My World

Ms. Helelyn has been to our class before, teaching us about interviewing people. Today she came to learn more about us. She asked everyone to draw a mind-map of their world ( any places that were special) and then listened to the different stories behind the places.

Illustratrators

What kind of movements do dances have?

The title for this post is an inquiry question one of the students asked. We understand that it is not enough to just randomly move your body and call it a dance. There are some specific ways to speak about the movements in dances. Ms. Karolina gave us a lesson to introduce some dance vocabulary.

Before we got started with the lesson we chose the attitudes we want to focus on during this unit. We came to an essential agreement that for this unit we will show the attitudes of enthusiasm, confidence, creativity and cooperation.

Valuable feedback

She is back! In September Mrs. Sigal Ehrlich, Sigal as she asked to call her, visited our class and spoke about being a writer. Since then we have learned more about the writing process and author's craft.  Now that we had finished our personal narratives, we decided to ask for some feedback. Sigal was kind to find time to read some of the stories. Not only that. She wrote down the comments and came and talked to the budding authors. You should have seen the ear movement, the beaming smiles and backs being straightened when students heard positive feedback.
Here are some of the comments (to different writers):
The idea of your story is very good.
The way you begin your story is unique and intriguing.
You begin your paragraphs in a way that draws your readers in immediately.
You show your emotions well and it comes across in the story.
The story flows.
adding sensations such as describing the smell and taste is very good thing, that way you are making your story more real for your readers.
Adding parts of dialogues rewards your reader with the extra glimpse into the scene and makes it more real.
I absolutely loved the"tail between her legs" description.
Good conclusion to the story.

In addition to praise she left us some beneficial advice:

Thank you so much for giving your time as a gift to us.
Thank you for writing the feedback and coming to class, Sigal.
We appreciate your feedback and will keep your advice in mind when writing new stories.

Mid week review

Every day we practice a bit for the winter pageant.

We have continued with daily math and word study.

We are writing short fictional narratives.

We have continued speaking about inferring as a strategy to support and enhance our understanding of the texts we are reading. They all wrote me a letter with an example when they inferred supporting it with the evidence from the text.

 We put on the music and danced. Before we danced we began to define what is a dance. We decided that it is movement that has purpose and usually is connected to music. We also agreed that it requires physical exercise. We were not sure whether it always has a story, can it always be called a sport, how dances formed, what kind of movements different dances have, or how to make a dance if you want to. we decided that we can find some answers by watching dances but in some cases we should ask an expert.

Collecting new seeds

Collecting ideas for some future blog posts

Collecting ideas for a fictional narrative

New unit: Dance

I am excited that we started our new unit "Let's Dance"

I look forward to dancing and learning about dancing.

We have written a bit about our feelings and knowledge about dancing.

pre unit reflection

I know/ I want to know

The most exciting thing this week was going to see "Nutcracker" ballet on Wednesday in the middle of a school day. It was magical!

Practicing for winter pageant

Every year ISE has a winter pageant. It is a combination of a play, music and dancing. This year the script was inspired by our UOI "Family Stories." Grade 3 students also have the honor of being the main characters.
Yesterday Ms. Karolina and Doc. Shepherd (the directors of the pageant) came and the students practiced read and acted the play through from the beginning to the end.

I can't wait to see the end production.

Geometry Art

Come and visit the gallery.

After seeing a variety of examples of geometry used in art, the students set down to work. 

The instructions were simple:

use lines and shapes

use a ruler for drawing the straight lines

They all did a draft at first and then set off to work. I was impressed how the students took their time and paid attention to the quality of their work.

 

Recent read aloud books

Word Study

We have word study every day.

Word study combines phonetics, spelling, reading, listening and writing.

Currently we have three groups in class.

Each Monday the students get about 24 words they have to sort into categories by a certain feature. 

On Monday they do a simple sort, on Tuesday they have a timed sort, on Wednesday a written sort, on Thursday a blind sort (they can only hear the words), and on Friday we have a small spelling test with 10 words. 

 

Before and after

Mind maps from the beginning and the end of the "Family Stories" UOI.

Geometry fun

Creating designs with pattern blocks.

Math art.

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.