Daily mental math

Beginning of this month we set a goal tomaster basic addition and subtraction facts and show growth in mental addition. Every single day we take 15 minutes to practice, practice, practice. We use different materials and tools to practice. Every Friday we have tested our skills. Tomorrow we will take one more test and then reflect how well we have achieved our goal. 

This week

We are wrapping up our UOI "Family Stories." Students are creating  mind- maps tat show what they know now about the reasons why people tell family stories, how you can find out about the past, what could you find out and what is something they learned during this unit. 

Digital stories are half way done. Students are experimenting with adding effects, changing the sequesnce, and recording their voice. You should hear and feel the buzz of the digitalw riting workshops with Ms. Glyka.

In math students have had two opportunities to show what they have learned and know about 2-D shapes. On Friday we will have one more mental matht est and then we reflect on how well the students achieved their goal for mastering basic addition.

In reading we have talked about inferring as a reading strategy. 

Inferring allows to look beyond literal text. It is our thinking based on combination of the text, our experience, knowledge, questions, values, creativity, logic and thoughtfulness. 

When we read we can infer themes and main idea, feelings and emotions of the character, points of views, and/or lessons learned.

Each time we make an inference we can ask ourselves some guiding questions:

What is the inference I am making?

What information did I use to make the inference? 

What evidence in the book supports my inference?

How good is my thinking?

Do I need to change my thinking?

We will take time to practice the skills of inferring, expressing our thinking and using the text to support our thinking.

We have continued blogging. I just love the excitement that this experience has brought into writing. Having others commenting, having an audience besides the teacher, has made the students eager to write. Plus, thinking more of conventions.

I have sent all of you invitations to view the blog. Slice of Grade 3

Please, be kind and remember that we are still learning how to blog and comment. Your comments are very welcome.

We are getting closer to finishing the final drafts of personal narratives. Using Google Drive, the students wrote comments to each other to help with the revision process. I hope that the stories will be  ready  for publishing next week.

Revision: word choice

Math: student teachers: part 4

Digital story workshop

Students:
How to add pictures?

How to add text and make it bigger?

How to add music?

How can I change the order of pictures?

Where can I see what I have so far?

Look, what I have made already!

Experimenting: A Cat Story

Revision: endings

Writes create powerful endings to leave a lasting impression on the reader.

A good ending can keep the reader thinking or carrying a feeling about the text long after it's finished. 

We looked at some different possibilities.

An ending with a message

An ending with a thought

An ending with a feeling

A surprising ending

A circular ending

Math: student teachers: part 3

Revision: transitions

What words and phrases help us to show passage of time, show two things happening at the same time, or move from one scene to another?

From: http://totallyterrificintexas.blogspot.com/2012/03/transition-words.html

Thank you, Patricia Polacco for the examples. The kids were able to recognize where these terms came from.

UOI: digital story

It took us a full lesson to listen to the different stories and interesting facts everyone was sharing from their interviews. I loved when students used phrases like "I didn't know..." or "It really surprised me..."

Now that the students have collected stories about their parents or grandparents through making a time-line, creating a Venn diagram, and conducting an interview, they can decide what they would like to include in their digital story. Like with any writing, they will make a draft first. We are using a paper comic strip to help to decide what pictures and texts they wish to include.

Math: student teachers: part 2

Revision: beginnings

Yesterday we read some beginnings from different books, looked at some collected examples and a list of possibilities for different beginnings. Then the students tried out three different leads for their own personal narratives and chose one to use intheir writing. The beginning is like an invitation. The writer has to make it interesting so the reader would wish to continue reading.

Math: student teachers: part 1

Estonoan Culture field trip: Bastion tunnels

We had an exciting (and a bit spooky) historical field trip to Bastion tunnels.
When you are looking for something to do on a weekend or for a place to take your visitors, this could be a place to go. It is not suitable for little children as it can be scary.

Digital story telling

We had a guest teacher Ms. Glycka in class today, leading a discussion of what makes a good digital story and playing with a new digital story app called Cute Cut.

A good digital story has

1. A story we want to tell that brings an emotion to the viewer.

2. Pictures or video that illustrate the story.

3.  Words that have to be chosen carefully dpending on the audience.

4. Music that fits with the mood of the story.

More revision

Adding dialogue to writing makes a story more livley. Today we looked at different ways one can include detail.

First I shared two of my writing examples with the students and right away they noticed how my first writing had only the spoken words in the dialogue but the second one had words and additional action to show what was happening when someone was speaking.

Then we looked how we can include how something was said or use a variation of the word "said."

Finally we looked  how the spoken words can come first, last or squeeze the speaker in between them.

Examples from: Crafting Writers by Elizabeth Hale

I haven't looked at the revised drafts yet. Tomorrow I will find out, how much of what I showed, the student chose to try out in their writing.
We will continue with revision for the next two weeks (word choice and sentence structure next week and text structure the week after.)