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!

November 18

Happy Monday, Everyone!

Sorry for the short break, but man was last week busy!

This week we are being introduced to fractions. At this point of the week, the students should understand the difference between a shape that is divided into equal parts versus one that is not divided equally. Students should also know how to name a shape based on how many parts it is broken into. Students should name and idendtify halves, thirds, fourths, fifths, sixths, eighths, and tenths. As we move through the week, students will understand how to represent a fraction with both numbers and an illustration. For example, draw a pizza with 3/4 shaded in. Here are some more vocabulary terms we are working on.

 

In skills block, we are working on comparative adjectives. This includes the endings -er and -est. Students should be able to choose the correct ending for the situation. Remember, -er ending adjectives (taller, happier, etc) are comparing two people or things. -Est endings are for comparing lots of items (happiest of all, quietest in the class, etc).

 

 

These words are also the students' spelling words!

 

Have a great night and I will be back with more updates later in the week!

 

*The secret word is: fractions. Write it in your child's planner for Nov. 18th!

 

November 6

Today we were all about alliteration!

Alliteration is a type of figurative language we study to help improve our writing! The kiddos have a ball with this because alliteration is what tongue twisters are all about! Alliteration is when the same beginning sound is repeated several times closely within a sentence or phrase.

Here is a rap our class sings in skills block- take a look and sing along with your child!:

 

We also made "Alliterainbows." We took the first letter of each color of the rainbow and wrote an alliteration for it. The projects were practically perfect!

*Tonight's secret word is: alliteration!

November 5th

Happy Tuesday, Everyone!

We are quite busy in the math department! This week we are studying strategies for division. This is an anchor chart of ways to solve a division problem:

We also have been memorizing chants and songs to help us memorize our multiples! Here we are singing our three's song!

 

In reading, we are focusing on Main Idea. We have practiced this using real world example to make things fun! We started by looking for the most important things. I told the students I was going to exercise outside but I didn't want to bring my purse. The students then discussed how to to determine what was important to bring (sunglasses and keys). Today we listend to "Coat of Many Colors" by Dolly Parton and looked at the lyrics. We discussed what message the singer was trying to convey. The students decided that the most important message was that the coat of many colors was an important, special item for the singer. They then discussed how all the other lyrics to the song supported that idea. This transitioned so well into the texts we are reading. The kids are now noticing the different messages and main ideas in everything they read! It is amazing how meaningful lessons really get the students relating what they read!

 

 

Today, we also got to see the "America" concert put on by the chorus and instrument ensembles. The older grades performed songs all created in America by Americans. They ranged from Amish songs to Toby Keith! It was very entertaining! A great way to get in the spirit of Veteran's Day! Here are some shots from the event:





*Our secret word is "America." Please write it in your child's planner for tomorrow!
Have a great night!

Fall Center Time!

We had an absolute blast at our literacy parade and fall centers!

All the kiddos looked adorable in their book character costumes!

Our center time was full of mad science, spooky treats to eat, and mad lib fun! We even had our meet the artist, Picasso!

The kids loved the lunch full of mummy hot dogs, gummy worm punch, ghost rice Crispy treats, vegetables, cheese sticks, jack-o-lantern oranges and more!

Thank you to everyone who donated or volunteered to make this super fun event possible! A special thank you to Olivia's mom, aunt, and grandma who all helped to put the event on! You are so appreciative of you all!

Here is a sweet slideshow to give you a glimpse into our day of spooky fun!

*The secret word is Spooky.* Write this word in your child's planner on November 4th and your child will earn an extra Star Buck!

October 29

Here is our day from our guest blogger, Mya!

Today in science, we learned about the sun. It is the closest star to Earth. It gives energy to all the other planets in our solar system!

We also learned multiplication strategies. And practiced word problems using them. We got to take turns teaching the class what strategies we used to solve problems.

In writer's workshop, we worked on our spooky stories. We learned ways to grab the reader's attention by using exciting beginnings.

In reading, we learned about inferring. We talked about how we can use text clues and our schema to infer. We did a fun group project too! We all got four items from Mrs. Petrauskas' purse and we had to infer things about her. We call these groups "HOT groups." This stands for Higher Order Thinking.

We also had music. We did a song with instruments and learned to square dance.

October 28

This week, we are focusing on multiplication strategies and properties. We created an anchor chart as a reminder. Please have your child refer to this chart on any homework that might need some reviewing! (Just FYI, groups is the same as draw a picture!)

 

Since we are focusing on similes and metaphors, we all will be creating simile and metaphor self portraits. The students have the directions attatched to their star homework. Here is an anchor chart to remind the students of the difference between the two:

 

I was very much impressed by the cereal box projects that were presented today! I saw a lot of hard work go into the creation of these new cereals! I could tell it was the first presentation in front of a group of people for some of us, so there will definitely be more presentation lessons in the future. :)

I loved the creativity with the back of the boxes and the prizes inside! These kids rock! Take a look at at some of the finished projects:

 

October 14

Here are today's happenings from our guest blogger, Landon:

"We had PE today. We learned about the Southwest Region of the US. We went over multiplication strategies and made shapes from tangrams. We started narrative writing by coming up with some ideas that we could write about. In reading we started the Socratic Seminar by getting articles about Jane Adaams. We highlighted questions, thoughts, and connections on the article."

To add to what Landon so perfectly listed, our class is starting something called Socratic Seminar. This activity stems for Socrates. He believed that students should not be given the answers to questions, but should develop their own thinking about a topic. This comes through open discussions and forums about pieces of writing that have been read several times. This can be a little tricky for third grade kiddos, but we are determined to tackle this amazing activity. We are starting with the basics- just learning how to have an appropriate conversation without raising your hand. This can be tricky since the students are so accustomed to doing this. In an everyday conversation, do you raise your hand? No. But you do know the appropriate time to respond to a comment or question. We are learning to do that in an academic setting! We will keep you posted on our progress with this activity and new style of learning!

Have a great Monday!

October 11

Happy Friday!

Today was a super fun pajama jamming day!

Unfortunately we had all of our testing to do, but we snuck in some learning fun along the way!

We finished our landforms projects! We have been studying the 7 Habits of Happy Kids (more on that later!) and one of the traits is making a plan/goal. We tied this trait into making landforms. The students had to sketch out 9 different landforms that we have been learning about: mountains, hills, valleys, plains, peninsulas, islands, rivers, oceans, and glaciers. We discussed how different landforms help to classify the five regions in America.

After sketching and planning, the students created the landforms on a paper plate- acting as the globe. The students then painted and labeled each land form. The projects turned out awesome! Take a look!

 

 

 

 

 

We also had our first "Meet The Author" event with Olivia's mom! We had a great time learning all about portraits and drawing portraits of each other. Thank you so much for putting this lesson together for us, Ms. Z! We loved it!