Too Busy To Blog

Hi there!

Thank you to those of you who have been reading my posts.  I so appreciate you taking the time to see what we've been up to in our classroom.  This week is all about wrapping up all that we've learned and having tons of fun.  Please see your child's homework plan for updates on this week's happenings.

Thank you so much for an incredible school year.  I look forward to seeing you at our awards ceremony in our class on Friday June 6th at 11:00 sharp.

Thanks again!

Melissa

14 Days and Counting...Down!

First and foremost, thank you all so much for attending our amazing "Poetry Blooms" recital on Friday!  I love how the kids totally ran the show with respect and care!  I always feel like I'm doing something right when they take the reins and lead.  Go third graders!

It's this time of year that I feel like the weather channel: constant updates!  We've got a lot going on and I will do my best to be sure that you're fully informed.  I sent home a list of upcoming dates today.  Here are the events again just in case:

The events you may want to add to your calendar are the following.

 Thursday May 22 – Land Trust presentation for the whole third grade in Bobby’s class at 9.

Friday May 23^rd – Presentation by Dr. Gloria Beim about her experience as the official Team USA doctor at the Olympics in Sochi Russia. This will be in the Multi-purpose room at 9:00. Please join us. 2^nd through 4^th will be attending.

Last Week of School:

Tuesday June 3^rd Field Day and Summer Birthday party. We start at the Town Park at 11:30 to celebrate summer bdays, then return to school Field Day from 12:30-3:00. If your child has a summer bday, contact me or look for a note soon!

Wednesday June 4^th - Happy Birthday Ben Barney and our annual 3^rd grade hike on the Upper Loop. If weather and snow conditions allow. It’s looking good!

Thursday June 5^th- Rain date for our hike or field day if needed. Otherwise out last full day together!

Friday June 6^th 11:30-12:00 Last day and 3^rd grade award ceremony. Take a coffee break from work and come join us as each child in our class is recognized for strengths and contributions throughout the year.

Dismissal on the last day is at 12:15.

Also, this will be the last week for spelling.  We will be wrapping up and reviewing all concepts in reading and math.  For writing, we have started a newspaper.  I still haven't decided what the final product will be.  More on that later!  

Speaking of later, I'm not sure what your summer plans are, but I am running an adventure camp and would love for your child to participate!  You should have received an email today explaining the details.  Please feel free to contact me with any questions you may have.  This adventure camp is open to all current 3rd-5th graders (or future 4th-6th graders) so feel free to spread the word!

For more info, check out my other blog http://melissassummeradventureclub.blogspot.com/

Thank you so much for all that you do and for reading!

Spring Time in the Rockies

What a wonderful weekend filled with dance performances and...snow?  Even though it feels like winter outside, we are in full spring here in our amazing third grade class!

Here is what we'll be up to this week:

Reading:  This time of year is all about book clubs and reviewing all the skills and strategies that we've learned so far this year.  This week we will revisit character traits and supports with our book clubs and self-selected books.  We will also be reading some more Junior Great Book stories in class.  I have some older additions that have a few more stories yet to be enjoyed!  These readings and discussions will be just for "in-class" only as I don't have enough copies to go around.

Poetry:  As you know, we will be reciting poetry in our class this Friday at 2:45.  We hope that you can join us for this wonderful celebration.  Please be sure to be on time as you don't want to interrupt the performers.  

Writing:  We wrapped up our poetry unit and are moving on to an end of the year newspaper unit.  This is a fun and meaningful way to reflect on our year together and also review non-fiction features, leads, details, and conclusions.  I'm not sure what our end result will be (maybe a blog, electronic newspaper, old-fashion hardcopy, or something I haven't thought of yet),  but I'll keep you posted!

Math:  We just finished up our unit on fractions and we expanding our knowledge on multiplication and division. In this unit, we will learn about partial-products algorithm for multiplying 1-2 digit numbers and strategies for mental multiplication.  Wondering what a partial-products algorithm is?  Here's an example:

That's all for now.  As always, thank you for reading and please feel free to contact me with any questions, suggestions, and/or concerns.

Melissa

Let the May-hem Begin!

It's already May people!  Happy Cinco de Mayo and early Mother's Day!  This time of year is action-packed here in third grade.  Here's a little peek at our upcoming week!

We had such an incredbile time building our volcanoes last week!  What a fun way to learn more about geology and teamwork!  This was a whole-third grade activity which gave students the opportunity to work with students in the other three classrooms.

This week we will be painting our volcanoes and then EXPLODING them! Woohoo!  We will also learn about the parts of a volcano and will begin exploring the three types of rocks.

Reading:  We will continue on with asking Thick Questions this week due to our short week last week.

Writing:  Poetry continues this week as well.  We will be turning our focus toward our marvelous mothers as Mother's Day is this Sunday.  Yay Moms!  Thank you for all that you do!  We will also be choosing a famous poem to memorize for our Poetry Recital.  Our Poetry Recital will be held in our classroom on Friday May 16th at 2:45- 3:20.  I will send home more information this week.  

Math:  We will be wrapping up our unit on fractions this week and will be moving on to more multiplication and division.   In our next unit, we will focus on mental multiplication, exploring two-digit multiplication, number stories, and remainders.

Special Events:  The high school National Honor Society students will be hosting Safety Day at the end of the day on Thursday.  This is a great way for the students to learn about safety in all sorts of situations like biking, rafting, crossing the street, and more!

Heads Up:

-We will be having another round of MAP testing this week.  We will be testing on Monday and Friday from 10-11:20.  

-Next week we will be heading to the Trailhead Museum on Tuesday May 13 for a fun some fun hands-on scientific explorations!  I will be sending a permission slip home with more details this week.

As always, thank you so much for taking the time to read this.  I so appreciate you attention and support.  Only four more entries to read after this!  

Four Day Week Lowdown

There will be no school on Friday for elementary students, but we'll still be having spelling and learning tons during this four day week.

Reading:  This week during reading, book clubs will continue to meet and discuss literature.  We will be focusing on asking "Thick Questions" about our readings.  We have addressed "Questioning" during our reading throughout the year.  Questioning is used to keep students engaged and thinking about their reading, but now it's time to expand on our knowledge.

Thick questions are questions that cannot be answered with just a yes or no.  Thick questions often address larger concepts and big ideas in the reading.  The answers to these types of questions cannot be found in the text, they come from one's mind.  This is a big step for us.  Students have been answering thick questions with our Junior Great Books activities, but it's a different skill set to come up with the questions.  We will be working on this skill this week and next.

Writing:  We will continue working on poetry.  We have been loving writing poems inspired by many famous poets!  We also have been incorporating Sharon Creech's Love that Dog as well.  The book is written from the point of view of a boy, Jack,who is journaling about his dislike of poetry.  Through his study of famous poems brought to him from his teacher, he finds his own poetic voice.  We're loving this story and have enjoyed comparing our poems and thoughts with Jack's.

Math:  We have delved into our study of fractions!  This can be a tricky concept for some, but our class is really enjoying learning about parts of a whole.  Last week we learned to name the parts of the fraction.  We learned that the denominator represents the total number of equal parts and right above it is the numerator that represents the part of the whole that we're discussing.  We explored fractions with shapes.  This week we are going to learn about number line fractions and equivalent fractions.

Theme:  We are "rockin' on" with our geology unit.  Last week we were on a quest for calcite!  We had  four rock samples and had to figure out which rocks had the mineral calcite in them.  Calcite is the most common mineral found in rocks and it fizzes when it comes in contact with vinegar.  Through a short series of explorations, we were able to determine which rocks had calcite.  It was a ton of fun and with all that vinegar, our classroom smelled like salad dressing all week long!

This week we will begin making volcanoes!  We will be working with the whole third grade in groups of four!  Since it's a short week, we'll probably only get through the creating part.  The eruptions will have to wait until next week!

Lastly, we were fortunate enough to have Mountain Roots come and teach us all about nutrition last week.  They taught us how to read food labels and make healthy choices and they taught us how to cook!  We kicked off our Wednesday by making yummy crepes!  They were nutritious and delicious.  We learned so much and had such a great time.  Mountain Roots will return this week for a final lesson about food and the media.

 It was amazing.  I mean, look at Jen's face!

Thank you so much for reading!

Time flies when you're having so much fun!

I can't believe that Spring Break is next week!  When we come back, there will only be seven weeks left of school!! Ahhh!!!

Thank you all for such a great Parent-Teacher Conference turn out!  We had some wonderful conversations about student growth and progress.  Another topic of conversation was the possibility of looping next year.  While this is still a possibility, there are so many variables to consider and decisions won't be made about next year until the end of this year.  One thing that is for certain is your child will be placed in the best possible environment to support his/her academic and social growth.  We'll just have to be patient and stay focused on the present.  Information about next year will be released toward the end of the summer just like always.  With that being said, we can still keep our fingers crossed!

This week in third grade:

We will be participating in two field trips this week.  The first is this Wednesday's trip to Gunnison Cattlewomen's Agventure.  Yeehaw!  We will be heading down to Gunni at 8:50 and returning around 1:00.  The weather is supposed to be sunny and in the high 50's!  Woohoo!  But, we will be down their early, so students should have layers, sunscreen, a sack lunch, and shoes that are ranch appropriate.

The second field trip is on Friday.  We'll be walking over to the CB Heritage Museum at 1:00 and returning around 2:30.

Academics are going along just swimmingly!  We are about to wrap up our multiplication and division unit just in time for Spring Break!  We are loving every minute of our poetry unit and are enjoying creating our own poems based off masters like William Blake, Robert Frost and William Carlos Williams.  We just concluded our Biography unit and our presentation was FANTASTIC!

Geology is our new theme and last week we explored "mock rocks".  We talked about how rocks are made up of two or more minerals and used some pretty sophisticated techniques to break down our mock rocks.  Check out the video.  Who knew water bottles could be so useful?

After breaking down the mock rocks with our water bottles, we decided to take out the gravel and shells and set them aside.  Next, we broke it down to a fine powder and put the powder in water, shook it up, and let it all settle.  Then, we poured the water into an evaporating dish and let it sit for a few days.  We thought maybe this would help us figure out what else these mock rocks were made of.

We discovered that one of the ingredients was salt!  We took some time to explore these really cool salt crystals!  We looked at them under a magnifying glass and compared and contrasted with others.  We wrapped up by recapping and realizing that mock rocks and real rocks are both a combination of materials, not just one thing or mineral.

Last thing:  We write in our Gratitude Journals every single day at school.  With over 130 entries, we needed some new ideas and inspiration.  We found inspiration in two places and we'd like to share them with you.  The first was our new Daily Gratitude poster that gives us some helpful prompts.  Feel free to use them for yourself as well!

And the second came from photographer Louie Schwartzberg.  He is known for his time-elapsed photography and he created this 5 minute short about gratitude.  Please check it out on my post titled Gratitude.  We watched it today in class and we loved it!

Thank you so much for reading!  Have a fantastic week and a super break!

-Melissa

GRATITUDE by Louie Schwartzberg

Buckle up people! There's a lot going on!

Our next couple weeks are going to be action-packed in Melissa's third grade.  Here is a couple of important highlights:

Class Picture Day:  We will be taking our class picture on Wednesday April 2nd at 9:00.  If you would like to purchase a class picture, the cost is $10.  Please send cash or a check made payable to Lifetouch.  I will fill out a form for you if you have misplaced the one that come home last week.

Also on Wednesday is the Talent Show registration.  This short meeting is mandatory and will take place at 3:45 in room D 204.

Biographies and Realistic Fiction Celebration:  Due to the overwhelming enthusiasm of this amazing group of kids, we will be presenting our biography study and our realistic fiction stories on Friday April  4th at 2:45.  Students are permitted (but not required) to dress up as the famous person that they studied for this presentation.  Each student will have a chance to share a bit about their biography and then you can check out their incredible posters!  Then students will be able to share their realistic fiction pieces with you.  I understand that we have been asking you to come into school a lot lately, so if you can't make it, it's no biggie.  If you can, we'd love to have ya!


Next week:  We are going on an Ag-venture!  The Gunnsion Valley Cattlewomen has prepared a six station educational experience for us down in Gunni!  The stations will include art, music, poetry, farrier and welding demonstrations and leather crafting all to celebrate the theme of "Telling the Story of Agriculture."  We will be taking the bus down to Gunnison on Wednesday April 9th at 8:50 and will be heading back to CB around 12:30.  Students will need to bring a sack lunch.  A permission slip will be coming home at the end of this week.

We are going to continue our learning outside the classroom with a trip to the CB Heritage Museum on Friday April 11th.  We will be walking over to the museum at 1:00 to meet up with Glo and learn all about the history of our sweet little town with a focus on the jobs of the past!  Amazing to think about how there used to be a dairy farm right here in town huh?

That's all for now.  Thank you for reading!

March Madness in Third Grade!

As you know, Parent-Teacher Conferences are here and so are two half days for students.  Of course, this has caused a shift in our schedule.  But we are masters at making it work here in third grade!

Here's the rundown of what's going on this week:

Reading Workshop:

Our Book Clubs are going along just great!  In third grade, we talk about how we can't just rest on our greatness.  We should always try and take it up a notch!  Our Book Clubs are no exception to this rule.  Students have been guided to lead Book Club meetings on their own.  This responsibility has two essential components.

The first is freedom to choose what to discuss about the text. Since we have spent a considerable amount of time practicing our reading response jobs (Discussion Director, Word Wizard, Connector, and Literary Luminary), students are ready to chose what parts of the book they want to discuss with the group without the restrictions of the "job".  For example, when students come to an unknown word or a part of the book that they have a strong connection with, they no longer have to set it aside because they are not the Word Wizard or the Connector.  They are free to flag what interests them with a sticky and bring it to their next meeting.  This allows for an authentic responses to reading.

The second part is leading the book club discussions without me.  I started doing this last year, and I found that students really enjoyed the freedom and responsibility and the really rose to the challenge.  Students will discuss their findings, decide what the next reading assignment and meeting date will be, and grade themselves and each other on their contribution to the discussion.  Here is the form and rubric that I created for them:

Book Club Meeting Agenda: 

1.    Meeting will begin with deciding who the Discussion Director will be and then with a group summary of the reading assignment.

2.    Next, we will go through and discuss each person’s findings as a group.  This should take a considerable amount of time as it is a discussion, not just a share time.

3.    The group will then decide the next reading assignment and meeting date.

4.    Each member of the group will grade each other and themselves using the Book Club Meeting Rubric.

Names	Participation	Knowledge of Book	Group Respect	Preparedness

	1	2	3	4
Participation	Student didn’t or rarely participated.	Participates some of the time during the book discussions and seems to have little grasp of content of the book (characters, events, behaviors...).	Student participated several times throughout the discussion and seems to have a firm grasp of the content of the book (characters, events, behaviors…).	Student was a leader in the discussion by questioning others and encouraging them to share more.  Student had a firm grasp of the content of the book (characters, events, behaviors…).
Knowledge of Book	Student showed little or no knowledge of the book.  Student didn’t contribute any thoughts about the book.	Student showed some knowledge of the book and contributed some thoughts about the book.	Student showed appropriate knowledge of the book and contributed many thoughts about the book and events.	Student showed a deep knowledge of the book and provided meaningful and thorough explanations of the events.
Group Respect	Student was off task, and didn’t show respect to other members of the group.	Student had difficulty staying on task and being respectful.	Student was on task the majority of the time and was respectful.	Student was on task at all times and was respectful.
Preparedness	Student showed no opinion of the book.  Sticky notes didn’t really add much to the discussion.	Student discussed little or vague opinions about the book.  Sticky notes added some to the discussion	Student discussed some detailed opinions about the book and their sticky notes were thoughtful and meaningful to the discussion	Student discussed several opinions from the book and used evidence from the story to back up opinions.

The use of the rubric not only helps the student know what to look for in others, but it helps them realize what they need to be bringing to the group as well.  We started this today and it was fantastic!  Although they are on their own, I am always eavesdropping!  I was very impressed to see them step up to the challenge and really take this responsibility seriously!

Writing Workshop-Biography Combo:

With are alternative schedule this week, our Writing Workshop has been converted to our Biography poster finish up, which includes a paragraph writing component.  Students have really learned so much through this study!  I would like to have a presentation where students dress up as the person they studied and share their findings.  Maybe next week?  Our next writing focus will be Poetry and our next theme will be Geology.  Both will be introduced at the end of this week.

Math:

We will be finishing our unit on Geometry this week and moving on to Multiplication and Division.  Even though we are already multiplication masters in our class, this upcoming unit will expand on our already amazing skills!

Thank you for reading.  We'll be chatting soon!  

Lastly, our Stephan Gammell inspired portraits were MIND BLOWING!  You'll see them in the hall above our cubbies, but here is a little taste: If you're reading via email. you'll have to go to the blog to see the pictures!