Good Behavior Pays Off!

On Friday, we took some time out, even though it was a short day, to enjoy our reward for excellent behavior! The Pickle Jar Prize allows students to gain marbles for quick and quite appropriate behavior. If we spend less time settling down for each lesson then we can afford to take a bit of time out to enjoy a reward together as a class! This time the spinner landed on a Dance Party! The kids loved relaxing, dancing and singing togther. Enjoy a video or two!

Good times in Room 30!

I thought I'd share some fun pictures of the class. On Friday, December 23, we had our winter party. Saanika's mom planned some Minute-It-To-Win-It type games that the kids really enjoyed!

Arav's mom and Jack's mom took care of the food treats!

A great time was had by all!

Team Arav and Srikari vs Team Anvi and Alina

Sarah, Samiksha, Olivia and Aahana build towers on the clock!

Samiksha and Sarah are getting there!

Mason and Tejas vs Saanika and Sarvesh

Intense!!

Raymond and Noah are taking care of business!

Joseph and Muglian build it up!

Het and Advaith feel the pressure!

Jack and Jayla are cool as cucumbers!

On Thursday, December 22,  Jack's mom came in and helped everyone make a sock snowman. The kids had a ball as you can see by the looks on their faces.

Alina and Sarvesh with their new friends!

Two cool dudes (Arav and Tejas) with their COLD dudes!

Het and Saanika are proud of their creations!

Joseph and Sarah look like Santa and a Snow Woman on hat day!

Noah, Aahana and Sarah with their creations!

Jack and Anvi had a (snow)ball!

Mason and Olivia cuddle up with their new friends!

Mugilan and Advaith have their snowmen dressed to the nines!

Raymond and Jayla are proud of their sweater clad snowmen!
Great smile, Jayla!😀

Srikari and Samiksha were so creative with their snowman's outfits!

Fun With Websites for Cold Winter Days!

Recently,  I have had parents asking if I know of any websites where their child can practice math and language arts skills and concepts. First, I'd like to say that working online on a high quality website is a fine way to spend sometime, however, there should be a balance between practice and authentic work, especially where reading is concerned. Reading short articles and taking quizzes should never replace 20 minutes of reading in a text. Additionally, eight year olds should not replace authentic living, such as engaging with friends and neighbors, outdoor play, crafts, card games, board games or puzzles for time on the computer, hopefully gaining skills. These real life experiences for 8 year olds provide the interaction needed to make a well rounded adult, something even the best website can't do.
Having said all of that, I know there are times when a website is just the right thing to motivate children and provide some educational computer time, so here are a few suggestions.

This site has short games and activities for many subjects and topics of interest.

Some of the best recommendations for websites for math come from our very own, Paige Weaver's website. She is our math coordinator. This link will bring you to a page that has many websites laid out by grade and then by domains. i.e. Operations and Algebraic Thinking, Numbers and Operations in Base Ten, Numbers and Operations-Fractions, Measurement and Data, and Geometry.

Once at the site go to Math Resources and you'll see grade level choices.

Finally, I'd like to suggest two fantastic web pages related to reading.

Epic is one of the nicest sites for reading books that look like real books! There are many current texts that students would find in my library or the school library-sometime there are only old titles to choose from on websites. There are many different genres from fiction to mystery and nonfiction. I found several Box Car Children chapter books that also had the Read to Me feature. This could be wonderful for a child who isn't reading at the higher level of The Box Car Children yet would enjoy the high quality, well written mystery. There are so many choices. I highly recommend the site or app.

Last but not least a website I've recommended previously, but it is still one of my favorites.

This site provides Themed Reading Adventure Packs for family reading with follow up activities. Each themed pack recommends 2 books and supplies"activity plans" for parents. One book is a fiction story that is tied by theme to a nonfiction text-the Best of Both Worlds!! The packs are loosly grouped by age, but it would be easy enough to find other books on the same topic. Then use the activities with books that are appropriate for your child's reading level.

I hope these provide some high quality websites for when the wind is blowing and snowflakes are flying and computer time really is the best use of time! If your child uses any of these recommended sites, drop me an email and let me know if you'd give it a favorable review.

Nonfiction Reading of All Kinds!

What a busy time it is in our classroom! It is hard to believe we soon will be entering our third unit in reading. We have read and enjoyed an extensive unit on nonfiction. The unit began with expository nonfiction, which is mainly facts and information and highlighted with many text features such as diagrams, maps, and photographs with captions. We've had several lessons on 'reading around' an unknown word to figure out the meaning. We found that nonfiction authors uses context clue words such as: is, or, called etc to aid the reader. Other times there are clues such as synonyms, antonyms or examples that help guide us to the unknown word's meaning. We focused on writing the main idea and details, as well as using this structure to write a summary.
The unit finished up with a focus on narrative nonfiction, which featured biographies. We took a look at several individuals such as children's book illustrator, Ezra Jack Keats and writer, speaker, and activist, Helen Keller. We learned in order to read a biography well, we need to pay attention to the life story of the subject, but also to gain facts and information about the time period the person lived in, and to take note of the way the subject led his/her life. We also found that very often the life lessons the subject learns are lesson for anyone to learn, including the reader!
      Since are close to completing the nonfiction reading and students have gained skills in this area, I'd like to take the time to mention two fantastic website for the whole family. The activities on these websites would support the learning  that we have done in class. Don't worry too much about reading levels just choose a topic of interest to all of you and Enjoy!
Non-fiction reading that Kids Love: The following article discusses areas of the newspaper that are appropriate and enjoyable for kids to read. The article is written by Scholastic especially for parents.
Reading Adventure Packs for Families: Reading rockets is a website for teachers, students and parents. It has lots of information about many different aspects in reading. I will link you to this site again and again in the future. It is an awesome resource that I use in class as well. This link will take you to a page that has Adventure packs of books specifically designs for parent and children to investigate together. The creators have paired excellent fiction stories with logical nonfiction topics. For example, the outstanding author, Patricia Polocco has a book called, The Bee Tree which has a theme of maintaining stamina to learn to do something worthwhile and then enjoying the rewards. This has been paired with a nonfiction book, The Life and Times of the Honeybee by Charles Micucci. There is a free PDF that can be downloaded which provides questions and activities for you and your children to further explore the topics. Either book on its own would have great value, together they will create a wonderful learning experience for you and your child that will be treasured.
Keep these ideas in mind as the colder months approach and there is more indoor time to be spent together.
Finally, I am attaching a link so that you will have a small selection of before, during and after reading activities for you to discuss as your child reads nonfiction books at home.
Nonfiction questions 1- Just nonfiction
Nonfiction questions 2 - Fiction and Nonfiction
How to Ask Questions to Check Comprehension - Blog article
I hope these are helpful tools for you and your family,

We are off to an Awesome Start in Room 30!

We are into a little over a month of getting to know each other in Room 30, and I am happy to report that all seems to be going fine!

In reading, we completed our first reading unit on Building a Reading Life. We learned the strategies that good readers use to comprehend text. I've included a picture of a classroom poster and have written a bit about what is involved in using each reading strategy.
As third grade readers who have crossed the threshold from learning to read to reading to learn, we have started working hard to utilize reading comprehension strategies. The strategies for comprehending text are: Predicting, Questioning, Connecting, Visualizing, Inferring and Summarizing. A brief description is:
Predicting: Using clues from the text to make good guesses about what might happen next in the story.
Questioning: Asking and answering questions about the text while reading.
Connecting: Making connections helps bring meaning to the text. There are three types of connections. Text to Text, Text to Self and Text to World. These are likenesses drawn between another text or the world and the book being read.
Visualizing: Readers create a picture in his/her mind based on the author's words.
Inferring: Using what was read in the text and the reader's background knowledge to figure out messages that are not directly stated.
Summarizing: Paraphrasing a section of the text to verify your own understanding.
Each day during our whole class lesson I model the use of reading comprehension strategies that a good reader should do while reading. Slowly students take over and begin to share their thinking, about our whole class reading and then practicing this in by jotting think notes about his/her independent reading. As we read we are using these reading comprehension strategies to better understand the text and "figure out" the characters we are reading about. Your child will be familiar these strategies and can explain how he/she uses each one during reading.
If you enjoy reading with your child these comprehension strategies can be used as discussion points as you work your way through the book together.

Getting to Know George Washington, Very Well!

     Our biography unit kicked off with a fast read of a very interesting person-Milton Hershey. This biography was super to begin the unit with because we all know and love his products! It would be easy to see his success and to figure that it was always that way for him, but we found out differently! This biography not only taught us life lessons of the importance of perseverance and stamina in reaching goals, but also gave us a few directions for new learning about other interesting topics. Once we completed the reading, we watched a video about the way chocolate is made!
     This text showed us all of the basics for high level reading of biographies and we were off to a four book study of George Washington's Life. We've completed, Who Was George Washington?, a full life time biography and have three books about specific sections of George's life to go. For more information about the types of text, and the comprehension topics we investigate with each book refer to my March 9, 2015, blog.
    One way to aid comprehension and process the biography's text is to think about other topics that would be interesting to learn more about, as they relate to the subject of the biography. We read many times that George Washington loved his home, Mount Vernon,  and really wanted to stay close to home farming and inventing, but his desire for a strong, successful new America forced him to leave Mount Vernon to lead the country, at the demands of his contemporaries. This led us to using a website to take a virtual tour of Mount Vernon. This is the first year that the tour has been available on the Mount Vernon Website and we thoroughly enjoyed it! I wanted to make you aware of the website and suggest that you and your student take the tour together. There are several areas we did not have a chance to see in class. If you are ever able to take a family trip to Virginia, I'd recommend a visit it is a naturally beautiful, historic area of Our Country.

Click on the picture and take a virtual tour of Mount Vernon

Update on Social Issues Reading and Our study of Native American Tribes

These two books have crucial scenes where a main character is bullied.

In reading, we are currently in our Social Issues Unit. We have read fiction stories that you may recognize: The Hundred Dresses and Thank You, Mr. Falker. Both stories while having several other small social issues share the the social issue of bullying. After reading and discussing the books in depth, we decided that we needed to gather some information about the topic of bullying. In order to do this we watched a video that explained exactly what bullying is. We learned that there are three types of bullying: physical, verbal and social bullying. We also learned that the easiest way to solve the problem of bullying is to be kind to everyone. After the short video we read a non-fiction article that discussed what to do if you experience bullying as a bystander or as the victim. The students in Room 24 are armed with a 3 step plan No!, Go!, Tell! The one word cues remind the students how to handle a bullying situation and how to turned it around sooner, rather than later. We finished off with writing advice to either Patricia, the character in Thank You, Mr. Falker who was bullied or Wanda, the character in The Hundred Dresses who was bullied. Students needed to include information we gathered in the video and the non-fiction reading in the advice response.

These books were our book club texts. Each has a strong main character who has clear longings and desires. The main characters work though adversity to accomplish big things! Beatice Beruit and William Kamkwambo from The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind are real people who have made a difference in their own world.

 

We have read about the condition of poverty, homelessness, and the desire for education or a home of ones own in several different book clubs. All of these books had themes and sub-themes. Students read to recognize the characters longings, and  the way in which the characters reached his/her dream. It is fair to say that we have hit home the idea of "working long and strong is the best way to make life's dreams come true!" Along the way we read non-fiction articles and watched TED talk video, CBS 60 Minute excerpts and agency informational videos to learn more about how these real people worked toward their dreams with the assistance of volunteers and specific organizations that supported their in need.

In social studies, we are learning about Native American Tribes from around the 1700-1800 time period. Just about the time many European traders and explores began to arrive in America. To mix up the hum-drum month of March, each third grade teacher prepared to teach about 1 tribe. We covered 5 regions of America and 1 major tribe from each region. In each learning group we covered the tribe's shelter, clothing, food and the main natural resources that connected that tribe to the Earth. Then students enjoyed making a craft such as decorating an Iroquois mask, a Northwest Coastal totem pole bookmark, a Pueblo Kachina, a Sioux paper bag 'buffalo' skin and an Inuit inuksuk 'stone' statue.
The students LOVED traveling from classroom to classroom. You would have thought they were traveling to Disney! They really enjoyed learning about the tribes and were able to share a lot when they returned to their home base!
Now students in room 24 are compiling all of their research into a final project showing all of their learning. We will cap off this fantastic unit with student led digital research on four famous Native American and listening to a Native American Tale on line which will be included in the project.