HELP HARRY!

Dear Third Graders,

      Our "Harrys" are very happy now that they have their new perches and can watch over us as we learn! I was very impressed at how persistent we were and how we worked as a team to overcome challenges!

      A big shout out goes to www.theteacherstudio.com for this idea!

      The task: Build a perch for Harry so he can more easily see around our classroom.

The materials: 5 pipe cleaners, 2 index cards, 2 cupcake holders, a cup, foil and a foot of painters tape

     The Task:  5 minutes to brainstorm and share ideas.
                     10 minutes to build.
                     10 minutes to test your perch with your Harry and make any necessary modifications. 

     The results are as follows!

     On Monday, we will reflect back upon our work. Watch some videos I took of us in action. Review trends from our teamwork evaluations. And....

...read this great book about how we each bring unique skills to our team that can help us succeed.  

That it is important to encourage our teammates, offer help, ask for help, participate equally, and stay on task. 

Bear Hugs,

Inspiration...

Dear Third Graders,

      We have been hard at work collecting our writing ideas. We did a nice job decorating our writer's journals with pictures that we can use to help us pull out stories. My hope is for us to collect more pictures and ideas in January and decorate the back covers.

    This week we got to do a museum share in our classroom.  Next week, we will share our writer's notebook with Mrs. Neufeld and Mrs. O'Connell's classes. We will also get to bring these home to share with our parents probably next week!

               

Bear Hugs,

The Paper Chain Challenge

Dear Third Graders,

     I was incredibly impressed how you did with our first teamwork challenge!

    The challenge... using only the materials I gave each team of three

•  one 12X18 piece of construction paper
• 4 feet of tape  (you could come get another 6 inches, but that was it!)
• 2 scissors

     Each team had 4 minutes to plan and 15 minutes to create the LONGEST paper chain possible.  It was important to work together and use our materials wisely....

    I am still stunned how LONG all the chains were. Here are some action shots... I can't wait to see what you do this coming Friday!

 The longest chain!

Bear Hugs,

Sorting Hat

Dear Hogwarts Students,

       Did you tell someone at home what house you are going to be in this year?!?!  Thank-you Miss Sabourin for orchestrating all the details that helped to bring the Sorting Hat to Rosendale! Thanks Miss Sabourin!

       Here are two videos of us meeting the sorting hat:  Click here and here!

       Here are some candid shots from P.E.!

Bear Hugs!

What's the Value?

Dear Third Graders,

      This week, we keep asking ourselves what's the value of the digit?  We had some fun using our base ten blocks!

  I love how some friends added up the value of their structure!  WOW!

We aslo had a friend share an amazing informational book about... wolves.  Double WOW!

     In writing, we are creating Acrostic Poems. Our first one we did together using the word "Friends" since we have been talking a lot about the qualities of a good friend.  We are now working on creating one for our name.  I am impressed with how hard you are working on these! 

   Here is our class brainstorm and acrostic...

   Some of us brought home the letters to our mystery word. We worked on making words with these letters... no one has been able to find the BIG word.  Good luck! 

Bear Hugs,

Week One in the Books!

Dear Third Graders,

    We rocked week one in third grade. I hope you had as much fun as me!

    We celebrated our first friend's birthday!

    You Third Graders also did a great job with our first of many math games we will be playing. This one helped us work on reading numbers to the thousand place (we will go bigger soon) and also had us compare our number with a buddy.  This is a great game to play at home. You need one die, paper and a pencil.  Decide how many digits your number will have (4,5,6... you need to be able to read it). Each player draws that many lines on their paper. Take turn rolling dice. Each player puts the number rolled in one of the places. Once you write it, it is locked in place! Your goal is to make the BIGGEST number.

Here are some action shots from us playing at school...

Speaking of games, do you have any old decks of playing cards laying around? Even if they are missing cards, I would love to have them for some math games in our class. Please consider donating your old decks!  Thanks in advance!

    This week, we also met our new music teacher Mr. Martell.

To all of those observing Rosh Hashanah tomorrow, Happy New Year to you!

Bear Hugs,