In Reader's Workshop we have been learning about character traits, or adjectives that describe the characters in our story. We've really been trying to find evidence, or proof in the story for each trait. We also have learned about SCHEMA and how we all have different schemas. We use our schema everyday to help us understand the world around us. Our schema is what we already know (our background knowledge). Our schema comes from what we eat, smell, taste, feel, hear, see, and experience. Our schema is what we store in our brains & we add to it each time we visit a new place, read a new book, and experience different things.
In Writer's Workshop we have been working on improving our personal narratives. We tried a new strategy this week to help us think of a fantastic small moment story that others would enjoy. We practice thinking of FIRST TIMES that we did things or visited places, or saw someone. Our 'first time' small moment stories were memorable and fun to share with each other.
In Math we have been working on our addition and subtraction with regrouping. We also have been reviewing place value. We are excited to be starting a new unit all about Area.
In Social Studies we just finished up learning about landforms. We will soon start learning about where famous landforms are in our country. It has been exciting receiving postcards for our Postcard Exchange Project & finding where each postcard came from on our map of the U.S.A. We have been singing and practicing the 50 States Song to help us learn the names of the 50 states! Anyone who memorizes it by December 16th will be invited for McDonald's Lunch Bunch with Mrs. Kartsimas!!!!
Our class is working HARD towards our classroom goal of reading/passing 500 A.R. quizzes! As of today, we have passed 487 quizzes! We are SO CLOSE. This week we all worked on creating an individual A.R. goal and a date we want to reach it by. Keep up the great work!!!!
Remember to log-on to IXL at home each night & on the weekends to practice your math skills and unlock those prizes!
Speedy will be going home with Dominic this weekend! :)
Enjoy the snow that's coming on Saturday.....
Friday, December 3, 2010
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
A Peek At Our Week......
This week, we finished up Unit 2 of Math Trailblazers by exploring subtraction facts and testing how quickly we could figure the differences to our subtraction flash cards. In Writer's Workshop, we have been working on beginning our stories with a strong lead, or first sentence. We looked at some texts from our classroom libraries and saw how authors' leads were in different forms: dialogue, action, a question, or a description of the setting. We practiced starting our personal narratives with strong leads this week. We will be publishing one of our favorite seed stories next week. In Reader's Workshop we've been exploring nouns, verbs, and adjectives and making meaningful connections to what we read. In Social Studies, we learned all about maps & about our continent, country, state and city. We all took a quiz on Friday to test our knowledge of our home address & phone number. This Thursday was our FIRST collaboration time with our 'online' buddies. Our classroom will be working with another 3rd grade classroom in Mount Prospect, IL. We will collaborate using technology throughout the year. This experience teaches us that two classrooms, from different buildings and different school districts can come together to collaborate! This year we will 'knock down the walls of our classrooms' to take learning and sharing to a whole new level! Check back often to see what we're up to! On Thursday we had our first Skype video conference call where we met our online buddies. Then, we broke up into 6 groups and used Google Chat to get to know our buddies even more! It was a blast!
Remember: We are going on a field trip to Sonny Acres' Pumpkin Patch on Wednesday! If you have not turned in your permission slip & $6, please turn it in ASAP Also, the Kennedy Carnival is on Thursday night! Remember, you may buy wristbands before the event for $10! Only children need wristbands, not adults! But children MUST be accompanied by an adult!
Remember: We are going on a field trip to Sonny Acres' Pumpkin Patch on Wednesday! If you have not turned in your permission slip & $6, please turn it in ASAP Also, the Kennedy Carnival is on Thursday night! Remember, you may buy wristbands before the event for $10! Only children need wristbands, not adults! But children MUST be accompanied by an adult!
Friday, October 1, 2010
The Beginning of a New Year.....
Parents & Families.....be sure to check out blog to see what we've been learning about in Room 203!
Here is our weekly newsletter (written collectively by the students):
In Social Studies, we are learning about communities. We learned about and compared 3 types of communities: Urban, Suburban, and Rural. We used a Venn Diagram to compare them. This week we read a book called City Mouse Country Mouse and we wrote about if we wanted to live in the city or the country.
In Math we did our first TIMS Lab lesson called Kind of Beans. We learned that the population is a whole group, and a sample is just a small part of the population. We have been practicing our addition facts.
In Reader’s Workshop, we’ve set up comfortable book nooks in our classroom & we read in them everyday. We learned about finding ‘just-right’ books to read during Reader’s Workshop. To see if it’s a just right book, we use the 5-finger test!
In Writer’s Workshop we are writing personal narratives or true stories! We learned some strategies to help us get started writing. We can think about a person who is special to us, or a place that is special to us & write about a small moment we shared with that person or at that place.
In P.E. we are doing fitness testing. It has been very tiring!
Kennedy Singers, our after-school chorus with Mrs. Kesler started this week. Kennedy Singers will meet every Thursday. We are going to have a concert in 5 weeks for our families!
This week we took our MAP tests and today we start going down to the Reading Room!
This weekend, Speedy will be going home with Joshua. Have a great weekend! ☺
Here is our weekly newsletter (written collectively by the students):
In Social Studies, we are learning about communities. We learned about and compared 3 types of communities: Urban, Suburban, and Rural. We used a Venn Diagram to compare them. This week we read a book called City Mouse Country Mouse and we wrote about if we wanted to live in the city or the country.
In Math we did our first TIMS Lab lesson called Kind of Beans. We learned that the population is a whole group, and a sample is just a small part of the population. We have been practicing our addition facts.
In Reader’s Workshop, we’ve set up comfortable book nooks in our classroom & we read in them everyday. We learned about finding ‘just-right’ books to read during Reader’s Workshop. To see if it’s a just right book, we use the 5-finger test!
In Writer’s Workshop we are writing personal narratives or true stories! We learned some strategies to help us get started writing. We can think about a person who is special to us, or a place that is special to us & write about a small moment we shared with that person or at that place.
In P.E. we are doing fitness testing. It has been very tiring!
Kennedy Singers, our after-school chorus with Mrs. Kesler started this week. Kennedy Singers will meet every Thursday. We are going to have a concert in 5 weeks for our families!
This week we took our MAP tests and today we start going down to the Reading Room!
This weekend, Speedy will be going home with Joshua. Have a great weekend! ☺
Friday, March 12, 2010
It's Been Awhile.......
We have been very busy learning & having fun in Room 203! We've been preparing for our ISAT test that we just finished! We are happy that it's over & we know we did GREAT! Sorry we have posted in a long time. We will try to write our newsletter every Friday from now on!
Time to fill you in on things we've been learning about:
In Music, we are working on "Poetry In Motion". We just performed last night for our families. Our class learned the poem Gregory Griggs. Mrs. Kesler taught us how to play the rhythm of the poem on instruments. We each had different parts: first to say the poem (Gregory Griggs, East/West, We love his wigs).
In Math we are working on multiplication. We are taking timed quizzes on our facts. We just learned how to do double and triple digit multiplication! We are working hard to get ready for 4th grade. Every Tuesday afternoon we had flex math groups. This is when we go to another classroom to learn something new about math. Topics we learned about so far have been: area, fractions, perimeter, shapes, multiplication, 3D shapes, and measurement. In our classroom we've learned a lot, too. We made fraction families (pictures of our families and fractions that described them) and learned a song about lines, rays, and angles. We made 3D shapes using marshmallows & toothpicks. We counted the number of edges, faces, and vertices. To learn about capacity (how much liquid fits into a container) we made the Gallon Man. We've been busy with Math!
In Art we are selling our artwork to raise money for the school. The Art Fair will be on Thursday, April 22nd. Students AND parents can donate their artwork to be sold! PARENTS: Please think about creating a piece of artwork to sell at the art fair. In Art, we studied about Walt Disney. We practiced drawing Mickey Mouse. It was easy when Ms. Dougal taught us step-by-step how to draw him. We have also been learning about Abstracts, which are art pieces that have pictures that are not real (shapes/lines) and you can't really tell what it is (you're not supposed to know).
In Writer's Workshop we have been working on writing Essays! We organize our thoughts using boxes & bullets. Each bullet becomes its own paragraph with lots of details. We have written essays on: our favorite holiday, something that's important to us, our best friend, our favorite animal, and our favorite season. Each essay has 5 paragraphs. We are also remembering to indent each paragraph, and to capitalize the beginning of each sentence.
In P.E. we are doing Fitness Week. We are practicing kicking balls. We practice running from one side of the gym to the other.
In Science we have been learning about the Human Body. The systems of the human body are: muscular, circulatory, skeletal, digestive, nervous, and respiratory system. Some of the important words we've learned about: lungs, heart, skeleton, skull, ribcage, esophagus, small intestine, large intestine, stomach, brain, spinal cord, and nerves. We will be finishing the Human Body Theme today & moving on to our Water Theme next week!
Don't forget.....Spring Break is coming up! March 26th is our last day of school before Spring Break.
Time to fill you in on things we've been learning about:
In Music, we are working on "Poetry In Motion". We just performed last night for our families. Our class learned the poem Gregory Griggs. Mrs. Kesler taught us how to play the rhythm of the poem on instruments. We each had different parts: first to say the poem (Gregory Griggs, East/West, We love his wigs).
In Math we are working on multiplication. We are taking timed quizzes on our facts. We just learned how to do double and triple digit multiplication! We are working hard to get ready for 4th grade. Every Tuesday afternoon we had flex math groups. This is when we go to another classroom to learn something new about math. Topics we learned about so far have been: area, fractions, perimeter, shapes, multiplication, 3D shapes, and measurement. In our classroom we've learned a lot, too. We made fraction families (pictures of our families and fractions that described them) and learned a song about lines, rays, and angles. We made 3D shapes using marshmallows & toothpicks. We counted the number of edges, faces, and vertices. To learn about capacity (how much liquid fits into a container) we made the Gallon Man. We've been busy with Math!
In Art we are selling our artwork to raise money for the school. The Art Fair will be on Thursday, April 22nd. Students AND parents can donate their artwork to be sold! PARENTS: Please think about creating a piece of artwork to sell at the art fair. In Art, we studied about Walt Disney. We practiced drawing Mickey Mouse. It was easy when Ms. Dougal taught us step-by-step how to draw him. We have also been learning about Abstracts, which are art pieces that have pictures that are not real (shapes/lines) and you can't really tell what it is (you're not supposed to know).
In Writer's Workshop we have been working on writing Essays! We organize our thoughts using boxes & bullets. Each bullet becomes its own paragraph with lots of details. We have written essays on: our favorite holiday, something that's important to us, our best friend, our favorite animal, and our favorite season. Each essay has 5 paragraphs. We are also remembering to indent each paragraph, and to capitalize the beginning of each sentence.
In P.E. we are doing Fitness Week. We are practicing kicking balls. We practice running from one side of the gym to the other.
In Science we have been learning about the Human Body. The systems of the human body are: muscular, circulatory, skeletal, digestive, nervous, and respiratory system. Some of the important words we've learned about: lungs, heart, skeleton, skull, ribcage, esophagus, small intestine, large intestine, stomach, brain, spinal cord, and nerves. We will be finishing the Human Body Theme today & moving on to our Water Theme next week!
Don't forget.....Spring Break is coming up! March 26th is our last day of school before Spring Break.
Friday, January 8, 2010
Weekly News
in Writer's Workshop we are working on Essays. There are 5 paragraphs in our essays and we are working on adding details to support our thesis. In Reader's Workshop we are working on finding common nouns and proper nouns. In Math, we are starting multiplication. Multiplication is an easier way to add. We did Math hoppers where we hopped on a number line to find the answer to multiplication number sentences. On Tuesday afternoon, we had flexible Math Groups where we all learned about Multiplication. On Thursday afternoon, we had flexible reading groups. We stayed in our classroom to learn about genres & Author's Purpose. Our Science Unit is exploring and learning about the Human Body. We used a website this week with Ms. Parkhill to learn about the Skeletal System. In P.E. we had free days this week. In Art, Ms. Dougal is teaching us about Paul Cezanne. We will be going on a field trip to the Chicago Art Institute later this month. Speedy is going home with Mateusz this weekend! Happy Birthday to Cassidy (on Saturday). Have a good weekend!
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Room 203 News....
We have been busy learning this week! In Math we have been working on area. On Tuesday we started Flexible Math Groups. We traveled to other 3rd grade teacher’s classrooms to learn about Area. In Music we are watching a movie called Music Man. In P.E. we are practicing chasing and fleeing. In Writer’s Workshop we are working on Essays. We are living with our eyes open and noticing and observing things that might spark an idea to write an essay about. In Social Studies we are becoming experts on the Southeast region. We finished up our regions project by learning the different landforms, the climate, the natural resources, and we learned all about the states in the Southeast region. We wrote out scripts & will be recording our movie to teach the other 3rd grade classes about the Southeast. We started our Great State Reports! Each of us are studying a state in the Southeast regions and learning all about it! Our Word Wall words the past two weeks have had prefixes and suffixes. We learned an awesome song about where prefixes go (at the beginning of a word, UP FRONT) and how they change the meaning of a word. In Reader’s Workshop we have been working on questioning. Good readers always ask questions, so we have been working on finding the answers to the 5 big questions: WHO is the main character?, WHAT is the problem?, WHY is it a problem?, WHEN/WHERE did the story take place?, HOW is the problem solved?
We started working with our 3rd grade ONLINE buddies who go to school in Mount Prospect, Il. We started by emailing them some questions & we are writing a winter story together using Google Docs.
Speedy is going home with Natalie this weekend! Don’t forget…next Friday is Polar Express Day! Remember to wear your pajamas!
We started working with our 3rd grade ONLINE buddies who go to school in Mount Prospect, Il. We started by emailing them some questions & we are writing a winter story together using Google Docs.
Speedy is going home with Natalie this weekend! Don’t forget…next Friday is Polar Express Day! Remember to wear your pajamas!
Friday, December 11, 2009
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! ☺
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! ☺
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
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!
Saturday, September 12, 2009
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!
Friday, September 4, 2009
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!
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
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:
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Dinosaur Fair Tonight!
Please come to our Dinosaur Fair tonight from 6:30-7:30pm. The 3rd graders worked extremely hard on their dinosaur projects & are excited to show you their work! Check out some of the projects:
Friday, May 15, 2009
A Peek At Our Week
In Science this week we’ve been learning about dinosaurs. We learned that paleontologists excavate fossils. There are 5 different types of fossils (eggs, bones, teeth, skin imprints, and footprints). This week we made our own imitation fossils using seashells. We practiced excavating fake fossils (aka chocolate chips) from a cookie using toothpicks. It is very hard work, and we learned that paleontologists must be very careful when digging for fossils. This week we picked our dinosaur for the dinosaur fair project. Each of us will study our own dinosaur and become experts. We will write a dinosaur report and make a science fair board for the Dinosaur Fair on Thursday, May 28th. Each of us will also create a visual project at home. In P.E. we are doing fitness testing. Reading Room is finished and now the reading room teachers are testing all the 3rd grade students to see how much we’ve grown. This week we added fish to our aquarium. Bubbles is our class goldfish, and Gary is our snail (who moves incredibly fast)! Wednesday was job juggling day. Miss Lisinski, who teaches 1st grade was our teacher, and Miss Gosche taught 1st grade for the day! In Writer’s Workshop we are working on writing essays about characters from the text. We read Streganona and took a close look at Big Anthony’s character. In Reader’s Workshop we read Mr. George Baker and worked more on making inferences. Julia will be taking Speedy home this weekend! REMINDER: Auditions for the talent show will be next week on Monday! In Math this week we learned DOUBLE DIGIT multiplication! We are really going to WOW our 4th grade teachers! We are finishing up our Young Author Books because Young Author Night is next Thursday, May 21st!!!! We hope to see LOTS of families that night . Our books are AMAZING and we can’t wait to share them! As we finish our Young Author illustrations, Miss Gosche is helping us record our books and we will create an iMovie.
Monday, May 4, 2009
New Tool
Last Friday we started one of our Mother's Day gifts for the special lady in our lives. We used Wordle (www.wordle.net) which is a great, free tool!~ According to their website, "Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide." The words that appear more frequently in the text, show up bigger in the word cloud. Students then customized their word cloud with different fonts, layouts, and colors. We printed them out and are turning them into some awesome hanging pictures, but you can also save them to the Wordle gallery to share with
Friday, May 1, 2009
This Week.....
This week we saw the 4th and 5th graders perform a multicultural show. In P.E. we are learning about baseball and softball. In Art we worked on our illustrations for our Young Author Books. In Science we are finishing up learning about the water cycle. Condensation is when the gas changes back to a liquid and becomes a cloud. We learned about the different cloud types, and had cloud stations. We painted clouds, used shaving cream to make clouds and mixed shaving cream and glue to make a 3D cloud. We learned the Water Cycle Song with Miss McSorley’s class. Next Friday the 3rd graders will share this song & everything we learned about the water cycle with the whole school at the Spirit Assembly. To show what we know about the water cycle, we made pictures using SumoPaint. In Writer’s Workshop we are working on literary essays and trying to jump into the story. Wednesday night was Bug Bonanza! The Peggy Notebaert Museum brought spiders, grasshoppers, centipedes, and cockroaches for the kids to see. Classrooms were open with fun activities for families. We found out that on Donors Choose, our Aquarium Project was fully funded! We can’t wait to get a fish tank for our classroom! Pictures coming soon! Does anyone have any ideas for names for our fish? Siyana is taking Speedy home this weekend. We took our Cycle 5 Math and Reading tests this week. Check out pictures below from our Cloud Centers! Learning is messy.......
Friday, April 24, 2009
In Science we are learning about the Water Cycle. We learned that water comes in 3 different forms: liquid, solid, and gas. We learned that the Earth is 75% water and only 1% is drinkable! We brainstormed ways we can conserve water. Water evaporates, or changes from a liquid to a gas, when it is heated. When it rained this week, we traced the outline of puddles and saw the next day that the water had evaporated. We also painted using colored salt water. The water evaporated leaving the colorful salt pictures. We are also doing experiments. We put celery in 3 different cups. One with red water, one with plain water, and one with no water to see the changes that happen. We know water can be found in oceans, lakes, rivers, seas, in the soil, and in all living things. In Reader’s Workshop we worked on making inferences. We used animal pictures on the National Geographic for Kids website to infer what the characters were thinking. To inference means to figure out what the author means, because authors don’t always tell us everything. To practice making inferences, we used bumper stickers to figure out what they mean, who would put it on their car, and why they would want to put it on their car. Wednesday was Earth Day, and we read Michael Recycle. We talked about ways we can take care of our Earth. In Math we’ve been practicing 2 and 3 digit times 1 digit multiplication! We are getting ready for 4th grade! In Reading Room we have been working on our Young Author’s Books. On Thursday we went to see Disney Nature’s EARTH movie. We learned about different animals in different parts of our world.Today we got our caterpillars. We will watch them go through the life cycle and turn into a butterfly. Today we also have a Survivor Game Show Assembly. Daniela will be taking Speedy home this weekend!t was awesome! In cursive this week we learned the letters y, v, and z. On Monday, we had a special treat. Miss Houf, who used to teach 3rd grade at Kennedy, came from the Peggy Notebaert Children’s Nature Museum, and brought insects with her! She brought walking sticks, crickets, hissing cockroaches, and a giant grasshopper. To teach the different body parts of an insect, she dressed up Miss Gosche! Check out our slideshow below! Rickie was our photographer for the day!
Monday, April 13, 2009
News for April 8th-10th
We had a VERY short week…only 3 days! This week in the Reading Room, we started Young Authors. We each will be writing our own story. First we come up with our ideas, then write a sloppy copy of our story, then the teacher checks it, and we publish! We even draw our own illustrations. In Math we worked with tangrams. We made different puzzles in the shapes of things like a giraffe, a horse, a cat, and a duck. We made our own pictures using tans, too! This week we officially got rid of our regular chairs. We now sit on exercise balls all day long! It’s cool. In Science we are finishing our Human Body Theme and learning about the food pyramid and nutrition. Today we are having a healthy food party. We have a field trip coming up on Thursday, April 23rd. To celebrate Earth Day (a day late) we are going to the movie theater to see Disney’s new movie, Earth. This week on Tasty Thursday we tried asparagus, and today for Fruity Friday we are having strawberries! Speedy will even have some because he LOVES strawberries! This week on Thursday we had a Spirit Assembly and Daniela won the Caring Award for our class. Today we have another assembly. A planetarium is coming, and we will learn about dinosaurs! Speedy will be going home with Julia this weekend.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)