Welcome Third Graders!!!

Welcome back to school everyone!  And welcome to our class website!  Here you'll find homework resources, pictures of our activities and updates about the class.  I will be attempting to post videos of what we're learning as well, but that will be after I get permission from you, the parents.

You may want to BOOKMARK this site and check back in.  There will be fun incentives for commenting on our posts, too.

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First, let me show you a bit of our classroom to those who couldn't make it to Meet the Teacher.

 

The most noticeable part of our classroom is the extensive, organized library. I love to collect books and have them in various bins based on author, genre and series.  This is our series/author section with some Dr. Seuss characters on top.  The book bins line the entire left wall of our room.  

The back of our classroom hold our student computers and our travel theme. Each of the planes and globes have a student's name.  Miss McMeekin and I made the "Where learning takes flight!" posters.  

Our calendar is at the front of the room on our white board.

                                      

My area is at the back corner of our room behind the filing cabinet that I decorated thanks to ideas from Pinterest.  Pink is my favorite color and I'm a HUGE Longhorns fan!

And the end of our tour is at the left front of our room, on the white board.  This will be our schedule area where we keep track of all the important things going on with assignments and important dates.  These will be copied in the Time Tracker.  The desk you see will be where I'll work with each student in our small group.

All parents are welcome in the classroom to observe at anytime!  Just make sure to email me to set up a time.  

Welcome to Alexander Airways!!!!!

We had a great time yesterday for our Beach Day!  We reviewed our editing/revising material and practiced a reading passage on Honeybees.  After we did our work we passed around beach balls to sign encouraging words to our friends.  I'm so proud of how hard the kiddos worked!!  They have done a great job reviewing everything for our benchmark days.  We will be testing the rest of this week and next week so please keep with us during this time that we showcase all we've been working towards this year! 

MAHALO (Thank you!)

Thank you to the following families for their wonderful donations that have made our review time so much more special.

The Zientek family

The Lynn family

The Whitley family

The Rivich family

The Powell family

The Scoble family

The Chandrabose family

The Szell family

The Harris family

The Autry/Campbell family

The Slaughter famiy

If I missed anyone please let me know and I'll be glad to add your name!

Weekly Update

Hi all,
I hope your week is going well! Here are some updates to our curriculum this week.

Last week we found that we struggle more with sequencing our stories, being able to tell what happened before or after an event. So we've begun working on a story timeline. This can be done with any book you want at home. Create 4-8 boxes and have your child write the main events in the story. Our second graders are having difficulty picking out which events are just details and which are really important to the story. When we are finished reviewing sequence we will be taking our 2nd reading stamina practice with another 5-passage practice. During this time we'll be talking again about taking breaks and what to do when we're tired of working but must keep going.

In writing we have begun our Fantasy Unit. We are in the planning stages of our stories! We have chosen whether we want to write a: fairy tale, fable, folktale or tall tale. We also planned four traits we will have that pertain to each of those units. (I.E. if I'm writing a fairy tale I'm going to have a princess who is a teacher, a magical sorcerer, a pet dragon, and an enchanted forest. If I were writing a fable I would need some animal characters like maybe a fox and a giraffe, these animals will have human traits like trying to trick their teacher from giving them homework, and my story will teach a lesson like how it's better to be honest than lie.) This story will take up much of our time for the next 3-4 weeks. We look forward to sharing them with you afterwards!

And in social studies we have switched to our economy unit with the help of Mrs. Sampson and Mrs. Martinez through Junior Achievement. We are focusing on learning the difference between producers and consumers, and then the different between goods and services.

Homeworks are as usual! 1) Reading comprehension, 2) Writing a short fable, 3) Reading "The Softball Game" twice, and 4) a spelling activity.

If you have any questions feel free to post on here or email me! Have a wonderful week!

Homework and Terrific Tuesdays

Hi everyone, hope you had a blessed Easter! It appears the flu is now hitting the morning class with another 7 absent today. Please rest up you guys and feel better soon!

We're going to carry on here as we have our end of the year benchmarks in about a month!

Starting this week we are going to begin growing our stamina of taking longer reading passage practices each Tuesday. Our schedule is so busy, I think it will be better to do them on a regular basis to help everyone out. Wednesdays are library days, Thursdays are computer lab and Fridays are spelling tests and checking homework. So Tuesdays we are going to begin taking a practice reading passage assortment and using that data to drive what we work on in class.

Homework:
Reading Comprehension homework
Spelling Activity
Writing Homework (over fairy tales)
Home Reader

What a Crazy Week, Happy Easter!!!

Ok, I wanted to post a quick note that I went ahead and canceled our spelling words for this week. We'll use the same words next week so if you did your spelling activity already just hold on to it so you can turn it in next Friday!

Secondly, I wanted to address the flu that seems to be going through our classroom. We have had up to 10 children out per day. We have made sure to use hand sanitizer hourly and have cloroxed our tables, chairs and even our pencils! For those of you who are out we hope you'll concentrate on feeling better! For those who may not know yet about all our illnesses I hope you'll stay healthy and make sure to get plenty of sleep and those other healthy choices we make each day!

Because of so many absenses I have not taught extra content this week. We reviewed the skills of distinguishing between fact and opinion and worked on our book reviews and Flag Day books. None of those are assignments that will be sent home for "make-up work." We'll take care of it when any students who missed the assignment come back. It's just too hard to explain the directions and it's something that should be completed in class as the books we use are in our classroom library.

For the book commercials: I will only post the commercials that I have consent for from the yellow sheet. (You can find an extra copy on the first few posts of the blog if you haven't yet returned one.) I will try my best to post all 20-30 students that I can but we will see if I can get them formatted correctly, because I'll have to learn a bit about Blogspot first :)

And lastly, I hope you enjoy your Good Friday. I hope you'll get to spend time with family and cherish the day however your family chooses. It's a very special weekend and I hope you'll enjoy the time with family and friends in the best ways possible.

Literary Nonfiction and Book Reviews

This week we began reading "literary nonfiction" which are true stories that really took place. We began by reading Nubs: A story of a mutt, marine and a miracle. Then we read Two Bobbies. These are two amazing stories that the kids really enjoyed!

You can watch a video of Nubs at:

You can find the website for Two Bobbies at:

http://www.twobobbies.com/ The kids may enjoy looking at it.
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And our next writing project will be writing book reviews. After writing commercials we will then videotape them to put online (after permission slips are signed!) Stay Tuned!

Homework Update

I cancelled writing homework for the week since I couldn't get the work to the copy machine in time. By the time it came back it was Wednesday afternoon so the kids wouldn't have gotten it til today. Next week we'll get back into the full rotation!