1) We had yet another 3 day week. Monday and Tuesday was bitter cold- wind chills hovered around -45 degrees both days. Thursday, we got a lovely snow storm that dumped 6 inches of snow during our morning commute. Spring can get here annnnnnnytime now.
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(The light just turned green... I promise, I wasn't driving and trying to take this picture.) |
They showed great cooperation as they looked at post-its and sorted them out.
I loved seeing them go back in their books for inspiration on drawings as well as using the books to help them spell things correctly.
Some partners practiced cooperation by reading post-its to the writer. It was really neat to see how well they all worked together.
Here are some of their finished products!
These photos are examples of all 6 panels they had to fill out in an hour. We made noticings on my example so they knew the expectations of color, neatness, sentences and talking to their audience. I created this brochure with some of my own clip art and am so glad with how it turned out! It was perfect!
Here are some different covers.
Some inside panels...
All in all, I'd say it was a great success. To celebrate, we did a gallery walk, read each others brochures, and left positive feedback on post-its.
3) We've been hitting parts of speech during our morning meeting message. We don't really have a chunk of time dedicated to grammar and my kiddos desperately need it. It is slow and steady, but I'm hoping this, plus continuing to do Mentor Sentences from Jivey will help my students with their writing. My amazing teammate, Kate, over at McDee's Busy Bees, introduced me to Mentor Sentences and is helping me out. She was the one who thought of working parts of speech into our morning message!
This is an example of what our morning message looks like each morning. I always have the same visuals for their morning tasks, other reminders, etc. I've been highlighting parts of speech (just one kind a day) and then we quickly name it, define it, and add examples on my giant post-its. (LOVVVVVVE GIANT POST-ITS) We have 6 as of Friday!
4) Now that our country unit is done, we are jumping into our next unit- one of my favorites: Mysteries! However, this is also a book club. I struggle with book clubs- usually because of a lack of books. However, our district readopted Teacher's College RW and WW, so we got some $$ to get more resources. My team and I divided up a ton of books and we now are ready to get into some book clubs!
I snagged that cart from the hallway. I'm going to give it a fabulous makeover this summer!
5) Now, for probably the most exciting day! On Thursday, we launched our mystery unit with a real life mystery! We've been reading Jigsaw Jones and have been exposed to some mystery vocabulary. We created this real life mystery to reinforce some of the vocabulary and to excite our students on this new genre. Can I just say- it was SO perfect today! They loved it so much, had so much fun, and they are pumped to start mysteries. Here's a run down on how it went down:
So although it was a short week, it was a busy one! Hope you all had a great week as well!
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We also had a short week! Haven't been back to school since noon on Tuesday. What a crazy weather week! Love finding new third grade blogs! =)
ReplyDeleteMs. Smith
Adventures of Ms. Smith
It really has been crazy! I realized, I won't have full week with my students until our spring break, due to professional developments, holidays, conference prep days, etc. It made me really sad!!!! I'm now following you as well too! :)
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh. Your Case of the Missing Donut was so cute! I bet the kids LOVED it!
ReplyDeleteI'm glad I found you through the Doodle Bugs link!
Angela
Southern Fried Teachin’
It was so much fun! I took a picture of all of them down in the lounge once we found the donuts.... they were so excited!! Or maybe they were so excited because they actually got to eat a donut at the end?? Needless to say, our mystery unit has been going amazing!
DeleteThanks for your kind comment! I'm off to check out your blog! :)