I love the night. It's dark, quiet, peaceful, and I can get so much done after everyone goes to bed! I was on a roll tonight. I created this Weebly for my students and their parents. Last year, I did a horrible job at communicating. I think this website is just what I need to improve. I also signed up for Remind, entered my parents into Google contacts, and created a QR Code to send home to make it easier to access our Website.
Things in class are rolling right along too. It's nice to finally find a normal mode without early outs due to the heat. I finished cleaning up our iPads and we've downloaded some of my favorite creation apps. The third graders have been experimenting with PicCollage, ChatterPix Kid, and Animoto. We've also been discussing our read aloud, The Best School Year Ever by Barbara Robinson on TodaysMeet. You can follow our discussion and join in if you want by clicking on the following link https://todaysmeet.com/bestschoolyear. It's new, so bear with us. We'll be using TodaysMeet a lot this year to make personal connections, talk about character development, make predictions, and discuss our stories with friends.
We're reading Tomie dePaola's 26 Fairmount Ave. as a class. Tomie was one of my favorite childhood authors and I like to use this book to teach about autobiographies and writing your own story. So often, third graders' writing looks like this. I woke up. I played. I ate supper. I went to bed. 26 Fairmount Ave. is a series of chapter books, but each one focuses on a small period in Tomie's life. This book is about dePaola's new house being built during a hurricane in Meriden, CT in 1938. So, our writing focus is choosing a topic and writing 4-5 sentences about that one thing. I can see major improvements in our writing in just two weeks.
In math, we are reviewing place value to 100 and writing our numbers in different forms: standard, expanded, and written. We danced and I blew bubbles to show expanded form and we stood like soldiers for standard form. I think it's important to get up and move around throughout the day. Hopefully this is just one more trick to help students learn the concepts. Rounding will be our focus for the next week.
Dance breaks are an important time in our day. My students are slowly coming out of their shells and dancing with me. Our favorite songs are The Sid Shuffle and The Cha Cha Slide. Try it at home, it's a ton of fun!
Things in class are rolling right along too. It's nice to finally find a normal mode without early outs due to the heat. I finished cleaning up our iPads and we've downloaded some of my favorite creation apps. The third graders have been experimenting with PicCollage, ChatterPix Kid, and Animoto. We've also been discussing our read aloud, The Best School Year Ever by Barbara Robinson on TodaysMeet. You can follow our discussion and join in if you want by clicking on the following link https://todaysmeet.com/bestschoolyear. It's new, so bear with us. We'll be using TodaysMeet a lot this year to make personal connections, talk about character development, make predictions, and discuss our stories with friends.
We're reading Tomie dePaola's 26 Fairmount Ave. as a class. Tomie was one of my favorite childhood authors and I like to use this book to teach about autobiographies and writing your own story. So often, third graders' writing looks like this. I woke up. I played. I ate supper. I went to bed. 26 Fairmount Ave. is a series of chapter books, but each one focuses on a small period in Tomie's life. This book is about dePaola's new house being built during a hurricane in Meriden, CT in 1938. So, our writing focus is choosing a topic and writing 4-5 sentences about that one thing. I can see major improvements in our writing in just two weeks.
In math, we are reviewing place value to 100 and writing our numbers in different forms: standard, expanded, and written. We danced and I blew bubbles to show expanded form and we stood like soldiers for standard form. I think it's important to get up and move around throughout the day. Hopefully this is just one more trick to help students learn the concepts. Rounding will be our focus for the next week.
Dance breaks are an important time in our day. My students are slowly coming out of their shells and dancing with me. Our favorite songs are The Sid Shuffle and The Cha Cha Slide. Try it at home, it's a ton of fun!