We Did It!

What a great opening and first week of school!  The kids came in so excited to learn, which was great, because we got right down to business after some fun preliminary getting to know you activities.  Students went on classmate scavenger hunts and learned more about me and my family.  We also made posters about what we did over the summer.  We established some rules and procedures to set up our classroom community.  Thank you to all parents who got emergency cards and other information back to me so quickly.

We began writing in our journals by answering a prompt about the characteristics of the perfect teacher, began doing daily oral language, read and answered comprehension questions on some non-fiction texts about the rain forest, and read some wonderful stories:  If Everybody Did, First Day Jitters, Have You Filled a Bucket?, and The Witches.  Next week we will begin working in guided reading groups and will begin establishing our reader's workshop model so students can begin to choose books from our classroom library and read independently.

We jumped right into Writer's Workshop, learning how to generate ideas for our own narrative stories, and how to create mental movies in our readers' minds.  Students also completed their first On Demand writing piece in class.  Please make sure all students have their pictures to decorate their notebooks on Tuesday, so we can work on this in class.

In math, we began our official curriculum after we made "Me By Numbers" posters where students had to follow a rubric to design a poster relating various numbers to their daily lives.  We started our first math module on multiplication, beginning with learning how to multiply by 2's.  

We also began our unit on rocks and minerals in science by making an interactive RAN (Reading and Analyzing Non-Fiction) chart and watching a short video about minerals.

Students did an excellent job during our first fire drill of the year on Thursday, too!  The best fire drill EVER!

Thank you for sharing your children with me this year!  They are absolutely adorable, witty, and great to work with.  I'm so looking forward to a great year!!!

IMPORTANT!! 

I've received very few email addresses from parents so that I can privatize the blog.  Please send me your email address this week, so I can add it to my list of contacts and send out the invitations to the blog and make it private for Room 29 parents' eyes only.  THANK YOU!!  I'd like to share photos of your children and their work, but I can't do so unless the blog is private, and I want to ensure that everyone has access.

I will be contacting everyone this week and next by phone to say hello and let you know how your child adjusted to the first week of school.

Welcome!

We had a wonderful first day of 3rd grade with 18 very enthusiastic students all ready to learn.

Today we went over classroom rules and procedures, learned about each other with toilet paper (ask you're kids to explain), made posters about our summer exploits, and read a story called If Everybody Did.  After reading the book, I divided the class into 4 groups by putting stickers on their heads (you'll have to ask about that, too) and they went to different centers to write about their hopes and expectations about 3rd grade.

Lastly, we began a math project relating numbers to our everyday lives.

I will be updating the blog weekly (usually on Friday or the weekend) about everything we've done in class each week.  You can also check us out on Twitter for updates!

I'm always available for questions, comments, and concerns.  Please feel free to email me at any time or give me a call!  I'm looking forward to working with your adorable, smart, funny children this year!

Our schedule

I just updated our schedule in the Our Schedule link at the top of the page.  Please check it out to see when our specials are and what our day is going to look like!  See you all soon!  Please feel free to email me with any questions.  And, don't forget to send me your email addresses!