It's Been Awhile.......

WOW, it’s been a long time since we’ve written in our blog! We have been busy learning in Room 203!

This week in P.E. we are learning about basketball. We are learning to pass the ball with the palms of our hands facing out. We are also doing stations with basketball, which are great. We are also learning how to shoot the ball in the hoop, which can be hard at times. In Math we are learning about place value. We are using bits and skinny pieces to show different ways to represent a number. We did Math Centers this week, using the laptops, our classroom economy checks, number puzzles, and subtraction flashcards. In Music we are learning our songs for the Veterans Day Assembly. In Social Studies we are continuing to learn about landforms. We found some of the important landforms of our country, like Mount Saint Helens, which is a volcano, the islands of Hawaii, Washington D.C., which is our nation’s capital, the Appalachian and Rocky mountains, The Grand Canyon, and the Mississippi River. We used candy to show where these things are on a map of the USA. Check out our website for pictures! ☺ In Art we are having a Veterans Contest. We are coloring pictures of liberty guards. The winning picture will win a $50 savings bond from the veterans. In Reader’s Workshop this week we have been working on character traits. We read the story I Hate English! and wrote down character traits that describe the main character, Mei Mei. We practiced identifying character traits in our own books. In Writer’s Workshop we have been working on using the timeline strategy to put our events of our story in order. It’s publishing time again, so we are working on developing a seed story & making it our best! We are really working on finding the heart of the story, which is the most important part for the reader, and developing it. We will be having our publishing party next week! This weekend, Speedy will be staying at Mateusz’ house. REMEMBER: NO SCHOOL MONDAY! (Teacher Institute Day). Today, the 4th graders from Washington School are coming back to Kennedy for an ice cream party! The 3rd grade teachers will get to celebrate with their students from last year & congratulate them on a job well done on the ISAT test! ☺

A Peek At Our Week

In Math we have been learning about Magic Squares. When each direction of the square has the same sum, it’s magic! We’ve also been practicing our subtraction facts. In Writer’s Workshop we are starting to publish our personal narratives. Good writers always go back and reread their ideas and they choose ONE seed story that they want to develop it and watch it grow into a final piece! We are also working on writing seed stories, not giant watermelon topics. In Social Studies this week we’ve been working on Maps. We made a compass rose, which shows our directions. We learned that the cardinal directions are North, South, East & West. We learned a catchy phrase that will help us remember the order they go in. “Never Eat Soggy Waffles”. There are also in-between directions, that we call intermediate directions. They are Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, and Southeast. We learned that the city we live in is Schiller Park. The state we live in is called Illinois. We know that Illinois is one of 50 states in our country. Our country’s name is U.S.A. There are 3 countries in our continent of North America. There are 7 continents on our planet, which is called Earth. In P.E. we are learning about football. In Art we are making portraits. Speedy is going home with Julia this weekend!

This Week's News

This week we started Reading Room. We were doing centers like making words, building sentences, and we played Outburst. We will begin reading books next week. Thursday was Curriculum Night (Open House). Our parents came in to see our classroom & Miss Gosche raffled off 2 great prize buckets for those families who attended. Stefania and Simon were the big winners! Today was the first day of computers. We learned how to use the new Macs with Ms. Parkhill. In Math we worked on more line number puzzles. We read a story in our Adventure Book about not copying other people’s work. We also practiced some more addition facts in our daily practice problems. In Writer’s Workshop we are working on Personal Narratives (true stories). We learned 2 important strategies this week. We should think of a person who is important to us or think of a place that’s important to us, and list small moments. In Reader’s Workshop we learned all about finding books that are JUST RIGHT. We shopped for books to add to our book boxes. We also started giving ourselves grades each time we do Reader’s Workshop. We talked about diving into good books & getting lost in good books, too. We came up with a P.O.A (plan of action) for Reader’s Workshop, which is 1. Choose a book, 2. Read, 3. Think, 4. Read Some More, and 5. Respond in our notebooks! In Social Studies, we put together paper community buildings, like apartments, police stations, fire stations, houses, hotels, and restaurants. Speedy is staying at school this weekend! Remember to choose a weekend or two and turn in Speedy's Field Trip Schedule form so Miss Gosche can make his schedule!

A Peek At Our 1st Full Week

In Social Studies we have been learning about communities. The three types of communities are: suburban, rural, and urban. We have been doing many fun projects. Today we finished City Mouse/Country Mouse. We had to pick if we wanted to be a city mouse and live in the city, or a country mouse and explain why. In Math, we did our first TIMS Lab called Kind of Bean. We took a sample of beans from the population and counted the number of beans for each kind. We put our data in the data table and then we made a graph. We made sure to label our graph (the horizontal axis and vertical axis). For Writer’s Workshop, we had to decorate our notebooks. We shared them with our class. In Reader’s Workshop, we decorated our book boxes & we added some useful tools that we will use during Reader’s Workshop. We read Library Dragon and the librarian in the story wouldn’t let the students touch the books! Our classroom library isn’t like that. We brainstormed good ways to take care of the books in our library. In Art we are learning about shapes and lines. In P.E. we did our Fitness Testing this week. REMINDER: There is no school on Monday because it’s Labor Day! ☺ Speedy will be going home with Natalie this weekend! Have a great 3-day weekend! –Room 203

New Year....New Adventures!

WELCOME to all the new 3rd grade students of Room 203~! We are going to have so much fun learning together this year!

Meeting our 'Online Buddies'

Today our class had the wonderful opportunity to travel to Fairview Elementary School in Mount Prospect, IL to meet our 'online buddies' that we have been collaborating with virtually all year! We got to know each other by writing a buddy cinqain poem, we created WORDLE word clouds of words that described our collaboration experience this year, and we created a presentation in Google Docs about our experiences this year! We had a picnic lunch together outside & finished off our visit by playing together on the playground at Fairview. It was neat seeing a different school and touring their building. Check out our pictures below:

Pictures from the Zoo!

3rd graders went to the Brookfield Zoo today! Check out the pictures below: