Life Skills

   Mrs.Spann came in for our first Life Skills lesson of Third Grade! She led the class in an exercise about handling new situations.  They brainstormed new things that Third Grade brings.  

Writing Seed Ideas

   We are collecting ideas for our personal narrative writing unit!  Personal narratives are true stories from our lives.  To find seed ideas, we begin with a big idea or topic (like a watermelon) and then work our way down to small moments that make great stories!  

Curriculum Night

   Thank you so much for a wonderful Curriculum Night! I enjoyed our time and I am excited to work together this year!  The kids loved their special letters this morning!  What a positive way to start the day!  We put our letters in our Smile Files!

Communicating Our Thinking in Math

   We are forming habits of showing our thinking-especially in math!  Even if a problem is "easy" for us, the communication of the strategy we used will stretch us to communicate our understanding to others!  Today we practiced showing our thinking when communicating 64 tens, or 19 hundreds.  Students used pictures, step by step directions, number patterns, or multiplication problems to prove their thinking!  Ask a Third Grader a similar question and then ask them to prove their answer is correct using a strategy!  (Here is a sample question:  What is the value of 31 tens?)

Communicating Numbers

   We practiced our conversation routines for math.  I will ask students to think, talk about, and write about math each day.  It is important for us to be able to communicate thinking as an expert and as ongoing learners!

Writer's Notebooks

   We began sharing writer's notebook covers today!  Students decorated their notebooks with images that could hold a future story- fiction or non-fiction!  We used these images to begin listing stories we can't wait to write about!

What is a Brain Break?

   After we complete planners, I extend recent learning through a fun game that often involves movement.  Today I demonstrated a game called 'Categories.' I use this Brain Break when we are learning about new vocabulary, grouping ideas, and connecting learning.  

   The game begins with a leader in the center.  They will name a category.  When we learn about Landforms, for example, I can begin the category as "Landforms in North America."  Students stand in a circle and work together to name as many landforms as possible.  I can also extend this activity at the end of the unit to check for growth.  For example, I could call the category "Landforms All Over the World."  

   Opportunities to extend learning with movement and game-like situations increase engagement and excitement! 

Olympic Mindsets

   I already knew I had a gold medal team, but I wanted to test their mindsets before we started our big academic challenges!  

   I tested my students on resilience, persistence, empathy, flexibility, and optimism.  As they took on the challenges, I observed team work, encouragement, and determination!  We discussed how to take on any challenge using their growth mindset! 

Happy Classroom

   We shared our personal happy places today, which led us to discuss our shared happy place-our classroom.  I challenged the class to create a model of our classroom, but redesigned to be their personal happy place!  Throughout the challenge, I was able to observe how students worked as a team, how students handled struggles, and how students communicate.  I am very impressed with my observations and even more excited about the potential of our happy classroom!

Book Shares

   Students began book shares today! I asked students to bring in their favorite book to share with the class.  This activity not only helps me learn about my readers, but helps readers think about new books to try!  We will continue book shares tomorrow and Friday!

First Day of School Success!

What a wonderful 1st day of Third Grade!  We explored our learning space, played a game focused on learning about one another, and enjoyed some reading time!  We also took a class picture!  What a good looking group of Third Graders!