President Obama's Inauguration Speech

News for January 26th-30th

Monday was an exciting day because a new student joined our classroom community! Now we have 19 students in Room 203! In Science we continued learning about the Respiratory System. The parts that make up the Respiratory System are: nose/mouth, trachea (windpipe), bronchial tubes, lungs, alveoli, and diaphragm. In P.E. we are learning how to play volleyball. In Reader’s Workshop we worked on finding common nouns and proper nouns in our books. In Writer’s Workshop we graduated from personal narrative stories, and we’re moving on to ESSAYS! We learned that authors grow their essay ideas by listening, observing, noticing, studying, and overhearing! Then writer’s say, “This makes me think of…” We practiced this strategy by listening to a song from the movie August Rush. We listened for different sounds and wrote a NEW IDEA that the sound made us think of! In Math this week we practiced multiplication/division fact families. We’re still reviewing the 0s, 1s, 2s, 5s and 10s. Next week we will be starting our timed multiplication quizzes! On Tuesday for flexible reading groups, we traveled to Mrs. Karas’ room to learn about story elements. On Thursday we had flexible math groups and learned different things about measurement. Wednesday was a 1/2 day and next week Wednesday it is a Teacher Institute Day so we don’t have school! Tomorrow is Ms. Henkel’s birthday! In Cursive this week, we learned the letters f, and s. This weekend, Speedy is staying at Kennedy! Have a nice weekend! See you in February!

It's Been Quite Some Time....

.....since we've written in our blog (no school last Friday due to extreme cold weather). This week, there was no school on Monday to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. day. Tuesday was an exciting day, as it was the inauguration day of President Barack Obama! It was fun to watch as he took the oath of office and officially became the 44th president. What a historic moment to watch the 1st African American president take office! In Math this week we've continued working on our multiplication facts. In flex reading groups this week we traveled to Mrs. Bricker's room to learn about context clues. In Reader's Workshop this week we focused on character traits. We read I Hate English! and focused on Mei-Mei's character. We also read The Wolf Who Cried Boy which was a twist on the Traditional Literature folk tale The Boy Who Cried Wolf. It had a lot of witty jokes in it and we definitely recommend it. In Science we began learning about the Respiratory System, which is the system of the body that brings oxygen in an removes carbon dioxide from our bodies. We learned that when we breathe in, it's called inhaling, and when we breathe out, it's called exhaling. Oxygen is the one gas our body needs to stay alive! After learning about the parts of the respiratory system and what happens when we breathe oxygen into our bodies, we were able to color and cut out lungs/trachea to glue onto our mini-me paper bodies! We will continue learning about the different systems of the body. On Thursday we did Project Recycle for the 2nd week. We love being responsible for collecting the recycling for the entire schooL! We will try to take pictures next week so you can see us in action! We do a very good job sharing the responsibility and working together! Today we did a project with our online buddies in the morning and made SNOW with our Kindergarten buddies in the afternoon! We had a great day! Speedy is staying at Kennedy this weekend....no field trip for him! Hope you all have a great weekend!

Digital Projects from December

Enjoy the slideshow....you'll see pictures of our holiday gift (digitally editing photos on picnik.com and online collaboration with our buddies in Mount Prospect, IL). Check out our wiki to see more of our projects with the 3rd graders at Fairview Elementary!

Area Maps of Our Classroom

Here are some pictures of the Area Maps we made of our classroom before Winter Break!

A Peek at Our First Week of 2009

In Math, we are beginning multiplication. We will need to learn and memorize our multiplication tables. We are starting a new Science theme: The Human Body & Nutrition. In Reader’s Workshop on Monday, we reviewed story elements while reading Pete & Pickles. We discussed the different genres of fiction and nonfiction. This week we focused on Realistic Fiction books. We read Thank You, Mr. Falker and Going Home. We also read Axle Annie and the Speed Grump. In Writer’s Workshop we worked on more personal narratives about First Times and Last Times. We received 8 new postcards this week from the states of: Kansas, Wisconsin, Hawaii, Tennessee, Georgia, and West Virginia. On Thursday we did Flexible Math Groups in the afternoon. We visited other third grade classrooms for math. Today is Polar Express Day, since we missed it on December 19th due to the Snow Day. Today we had our first Spirit Day Assembly. The whole school gathered in the gym and recognized students who were generous during the month of December. Abel received the award from our classroom! Congrats, Abel! We also learned our new School Pledge which is: “Today I promise to do my best, I will be responsible with my actions, I will be respectful to myself and others, and I’m ready to learn!” Kindergarten shared with the whole school some of their songs (like the alphabet song and the months of the year song). Next month, the Spirit Assembly will award respectful students! We also started using Tumble Books this week, which is a website where we can read and listen to books online. This week in cursive, we learned the letters h and k. Siyana is taking Speedy home this weekend. Have a good weekend!

P.S. We FINALLY were able to paint our landform models that we made quite awhile back. They took forever to dry, but we painted them this week. Check out the pictures below: