Nature Center and Writing

This week we went out in the nature center and chose an area to draw and color a fall scene.  This week on Poetry Wednesday we are going to be writing fall poems and working on adjectives, verbs, and nouns that describe fall.  We had a lot of fun in the nature center and the fall colors were BEAUTIFUL!

In writing, we are working on personal narratives and narrowing our stories into small moments.  I shared a funny story from childhood with them and explained how it was a small moment and now they are having fun writing their small moments in class.  We are focused on getting the five senses into our writing and used Owl Moon by Jane Yolen as a model.

The last couple weeks have been very exciting!  I wanted to share some of the new things that we are learning and the experiences we are having in Third Grade.

Word Work-  We started learning our day by day routine and practiced as a whole class the activities we will be doing each day after we start our differentiated lessons.  In the lesson in the picture, we learned how to use a thesaurus, dictionary and the computer (dictionary.com) to define words and find synonym/antonyms.

Writing-  This week we started learning about personal narratives and are getting ready to work on our first writing project.  We discussed visualization in our writing and creating mental images for the reader.  We had fun trying to form a mental image of the "green giant" and drawing it on paper. 

We also gave friends and family members a "Gift of Poetry".  The students found poems that they thought someone else would like from our bins of poetry books and gifted them. 

Math-  We are well into our graphing unit in math.  This week practiced analyzing graphs and even graphed skittles!  The students learned about the X and the Y axis, labels on a graph, scale, intervals and categories.  We also talked about how graphs need to be pleasing to they eye, neatness and spelling are VERY important!  In this picture we are graphing M&M's.

Reading-  In reading we have been busy learning about context clues and character traits.  We even found the character traits of one of our classmates, Logan.

Today was Free Choice Friday during reading.  The kids had a lot of fun reading Bookflix, Trueflix, writing with a friend using Google Docs or their notebooks.  It was a time where they were free to choose their own activity and I know that they loved every minute of it!'

Poetry Wednesdays!

Poetry Wednesday in the Van Sluys classroom was a blast!  On Poetry Wednesday we read poetry to ourselves, choral read it, and wrote it!  Last week, we started preparing on Tuesday for Poetry Wednesday by going out into the Thorson nature center and using our five senses to describe the a certain area in the nature center.  We even had the great surprise of a little rain, which made the whole experience such fun!

We also had time to finish our poetry from the week before.  That week we read The OK Book by Amy Rosenthal. We had fun finishing our OK poems and Bio poems.

Kindergarten Buddies

The third grade wing was buzzing with energy on Friday with the anticipation of meeting their kindergarten buddies. This is their first time when they finally get to be the older kids, show responsibility and be good role models for their buddies! On Friday, all of the third grade classes ventured over to the kindergarten rooms and the library, met their friends, played a get-to-know-you game, and had some fun :) 

Afterwards we reflected on our experiences by writing in our writing notebooks and then sharing out. Overall the third graders thought their buddies were adorable and very chatty!