10.27.14

Finally back to a normal week!

Conference week was wonderful and I am so glad we had 100% participation!

Each parent got to see and hear all of the wonderful things that their child is doing. 

On Monday please look for an invitation to come to class on Friday, October 31st at 9:00 for Halloween pumpkin carving! If you are able to bring a pumpkin for you and child to carve that would be great. Please bring in a pie pumpkin, as they are the smaller, medium sized pumpkins. This way we will have enough room for carving. Hopefully it is a beautiful Fall day and we will have some parents and students carving outside. Also, if you have extra pumpkin carving knifes, we will need those too. If you cannot bring a pie pumpkin, that is fine and I will pick up extra pumpkins. I do not want to burden anyone and will be happy to bring a pumpkin for you and your child. Please fill out the invitation with your RSVP so that I can make sure we have enough pumpkins and carving knives.

 

This week I will also send information home in GATOR notebooks on how we will use Touchmath for multiplication. I'll also post a similar explanation on our blog for future reference. Students will be excited to hear that homework will be back to normal and start back up on Monday. : )

 

10.13.14

3rd graders take a deep breath...CogAT testing is over!

 

 

Take another deep breath because IOWA testing is about to begin.

Keep up the hard work!

 

 

This past week we started a reading program News2You. Students now have a reading binder and news articles will be added each week. This program has embedded visual supports for students which helps decode and aid in comprehension. There are comprehension questions with each article and puzzle pages which include cross words and picture Sudoku pages. This upcoming weeks article is about Native American Day which is on October 13th. This week we will also be researching different tribes, writing informational paragraphs and creating mini models of Native Americans out of toilet paper rolls! If you have any extra toilet paper rolls from home, please send them in! The activity will be on Friday, October 17th.

 

FYI - There will be no homework until testing is over.

 

 

10.6.14

 Our soil snack activity was a success!

 

   

 

 Congratulations to our SLT representative!

We are so proud!

 

 

October will be a busy month...

3rd graders will take the CogAT standardized test on October 7th, 8th and 9th.

3rd and 5th graders will take the IOWA standardized test on October 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th. 

I am sure that all of our students will do there very best so please do not stress over these tests. 

Student led conferences follow testing during the week of October 20th-24th.

Conference forms will be sent home Monday to schedule a conference.

I am so excited to share all of the progress that has been made so far.

   

This week we finished up our addition unit and are moving onto multiplication.

In science we finished up rocks, minerals and soil and are moving into social studies and will be learning about Native Americans! We have a lot of fun lessons ahead of us to learn about the Inuit, Nez Perce, Hopi and many more Native Americans.

Look how our garden has grown...

 

 

 

Mineral tests in the Science Lab...

 Igneous Rock Model

 

 Metamorphic Rock Models

 Sedimentary Rock Models

9.29.14

9.29.14
Math
We have all made so much progress this past week with adding! I am so pleased with the hard work during math. Students are successfully regrouping double digit addition and estimating the sum. We will continue with addition this upcoming week moving onto 3 digit addition and word problems. We have an activity this week where we will be scanning bar codes and adding to see how much it would cost to buy certain items.

ELA
Students have been working hard with word and text training in Language Live. We introduced nouns and verbs and practiced sorting words into categories. We discussed that some words have many meanings. We completed a multiple meaning chart for the word bat. This week we will continue to discuss nouns and verbs. If you would like to check out the word training component of Language Live click on the hyperlink below.
Please do not watch more than 1-2 videos since word training is classwork.

Language Live
User name is your child's first and last name with no spaces in between.
Password for everyone is 103.

Science
We finished up learning about rocks and minerals. We had science lab this past week and conducted tests on minerals to determine the hardness and luster. We also created our own models of sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks. The metamorphic rock model will go home this week but sedimentary will stay at school so we can use them during our fossil lesson. This week we will be reading "Diary of a Worm" and learning about the different types and layers of soil.

On Friday to go along with our soil unit we will be making a fun food model of the 4 different layers of soil. We will need indigence for our models and I will be sending home a wish list on Monday of the items that we will need. I greatly appreciate any family who would like to contribute to our soil snacks!
 

9.22.14

 Gardening Day

Gardening Day was a huge success! What an amazing day we had!

 Thank you so much to all the parents that were able to come, 

help and provide soil and mulch for our garden. 

I'm so proud of each student as they 

put so much effort into making today an unforgettable, successful day. 

I hope everyone has a wonderful September break!

 

We started with weeds and dirt!

 

We learned about rocks and minerals.

Everyone helped get the soil ready for planting.

 

I'm thrilled that we got to harvest tomatoes and carrots from last years garden.

Thank you Mrs. Knobbe!

Students painted and wrote our class garden sign.

 

 

 

Students completed a writing assignment about gardening.

 

 Students sequenced the events that would take place for the day.

Students also made signs to label what we planted.

We planted beets, radish, carrots and broccoli in our back garden 

and different types of lettuce in the garden outside our classroom.