Week of 8/11/08

We had a great week in room 16! It was filled with tons of fun, hands-on learning.



Every day we started off with Reading and Writing 4 Today. These activities practice skills Monday-Thursday and then on Friday the skills are tested. I am happy to report that our class did tremendously well on both of the tests!! Way to go 3rd graders!



In writing this week, we continued with our chocolate chip cookie writing. We have tasted and written about Bakery Fresh Cookies as well as store bought cookies. We are using descriptive words to help our reader be able to make a "mental movie" of our experience. I wonder what type of cookie will be next?? We will continue this lesson next week! We have also started writing in our writing journals every day!



In reading this week, we read read several different versions of The Three Little Pigs. With each of these we compared and contrasted the diferent elements of the story. The setting, characters, villans, what all of the houses were built out of, etc. We also spent time discusssing bullying, this fit in well with the Three Little Pigs story, because we all know that the Big Bad Pig is the ultimate bully! We learned that there were two types of bullying and what we should so if we are bullied.



Math was busy this week as well! We started the week learning about number grids. The students were introduced to number grids last year, but we took them to a new level with larger numbers. We also tried our hands at some number grid puzzles. They were challenging,but fun. We also learned to use our Student Reference Book (SRB). This is new to third graders. We will use it often this year to help us with our math lessons. It is also a great help to parents if they need help understanding the math lesson. Students are welcome to take them home every eveving, but they will need to be returned to school every morning!



In unit study, we did two fun hands-on activities. The first was a bean pod observation. We learned what a property was and used our new knowledge to describe the bean pod. We also learned that seeds come from FRUIT. Hmmm, then why do we call cucumbers and tomatoes vegetables? Ask your child and they will be able to tell you!!! We ended the week with a fruit dissection activity. It was messy, but fun and full of learning! The students dissected many different fruits, counted the seeds, and then listed the properties of each seed. When they were finished, they sorted the seeds by common properties (size, shape, texture)



As you can see, we had a great week! As we were leaving on Friday, one of the students said, "Wow, its already time to go home?" That was music to my ears! I know that they were engaged and learning and forgot about the time!!!



Don't forget to post a blog, vote in the poll, and have a GREAT weekend!!