This Week's News

This Monday we went to the Morton Arboretum for our first field trip. We learned about the water cycle and how nature recycles its materials. It was very cold! BRRRR! Tuesday was Veteran’s Day. We invited veterans and parents to come see our performance. In Reader’s Workshop this week, Miss Anna taught us a lesson on connections. In Writer’s Workshop we are planting our seed stories onto paper and working on fixing up our writing. Next week we will publish our personal narratives! In Math, we reviewed place value. We are learning a place value game that we will teach our online buddies in Mount Prospect. In cursive this week, we learned the letters i and t. In P.E. we had a free day. Today we are going to an assembly called The Power of One (about bullying). In Social Studies this week, we’ve been researching Washington D.C. and we started making a brochure to welcome the Obama family to their new home. Today is our first Fruity Friday! Mrs. Boryszewski was able to win a grant and get money for our school to give healthy snacks out! Every Friday, each class will get to try a new fresh fruit! Dominika is taking Speedy home this weekend. Check out pictures from our field trip below:

Our Ball Chairs Have Arrived

As you've read from our previous blog entries, our class posted a grant proposal on the Donor's Choose website, where people can donate money to school projects and help teachers fund projects for their classrooms & students. One of our projects was called "On the Ball...." and we were requesting 6 large exercise balls to use as chairs in the classroom. I wanted the 3rd graders in Room 203 to be "on the ball" in reading, math and writing, and what better way then by providing exercise ball seats! All teachers search for ways to promote learning and engagement in their classrooms. Creating a motivating, engaging, and creative learning environment is always on the top of my list!

The balls arrived on Monday, and with the help of an electric air pump, we inflated them all! They're orange (they perfectly match our Promethean Board) and the kids love them! Check them out:

A Peek at Our Week

On Monday this week, we all did a school vote for our country's next president! We all got our own ballots and voted in a voting booth for John McCain or Barack Obama. We even got an I VOTED sticker after! The winner of the Kennedy School Presidential Elections was Barack Obama! We didn't have school on Tuesday since it was Election Day. We all watched the elections at night to see that Barack Obama won with 364 electoral votes (he only needed 270 to win). Wednesday we learned about the different regions in our country and which states are in each region. We used candy to represent the different landforms in the United States! On Thursday in Reader's Workshop we read If I Were President and talked about all the different jobs a president has when in office. In Writer's Workshop we worked on planting our BEST seed story from our writer's workshop journsl on a piece of paper to grow and develop into a writing piece to publish! This week we read The Scrambled States of America and even watched the movie version! Today we chatted with our "online buddies" (the 3rd grade class in Mount Prospect) on gmail. We had music today, too. It was our last music class before our Veteran's Day show next Tuesday. Earlier this week, real veterans came to talk to our classroom. We got to ask them questions and learn all about what it was like to be a soldier in a war. We are very excited for them to come to our Veteran's Day show next week!! In computers this week, we started researching for our WELCOME TO WASHINGTON,D.C. brochures we will be making for the Obama family! Malia and Sasha, and Mr. and Mrs. Obama will probably want to learn about all the monuments and buildings they can see when they move to Washingotn, D.C., so we are going to make them a brochure and send them to the Obama's! Julia will be taking Speedy home this weekend. We received 4 new postcards for our postcard exchange project this week, Louisiana (2), New York (1), and Utah (1). Have a great weekend!!!!!!

This Week's News.....BOO!

This week in Social Studies we learned about landforms. We made a dough and put it in a landform mold. When it dries we will paint it and label the landforms. In Math, we did Candy Corn math, where we practiced multiplication and division fact families. In Reader’s Workshop we’ve been working on making good connections to what we read. We read Duck for President and Roberto the Insect Architect. We also read The Wall by Eve Bunting and learned about Veteran’s Day (coming up on November 11th). In Writer’s Workshop we’ve been practicing writing great leads, which are the first sentences of the story to hook the reader! In P.E. we started basketball. In Art we painted Picassos. Our postcard exchange project is going great! This week we received 8 new postcards. We now have postcards from 15 of the 50 states. Today is HALLOWEEN! We have our parade at 1:30 and our party afterwards. We brought LOTS of goodies! Our class’s ball chair project was fully funded on the Donor’s Choose website! We will soon have 6 large exercise balls to use as chairs! Thanks to everyone who donated money for our classroom!

This Week's News from Room 203

This week in Reader’s Workshop we learned another way we can respond in our Reader’s Workshop journals. We practiced making connections. We read Sparky the Firefighter to practice this strategy. We also worked on picking out the adjectives in a story. We read The Night I Followed My Dog by Nina Laden. In Writer’s Workshop we practiced telling stories, instead of just saying what happened. We learned that great writers write so that readers can feel like they are there (in the story)! This week we received new postcards from Washington, Alaska, Texas, Nevada, California, Florida, and Pennsylvania. We now have 20 total postcards from 12 different states. In Social Studies we are learning about landforms, which are different ways our land is shaped. In Math, we’ve been practicing subtraction facts with flashcards. We learned strategies to help us when we subtract 9 or 10 using a hundreds chart. The answer to a subtraction problem is called a difference. We also started multiplication this week! We practiced multiplication number sentences using cookie crisps! This week, we also started cursive! We put shaving cream on our tables, and practiced some of the strokes that we will use when learning cursive letters. Friday is Matthew’s birthday. This weekend Julia will be taking Speedy home. In P.E. we are learning about fitness. This week was red ribbon week (drug awareness week). Each day we did something fun to promise to just say no to drugs Monday was turn your back on drugs so we wore our shirts backwards. Tuesday was put a cap on drugs, so we wore hats to school. Wednesday was sock it to drugs, so we wore crazy socks. Thursday was team up against drugs, and we wore our favorite sports team shirt to school. Friday is saying no to drugs is no sweat, so we are wearing sweats and pajamas today. We decorated our door for the door-decorating contest, which will be judged today!

Our First VoiceThread

A Peek At Our Week (October 13-17)

This week we received our first postcards in the mail for our Postcard Exchange Project. Our goal is to get a postcard from all 50 states. So far we’ve received 13 postcards from the following states: Florida, Texas, Vermont, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Michigan. In Reader’s Workshop we reviewed our Workshop Plan which is to 1. Choose a book, 2. Read, 3. Think, 4. Read some more, and 5. Respond. In Writer’s Workshop we read Library Mouse which was about a mouse who was an author and wrote about what he knew. He wrote lots of different genres (kinds) of books and he taught the kids that they were all authors, too! This week we used the Activotes (the eggs) to review for our Reading Cycle Test. In Math we worked on Magic Squares, which are squares where each line equals the same sum. On Wednesday we had a very special visitor. Mr. Bren, an artist, came to visit Kennedy School. He started Project Smile, where he leaves his paintings for people to take for FREE! But the new owner has to promise to smile more often! We went to an all school assembly to learn about his project, and then he visited Room 203 to teach us how to draw his creations. He’s so cool! He gave our school one of his paintings. We are so lucky! If you come to Kennedy School you will see lots of smiling kids & teachers! This week we’ve been working on the Halloween Story with our online buddies in Mount Prospect. We write a little of the story, and then they continue where we left on. We are using Google Documents to share and work together on a story. We can’t wait to show you our story when it’s done. We sure have been writing a lot this week!! Our next project with our online buddies is to create a VoiceThread to teach them a math game from Math Trailblazers. Announcement: The food drive is going on at Kennedy, so please bring non-perishable foods. Dominika will be taking Speedy home this weekend! Today we have Music and Computer Lab. We also made our first VoiceThread today. It’s like a mini-movie. Click the link below to check it out:

http://voicethread.com/share/224433/

Have a good weekend!

A Peek At Our Week.....

In Social Studies we reviewed the 7 continents, and the 4 oceans. We made a compass rose. We learned that the cardinal directions are North, South, East, and West. A trick to remember which order they go in is, ‘Never Eat Soggy Waffles”! We also learned the intermediate directions: northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest. In Reader’s Workshop we started writing in our Reader’s Response Journals. When we read books, we think about them and respond in our journals. We put our thinking in writing. They are like maps of our reading adventures! This week we read Wolf and Jumpy Jack and Googily. In Writer’s Workshop we learned another strategy to write personal narratives (true stories). We think of an object that’s special to us. We also talked about the difference between a watermelon story and a seed story. On Monday this week the Schiller Park Fire Department came and taught fire safety. Only call 911 if it’s an emergency. In P.E. we started soccer. Today we’re starting a project with our online buddies, and we’re visiting our Kindergarten buddies this afternoon.

New Mix Tape!

What We Did This Week.........

This week we played football in P.E. In Social Studies we started a new theme! We will be learning about the 50 states. We are starting a postcard exchange project, where we are trying to get a postcard from each of the 50 states. We reviewed the words universe, galaxy, Earth, continent, country, state, and city. In Math this week we used connecting cubes to help us with an addition strategy. We tried to make groups of 10 to make adding easier. In Reader’s Workshop we got new tools, like a journal, a pencil, bookmarks, pointer sticks, and word finders. to help us become better readers! We read Oh The Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss. We also read Miss Malarkey Leaves No Reader Behind. It helped us get pumped up about AR (accelerated reader). Some of us even started taking AR quizzes this week!
On Monday we brought back our decorated writer’s workshop notebooks and shared them with the class. We learned two new strategies to help us write personal narratives (true stories). We would brainstorm a special person, or a special place, and think of clear, small moments that happened. In Art we made Christmas Cards for a contest. 1st place winners get a $50 gift card to Toys R Us. 2nd place winners get a $25 gift card. This week we also reviewed and practiced fact/opinion. Have a good weekend!

This Week's News....

This week in Math we worked on Line Puzzles. We cut out numbers and figured out where they went in the puzzle to reach a sum. A sum is the answer to an addition problem. On Thursday, we used our Adventure Books for the first time, which is a comic book for Math! We learned not to copy, but to ask for help if things are hard! In Reader’s Workshop, we learned how to pick Just Right Books using the 5 finger rule and we read the book called Goldilocks & the Three Hares. We “shopped” in our classroom library to find Just Right Books for our book boxes. This week, we also learned strategies to use when we get to a hard word. We should look at the beginning & the ending letters of the word and see if we can also find little chunks or little words we already know! Good readers ask “Does this make sense?” If it doesn’t, they should STOP and go back to re-read. In Writer’s Workshop, we learned that writer’s have a saying: “When you’re done, you’ve just begun!” We learned what we can do if we think we’re done writing. We can add to the picture, add to our words or start a new piece! In Social Studies, we worked in community groups, and made our communities with the buildings we made on the computer. Thursday night was Open House!!! We were so excited to show our parents the Promethean Board & Activotes (we call them the eggs). We recorded our voices so our parents could hear a special surprise when they came! Speaking of the eggs, we got to practice answering questions using the eggs. It was really fun! In P.E. we played football & finished fitness testing. This week, 3rd grade chorus started, too! They will practice after school every Thursday. Have a good weekend!

Class News

This week we started Contract Spelling. On Mondays we always take a pre-test and we decide how many words we want to study for the week. We practice our words all week long and take a test on Friday. In P.E. we had fitness testing. In Math we learned about populations and samples. We did a fun math lesson using different kinds of beans. We counted them & recorded our data in a table first, and then graphed our data. Our first theme in Social Studies is Communities. We learned about the 3 types of communities: Rural, Urban, and Suburban. We live in a suburban community. To see the different types of communities from ABOVE, we used Google Earth. We noticed that in urban communities, like Chicago, all the buildlings were close together, but in rural communities we noticed lots of open spaces for crops to grow. In Reader's Workshop we brainstormed ways to take care of our classroom library. In Writer's Workshop we began writing small moment stories. We learned that authors write about things that they know! This month we're focusing on FRIENDSHIP so we talked about how to be a good friend and read the book Horris, Morris, but Mostly Dolores!

Enjoy Some Tunes!

Welcome to Room 203’s classroom blog. You might be wondering….what’s a blog? It is an online journal. This site is built for students, parents, friends & family. Please use it to stay informed of all the great things happening in our classroom. We hope that by visiting our classroom blog, you will get a better idea of what we do in 3rd Grade. Every Friday we will be sharing some of our exciting, fun learning experiences. This will encourage good writing technique and let students work on skills while informing you what is going on in our class! I hope you find this blog useful throughout the school year. Enjoy your visit & check back often!

To my Smarties….it’s still summer, but I have been busy cleaning, organizing, and planning for an amazingly fun-filled new school year! I look foward to meeting all of you & your families soon! I can’t wait to hear all about your summer! Enjoy your last week(s) of summer, but get some rest so you have lots of energy for all the learning we will be doing in 3rd Grade! See you on Wednesday, August 27th!

Check out this video on why students should blog: