Two New (and Helpful) Posters!

Yesterday while teaching Main Idea, I came up with a stoplight idea to teach the difference between retell, summary, and main idea. I drew a quick one on the board and made a mental note to make a more permanent copy at home. Last night I did, and I created the anchor chart today. It's precious! Click the picture to download your own printable copy.

Another thing I've been working on is a problem solving operation tree to help students pick which mathematical operation to use when reading a story problem. I used this one a few years back but just had it drawn on a poster. Yesterday I re-vamped it, and here's the final product! You can click the picture to download your copy.

Cursive Name Skeletons!

What a fun project!

I made this slide show to teach my kids how to make them. It loops through with step-by-step instructions and pictures to gowith each step. You can find it by clicking on the thumbnail below!

Clay boats, voting, etc!

This week has been pretty busy because we had district benchmark assessments in both science and math, plus we are out all day for a field trip tomorrow, but we have still done a lot of fun stuff!

In Social Studies we continued our election unit by hosting our primary election! My students were SO excited to bring in their voter registration cards and vote. Our side of the hall primarily voted for Movie and Popcorn, and the other side voted for Doughnut holes. So those will be our two "candidates." I made this cute little ballot box and the "I voted today" stickers to make it more realistic and fun!

In science we studied density and buoyancy by doing a clay boat lab. We discussed how clay was more dense than water, and thus would sink. However, students learned that if they could build their boats to make them buoyant enough, they would float! We then took them outside and tested them to see which could hold the most pennies. The winning group's boat held 23 pennies! Click here to download the lab!

We also played Matter Scoot, which I unfortunately did not take any pictures of. This is not my product, but it is very cool and you can find it here!

In ELA we worked on sequencing events. Click the picture to download your FREE poster pieces!

We also worked with leveled readers to sequence events and reviewed summary by reading Stellaluna.

We studied verb tense. I love this smart board lesson to practice the skill! Click here to download your own copy!

In  poetry we learned about onomatopoeia, and I showed this awesome rap from Youtube - they wanted to watch it over and over and OVER! Click the picture to follow the link.

In math we reviewed for our assessment in a couple of different ways. First, we played Subtraction Bingo. Students made their boards by solving problems and recording their differences, and then we played the game! Click here to download your own copy of this fun game!

Then we did something else really cool! Since our test covered 6 units, each of the third grade teachers picked one unit and made a 15 minute game to review and practice the skill. Then all of the classes rotated through our rooms one afternoon, I played addition bowling, which you can find here. It's not my product, but it was a lot of fun! Be careful though, because there were some missing parts when I printed the file.

Tomorrow we'll be visiting the Klein Art days at the art museum. My sweet kids are so excited; they've been telling me that they're having dreams about it! It's the first field trip for most of them.

Transportation Themed Party Pack!

Okay, so this is not school-related, but I just had to share what I've been working on!

It's for Jaxon's 2nd birthday! I have it posted on Ebay, and you can find it here! I will personalize all of the files for you and email it to you within 2 days of receiving payment through Ebay. You simply print and assemble your party! The Ebay listing has details about what to use each of the food signs for.

I'm just here for the movie!

This week was a lot of fun! In reading, we focused on making inferences, which is a very tough skill for third graders to master. We started by using pictures in small groups. We also did this fun activity where I brought in an extra purse filled with 10 objects and they had to infer things about me based on those objects as evidence.

We read Two Bad Ants and filled out this anchor chart (click the picture for a free download)!

 We also played the inference riddle game you can find here: So much fun!

We read the paragraphs found in this slide show and practiced making and proving our inferences! Click the picture to download the slide show.

They also read a leveled reader and recorded inferences and evidence in their Readers' Response Journals. 

Another fun thing we did to practice was writing 3 clues of things they were packing in their suitcase to go somewhere. Then the class had to infer where they were going. Some of my favorites including the hunting lease, the rodeo, fishing, Paris, and College Station!

In grammar, they finished their Angry Verbs!

 Then we did a sort of past-tense verbs according to how you change the ending to make them past-tense.

 In math we spent another week on subtraction. It's always "fun" to teach subtracting three digits across zero for the first time. We spent a couple of days on it; about half of my kids got it the first day so on the second day I sent them to computers to do math activities. I pulled the other half into a "small" group and we practiced some more on dry erase. This was very effective and I plan to do it throughout the year. I didn't take many pictures of math this week. But we did a lot of dry erase work on our desks and white boards, and a lot of stations while I worked in small groups. Today we practiced deciding whether a word problem was addition or subtraction using a slide show (which I did not make an cannot share) and then we rotated around the room choosing operations and solving word problems on a recording sheet with elbow partners. Here is one fun station activity: Subtraction Cup Stackers. I also have it in Addition and Multiplication. Easy to make and a blast for the kiddos! They have to answer the problem correctly before they can stack the cup.

In science we are still working on solutions and mixtures. We did two really fun "labs," while staying in our classroom because it wasn't our week to go to the science lab. First, we separated a mixture! We used different tools and filled out our lab recording sheet. 

Another day, we made a solution of Crystal Light and water. This was a hit! We discussed how it's a solution because the powder dissolves into the water, and they even made a label for their water bottles to remind themselves of that fact!

In Social Studies we are doing a really fun election unit! We didn't want to get caught up in the drama of the candidates so we thought of our own, high-interest issues to vote on: rewards! On one side of the hall they are focusing on food rewards: cupcakes, doughnut holes, and candy. On our side we have non-food rewards: movie and popcorn, class picnic, and pajama day. Each side of the hall will hold a primary election where one food and one non-food item will be selected as the candidates. Then the students will vote again between these two rewards. We are journaling about the election process as we go. Eventually the students will hold a "debate" in the cafeteria, fill out voter registration cards, vote in the ballot box, and get "I voted today" stickers. Fun! This week we just introduced the concept and they made their initial choice, and then created a campaign poster to promote it. 

This poster seriously cracks me up. So many of my students were so creative with this and I was very impressed, but this one is just hilarious. it's for Movie and Popcorn, but the smiley face has braces so he can't have popcorn, so he's "just here for the movie."

All-in-all, it was another very busy week but a GREAT one!

Another Busy Week!

This was yet another busy week for my third graders and me! I am constantly surprised at how quickly the curriculum, especially in math, moves from one skill to another. I try so hard to dedicate enough time in our day for my students to master these important concepts!

This week in math we focused on subtraction. We reviewed subtracting on a hundreds chart and discussed estimation in subtraction. Next week we'll move on to actual solving subtraction problems and the "borrowing" and "subtracting across zero" aspects of it (shudder).

 We played two "Scoot" games, which I created to reinforce the concepts. The balloons on these cards are to remind students of our "holding a balloon" method for rounding. Click the pictures to download your copies.

We did math stations every day. My kids (whenever possible) go to stations three times per day. They do ELA stations in the morning (1 station each day for 30 minutes). Then they do math stations in the afternoon (4 stations of 15 minutes each). At the end of the day, they do Enrichment stations (1 station for 30 minutes). This is when I can pull my intervention groups for reading and math.

I don't pull a group during math stations, because I keep myself available to walk around and help the people in Seat Work, who almost always need me to sit by them for a while and get them going. I also have kiddos in Games:

Fact Practice:

I have used these ice cube trays so many times already! This week, I had them throw both number cubes into the tray and estimate the difference of the two numbers using rounding. They had white boards to work on.

Other kiddos go to Computer where they do First in Math!

While I'm on the subject of stations, here are this week's enrichment stations!

The journals are a personal favorite, which my team-mate came up with. They're class journals, so the kids get to read what others have written on the prompt and respond. It's been a hit so far!

The Popsicle sticks are a game called Fiddlesticks and the kids are OBSESSED! Each stick has a subtraction problem on it. They take turns drawing a stick and answering the question. They keep it if it's right but return it if it's wrong. One stick is colored black on the tip, and it's called the Fiddlestick. If you draw that one, ALL of your sticks go back into the cup. They get very excited during this game!

In Reading this week we focused on summary. Click here to download a summary practice PowerPoint that works wonders in teaching both Fiction and Nonfiction summary skills. 

We also made this anchor chart (click the picture to get your FREE copy of the fiction side. AND click HERE to get your FREE copy of the nonfiction side (not pictured here). 

We made a summary foldable, filled out a cute summary organizer using a leveled reader, and worked in small groups on the skill. 

In Language Arts, we continued revising our personal narratives. We also made Angry Verbs!

I also made this competition tracking chart to try and promote our students to do better work on Achieve 3000, a great reading program on the computer that has proven results in increasing lexile reading levels! It will start next week between the three teachers on our side of the hall. The kids are pumped!

In Science we finished up our unit on states of matter. On Monday we made Oobleck! I SO WISH I had remembered to take a picture (at least of the lab once we were finished haha), but sadly I did not. Here's our work. 

And on Friday we practiced changing states of matter by observing a colored ice cube melt on a grid and timing the spreading of it's water. 

Well, until next week! Enjoy your weekend, I'm heading to garage sales!