Crazy Christmas

The third graders did a great job at their Christmas program this week! I was so impressed with their performance! I know they worked really hard.
Here are a few "behind the scenes" pictures." ;)



















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Books!

You may have noticed that I have been sending home book orders every month. When you order books, we earn points for our classroom to earn free books. We got our first shipment of free books along with a free book for every student in the class! They received The School from the Black Lagoon. Yay!

Thanks for ordering!

Take a look at all of our free books!






Our next book order was already sent home. Our order will close on Dec. 3rd.
If you are interested in ordering, visit the Scholastic website:

www.scholastic.com

Click on book clubs
Our class code is: LNVPP

THANKS FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

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Update

This is a quick update on what we have been doing in class the past few weeks!

We studied cause and effect relationships with some favorite books:
Click, Clack, Moo! Cows that Type
And
Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day

Then, the class worked in groups to put together the causes and effects from the story.













Last week we worked on nonfiction text features. The class worked with a partner to identify features. We later used our ActivExpressions to vote on answers about the features. This was so fun!

























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Happy Halloween!

This week we were working on identifying the main idea and details in the text.  Every day the kids had a chance to work with a partner to find the main idea of a short story and identify the details.  They had to talk it out with their partner and be able to prove that they had the correct answer and explain how they knew that was the correct answer.  They also had to explain to me why they didn't choose the other answers.  They all did great with this!

 

We are working on identifying which questions are main idea questions too.

 

Main idea questions are asked in different ways:

1. What is the passage mainly about?

2. What is the main idea of the passage?

3. What would be a good title for this passage?

4. What is a detail that supports the main idea of this passage?

When completing homework, look for questions like these.  Remember to look at all the details in the text and identify what words, phrases, or topics are repeated throughout the text.  This will help to identify the main idea!


This week we also had a great time with Halloween rotations!  The class was able to rotate to each 3rd grade teachers classroom to do a Halloween activity. In my class we played the roll a monster game.  We rolled the dice to see how to draw our monster.  When we were done creating our monsters, we wrote a story about our monster!  Ask your child what they did in all of their rotation classrooms!  It was a fun day!

Here's the roll a monster game if you want to play it again at home!

Roll A Monster

 

 I hope everyone had a fun and safe Halloween!

Red Ribbon Week

Next week is Red Ribbon Week.  We will have a different activity every day to support our commitment to a healthy, drug-free life.  Please view the activities for the week below.

 

Monday: Wear Red

 

Tuesday: "Sock it to Drugs" ~ wear crazy socks!

 

Wednesday: "Join the Fight Against Drugs"~ Wear Camouflage

 

Thursday: "Put a Cap on Drugs"~ Wear a hat

 

Friday: "Team up Against Drugs" ~ Wear your favorite team jersey or shirt

Inferring and Context Clues

Last week we worked on making inferences when we read.  In one activity, the class had to work in a group to read a poem and infer what animal the poem was about.  They checked their inferences by scanning a QR code to see the correct answer.  This was a big hit!

Last week, we also began using Edmodo in our book club groups.  We are all really excited about this.  I post a question, poll, or quiz on Edmodo and the book club members can use the app to comment or answer questions about their book.  It's fun!

This week was the book fair!  We stepped in to help Pre-K and First grade during the book fair.  We helped them find books they might like and we wrote them on their wish list.  This class is a group of GREAT helpers!  I was so proud of them!  They were very patient and helpful. 

We have also been learning about context clues.  We need to use the clues in the text to help us figure out unknown words when we read.  Today, we played a game with silly made up words.  The students had to use the context clues to help them figure out what the unknown word really means. Fun!

I told the class I would add a context clues page here for them to download.  This is a page for them to write their own silly word with context clues. They give the page to someone else and have them figure out the unknown word. Here it is...

 

Fun With Context Clues

Student Council Representatives

The official vote is in! Congrats to Reese and David, our new student council representatives!




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Book Clubs

This week in reading we chose the book club we would like to be in! We started meeting with book club partners. Everyone was VERY excited about this! Ask your child what book he/she is reading in book club.













We also started using Istation. This is a reading practice program on the computer. Your child can do this at home too! Directions and passwords will be sent home next week.







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Nouns

Today we were learning about nouns.  We watched this short music video about nouns.  This is a catchy tune that had everyone singing and dancing!  It will be stuck in your head all day...BEWARE!

Week Two!

We had a short week, but we did a lot of important work!

We continued to learn and practice our Daily 5 stations.














In writing, we worked on writing paragraphs. We played a few games to help us learn the parts of the paragraph to get us started.














In reading, we talked about stopping to monitor our comprehension. We worked on stopping to think and to write down our thoughts and questions.






It was a fast and crazy week!


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