The Antarctica Webinar

I hope you all heard about the webinar that the entire third grade participated in. Mrs. Crawford's and Mrs. Marinelli's classes watch the presentation together. The webinar was broadcast from Antarctica and was a wonderful additional resource to learn from during our habitat unit! In case you got "nothing" as a response when you asked, "What did you do today?" Here are the details and the website link for you and your child to investigate together.

This is a list of the new learning that our classes realized during the webinar. Some of these points were new to Mrs. Crawford and me!

• The scientists sleep in tents

• The scientists build igloos (snow caves) by covering bags of clothes

with snow, then removing bags of clothes

• Scientists are trained to build igloos for safety

• Scientists wear “white bunny boots” to protect their feet

• There are no polar bears in Antarctica

• Arctic and Antarctica are different places. The Arctic is the North

Pole; Antarctica is the South Pole

• Antarctica is the only continent with no Native people 

• The coldest recorded temperature was -128 degrees Fahrenheit

• Some penguins don’t like ice (terrestrial penguins)

• Temperatures are still below freezing temperatures (30 degrees F

today) even though it is their summer

• There are 200 different kinds of penguins

• Antarctica is a desert (due to the amount of precipitation and extreme

weather)

• Adelie penguins make their nests out of rocks on dry land

• There are no countries that own Antarctica; it is set up for peaceful

research and science

• The sun never goes down in the summer; scientists sleep during the

daytime hours. 

Go to Time for Kids.  for more information about the scientists and their research. 

Multiplication, Mysteries and More

We've just begun our second unit on multiplication, and I have a new website for you and your child.  Mr. R's World of math and science has something for everyone! This site has math songs, math poems and math music videos as well. It is important to get the math facts and math concepts in to our memory in any way possible. This site might excite some students who are music smart. That is he/she can sing any song, rap or rhyme. He might always be tapping or drumming. It is thought that music, math and science may share some thinking processes. Besides all of these good reasons, learning something in a fun way is always easier and more rewarding, so check out these new resources with your child.
We are finishing up our mystery reading partnerships! The students have enjoyed being sleuths and discussing their reading with their partners. The next step is independent reading of a mystery of each students choice. The only requirement is that the book is at the student's just right reading level.
Here is a website that has some awesome additional mystery resources that would be fun and educational. SuperThinkers Website: SuperThinkers encourages you to become a thinker, not a memorizer. The goal of SuperThinkers is to teach how to think by creating connections, looking for meaning behind facts, and analyzing to understand. Choose a game from the Peetnik Mysteries, watch a short video, then begin using information on the site to solve the mystery. In addition to games, the site includes a Creativity Workshop that features short online books with ideas for creating a book, making a movie or making a jigsaw puzzle. Many of the mystery pages include an audio button that will read the text to you!
Finally, this is our second week of poetry in our writing unit. We are focusing on free verse poetry. This is a style of poetry that focuses on delivering powerful thoughts in small packages. The author's message is delivered through careful observation, creative thinking and selection of just right words. Finally, students are exposed to different types of craft. They add their own personal style with appropriate line breaks, repetition, alliteration and a variety of other figurative language to deliver their ideas with appeal and impact.
As I write this post, I am hearing a weather report for more snow! I guess our January thaw was short lived! : (

Mystery Genre and Much More!

We have a big week ahead in room 21!
We are in the second week of our mystery genre study! The students are all working in reading partnerships. They are not only enjoying a mystery with one other partner, but really working to think like a sleuth and solve the mystery right along with the detectives in the story. This week students have spelling words that are related to the mystery genre. These words don't have spelling patterns as our usual spelling words do, so I have minimized the number of words to study. There will be specific spelling homework to aid in mastering these words this week. Look for "What to do with Mystery Vocabulary Cards" letter attached to the cards coming home tonight. These are games that can help make spelling and vocabulary practice a bit more fun!
When reading in the mystery genre for homework, your third grader should be thinking like a detective, practicing the skills we learn in class. I have included some pictures of our classroom anchor charts, so that you can both 'speak the same language' when you talk with your child about his/her reading.

The Language of Questioning and Prediction

 Mystery Readers read Suspiciously

Rights and Responsibilities of a Reading Partner
Reading Partners Can Talk About... Bubbles get changed as the genre changes.

The big news in the classroom is we have a new student! His name is Amogh. We are welcoming him and helping him learn about the classroom and West Hill School.

Happy New Year!

      Wow! It will feel very unusual to be back at school for a full week, but we will all be patient with each other as we get our brains back up to speed!

      Class Happenings: This week will be full with finishing our non-fiction reading unit. Mrs. Crawford's class and my class combined to create digital "posters" of non-fiction text features. In order to investigate and learn more about the text features we studied (caption, close-up view, map, sub-heading, diagram, comparison, graph, cut-away, textbox). Each group of three students worked to find 5 examples of their text feature in books. They photographed the text feature using the iPad camera and imported the photo onto a blank page in the Notability app. Then students added type to explain what the text feature is used for and how it helps readers of non-fiction understand. Finally, the group used the voice record feature on the app to read a portion of their presentation. The students loved the ability to add their voice. They found out what we already know....You never sound like you think you do! Due to the successive snowstorms we haven't been able to present yet. Barring any other weather challenges, we should be sharing our technology projects first thing Monday!

      Classroom News: During conferences, I mentioned the need for third grade students to improve their typing skills. I also mentioned briefly, that I would look into setting up our Reading Response Homework on our classroom blog that students could access at home. This would allow practice with reading an article online, composing, and typing a response at the same time. The long winter vacation allowed me to scan the articles and set up the questions for the next several weeks. Tomorrow, I will send home a letter giving the web address of the classroom blog and the details on how to log on and create the response. I anticipate students being very excited and wanting to complete their homework on line. Please know that all Reading Response Homework will be given out in paper form and is available online. Students may work online one week and the next week turn in a paper copy. The only important thing to be consistent with is the due date of Thursday morning. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns about homework blogging.

      Finally, I'd like to draw your attention to 2 new "Places to Go" on the links list on my blog page. I've added our English/Language Arts Coordinator, Darlene Brown's and our Math Curriculum and Instruction Coordinator, Paige Weaver's webpages. Each of these pages has several links that provide fact practice, reading, games, and other great practice opportunities for each grade level. All of the links have been previewed and deemed excellent learning choices! If you are interested in supporting the learning we do in class and providing your child with some educational fun, check these links out!