Reasons I love coming to school

• We start our day sitting in a circle saying "good morning." It brings a smile to my face.

• During the morning circle student share something about themselves.  It's fun when a pet comes to a visit, or we get to see colorful journals or old toy cars, or see a video made at home, or hear stories about after school games or time spent with a family. With each sharing I get to know the students a bit better.

• The students have learned the routines, they know what to do during word study, snack and read aloud, mental math time, during reading and writing time, and when they have independent study. I have moments when everyone is working and no one needs my help and I can actually just sit for a moment and observe the students working and my heart swells with joy.

• I love, love, love to hear comments like "I want to keep writing" or "Can I do more mental math?" or "When is it time to read?' or "Can we share our work." It's music to my ears.

• It's never boring in grade 3. Sometimes the classroom looks like a big mess, papers on tables, pencils and pens rolling around, I-Pads and books in various places, and a busy buzz pouncing around the room. This chaos and noise are the signs of learning and creating. Like this week, the students had on their desks: big poster papers for making "Family Stories" mind-maps, folders with drafts for personal narratives, rulers and pencils for drawing shapes in math,  papers and pencils for drawing pictures for the digital stories, I-Pads for writing, blogging, mental math and digital stories. I can't wait to share their creations with you next week.

• Our classroom is rich with compliments and support. Quite often, without any prompts from me, the students offer help or say positive comments to each other.  On Fridays we finish the day with sitting in a circle, everyone picks a classmates name and shares what positive things they noticed about the student whose name they picked.  They don't forget me either. "You read poetically," is a comment I will treasure from this week.

• The best part is to show the students the pre-assessments and the final assessments and see their faces glow in pride when they notice the growth.  Sometimes it's small steps, sometimes big, but it is always the learning and practice they have done that makes the difference. 

• Occasionally I have moments when I am a tad bit disappointed that the work didn't get done as fast as I planned or the result of the work was not as grand as I envisioned. Then I take a deep breath and remind myself that I am together with third graders and it takes time to grow. Instead of looking for what isn't there yet, I celebrate what the students know and can do already. Even small growth deserves a celebration. 

• We finish our day, sitting in a circle clapping and saying, " One, two, three, yay! We had a great day!" It brings a smile to my face.

Working together to create an example for expressing inferences

It is easier to work together to revise texts about reading and thinking. Yesterday we focused on improving our summary and finding themes and ideas from the story "Swimmy." Today we looked for evidence from the text to support our thinking.

Now the students work in groups to revise texts about other Leo Lionni books.

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.