Change, Change, Change

A lot of changes are going on in Room 29!  We have moved on from our focus on personal narratives and our study of character traits in non-fiction literature in Writer's and Reader's Workshops, and finished up our unit on rocks and minerals in science.  Not to mention, we've jumped into a new module in math where we're learning about time and measurement.  That means lots of new things to learn and lots of new, exciting activities to work on.

As the week began, we started off Reader's workshop with a series of lessons about non-fiction text features and how they help us to become better readers and to better understand the content of the texts we read.  We used the great technology tool, Learnzillion every day to learn about a new aspect of how to better understand non-fiction texts.  We learned how headings can help us find out what a section of an article is mostly about, about how to understand tricky words, about how to use our prior knowledge to ask questions about text, and about how to find the main idea about a section of a passage or an entire book.

Students put those lessons into practice by using sticky note to ask questions about their own reading and to identify what they thought sections of articles would be about based on their headings.  We used non-fiction texts in our classroom library as well as National Geographic for Kids magazines.

In Writer's Workshop, students learned about how to choose a topic they know a lot about and how to begin to craft a non-ficiton informational writing piece about that topic as if they were an expert.  They learned all sorts of key text features that they might want to include in their own writing.  We picked topics to write about and began to get started working on our new books.

During our review for our end of unit science test, we played a rousing game of Jeopardy on the Smartboard.

As we continued to study time to the minute and elapsed time, students worked in cooperative groups on an application problem.  Each group had to answer their question using a reasonable strategy and then design a poster to represent their answer and strategy.

We also reviewed multiplication facts with a new game called Read, Think and Color.  While multiplication facts were shown on the Smartboard every 20 seconds, students had to color in the corresponding answer on a 100's grid.  In the end, if the student answered all the questions correctly, they would discover they had created a picture.  This week we made Pigeon from the Mo Willems Pigeon books and Steve from Minecraft.  We also worked on a multiplication fact pumpkin.

Our second game--one which we will play throughout the year to keep sharp with our facts--is Three Strikes.  Representatives from two teams face each other to see who can answer multiplication facts the fastest.

As a Halloween treat, students wrote amazing stories after being given some ominous first sentence story starters!  We have some great imaginations in Room 29.

Reminders: 
*Coats, coats, coats!  Recess is held every day unless it rains--and it's getting cold out there!  Students should come to school dressed appropriately for the chilly weather.

*Mystery Masks are due Thursday, October 30.

*Our Halloween Party is Friday, October 31.  This is a party for children only though room moms may contact you to ask if you would be willing to send in a few items like plates and napkins.  All snacks served at the party will be healthy and nut free.  We will not be dressing up that day, though we will have our mask parade in the morning with the other 3rd grade classes.  I also will be displaying the masks in the classroom and will take pictures of them for the blog and to post on Edline.