun delivering the letters to the people!

Mr. Strickland stopped in to help serve us the feast. It was amazing to see our principal be so involved! Thank you, Mr. Strickland!

Our turkey pillows came out great! The kids loved having something cuddly to take home with them!

Here are some pictures from the feast!

*The secret word is December. Write the word in your child's planner!

November 25

Happy Thanksgiving, Rock Stars!

Here is an update of what has been going on in Portable 2:

In Reading, we have been working on visualizing. That is a reading tool the students can use in all subjects! We practiced visualizing through poetry. I would read the students a poem and they had to draw a picture of what they saw. We had a poem about scarecrows, flowers in a garden, and even a giant purple dog. It was amazing to see how alike the pictures were from all of the students! That helped them to see that details are important in writing! We practiced the skill of visualizing in math as well. This really helps with word problems. By doing a quick sketch of what is happening in a word problem, it is easy to see what needs to be done- multiplication, division, addition, or subtraction!

In Skills Block, we have been having a ton of fun learning about adjectives! Sounds impossible, right?! Well it isn't when our "magic book" gives us more exciting words for those boring ones! The kids worked in parters to explore their thesauruses and look for more exciting words to replace boring ones! They quickly realized that all the describing words they were finding were adjectives! They can't wait to use those "magic books!"
 

Math has been a challenge, but one we are facing head on! We are learning to write improper fractions and mixed numbers.
Here is an example the students might see and how to solve it:
There are three bags of oranges. Each bag needs to have 5 oranges in it to be full. Two bags have 5 oranges and one bag has 3. Write a mixed number and an improper fraction for the number of oranges.
To solve: How many bags are full? 2. What fraction of oranges is in the third bag? 3 out of the 5 total, so 3/5. The mixed number is 2 and 3/5. To change the number into an improper fraction, follow these steps:

So for the improper fraction for 2 and 3/5, you would multiply 5x2=10 then add the numerator 10+1=11. Put that number over the denominator, 5, and the answer is 11/5.

 

Stay tuned for pictures of the Thanksgiving feast coming up soon!!

The secret word is feast!