Busy week...

Even though we had three days this week with early outs, we kept the kids busy!

• Please remember to return the math homework!  It has been hard getting back into our school routine, but it is important for the kids to return their work.  REMEMBER THE KIDS HAVE HOMEWORK EVERY NIGHT EXCEPT FRIDAY!

• Check out the note (sent home with youngest and only students) regarding the Mile of Pennies project that KE is participating in.  We are teaming up with the Kalona Optimists to raise funds for the Childhood Cancer Campaign. Students are encouraged to bring in pennies (or other coins) to donate in our classroom penny containers.  The classroom that donates the most will earn a pizza party from the Optimists.

We did manage to get a few chess games in this week.

The kids have journals that they write in at least once a day.

Stations

We did manage to get some Station time in before dismissing early today.  The kids worked on finishing up math and their language arts assignments along with working on our new September bulletin board.

Mr. Wegter by Ivana Ebersole

One of the many things we learned about Mr. Wegter this week is he is an avid chess player!  The kids have enjoyed challenging him to play.

A goal of ours this year is to get the kids more involved in putting together the blog.  This week I asked Ivana to interview Mr. Wegter.

From Mr. Wegter,

Wow!  It has been a great two weeks and I can safely say I'm learning as much as the kids!  Here is the interview from Ivana:

1. When did you decide you wanted to be a teacher?

When I was around 15 years old.  I am the youngest in my family and I have three older sisters.  Around that time my sisters started having kids and I found that I had a real enjoyment out of socializing and teaching kids and I found it to be the profession for me.

2. When you were younger, did you look up to a teacher?  If so, who and why?

I had many excellent teachers when I grew up but I'm sorry to say I never really had just one that I would really call my favorite.  When I was younger I just enjoyed going to school so I think that is a testament to all of my teachers on what a great job they did!

3. This is a totally unrelated teacher question, but, what's your favorite pizza topping?

I love pizza but I would have to say some of my favorite toppings are bacon, pineapple, canadian bacon, and chicken.  Now if you put all of that on one pizza it is one of the best pizzas you could ever have!

4. Do you have enough patience to put up with elementary school kids?  Do you?  Do you?  Do you?

That is an excellent question.  In short, the answer is yes!  I have always had plenty of patience and I know that it gets pushed now and again but that is a part of school and I enjoy the challenges of a school day.

5. What do you want your students to learn the most?

I want students to know that school is fun! (and I'm not just talking about recess).  In the classroom kids should enjoy themselves because what they are learning is valuable and the way they are learning it is exciting.  It's my goal to make every lesson as engaging as possible.


I want to thank Ivana for having this interview with me.  It helps everyone to get to know me a little better.  Starting next week, I have decided to start a lunch bunch.  This is where 3 students, everyday, will get to take their lunch to the classroom and chat with me while we all eat.  I hope this will be an enjoyable time where I can learn more about the students while they are also learning more about me.

Social Studies

We're wrapping up our review of the continents with a mini research project.  Students selected a continent that they are interested in learning more about, and are working to gather interesting facts about that continent, as well as to record the sources from which they discovered the facts.  We've gathered information from a BrainPop video and by using an online Encyclopedia this week. 

Language Skills

Our spelling words this week all had short vowel sounds (short a, i, and e).  We took the spelling pre test, and worked on the words via practice book pages in class, and using the Spelling City website on the ipads (your child can use the website at home too - check out the link under our websites tab).  We will take the post test over these words (and the remaining lists in this theme) at the end of our unit.

We also reviewed what makes a sentence.  Sentences need to be a complete thought, including a who/what, and an action (what they did).  Sentences should also always begin with a capital letter, and end with an end mark.  Students practiced identifying sentences, as well as changing fragments into sentences.

(Our Language time was cut very short this week due to early outs) :)

Reading - Mrs. Hartsock's group

We tackled our first shared reading story in our anthology this week - Cliff Hanger.  Students learned rock climbing vocabulary, and practiced the reading strategy of predicting what would happen next in this exciting story.  Ask your child to summarize the story for you. :) Other skills that we worked on include cause and effect, similes, alphabetical order and words with inflected endings.  We also practiced the art of reading with a partner to work on reading fluency.

This week we also reviewed/practiced independent reading (ask your child what an independent reader should do/not do) and learned how to record what we've read daily in our reading logs.  We also discussed about what makes a book "just right" for us to help students select independent reading books. (Once we complete our DRA and MAP reading assessments, I will help students select books in their reading lexile range - more info to come on that.)  Now that we've laid the groundwork for our classroom routines and expectations for when the teacher is working with small groups, we will be ready to start guided reading groups next week.

Science

 What does candy have to do with Science?  Ask your student!  This week we worked on learning about the water cycle.  To learn about the water cycle, we have to know the three states of matter, and the difference between a physical and chemical change.  What better subject matter to use than candy!  The kids did a great job discussing what items would be a chemical or physical change.  What do you think...butter on a warm piece of toast - physical or chemical?

Special Days in Third Grade

We have a few special days in third grade for which we will either need parent/volunteer help or participation.  These fun events are now on our calendars, so we thought we'd give you a heads up so that you can add them to yours. :)

Watermelon Day - Friday, 9/21 - We'll need a few volunteers from each class to help us with this fun activity that will take place at school from 12:15 - 2:45.

Laura Ingalls Wilder Day - Friday, 12/7 - Laura Day is a favorite third grade tradition to culminate our study of pioneers in social studies and our Little House on the Prairie novel unit in reading.  Mrs. Casper, our resident Laura expert comes to help us with this all day event that takes place at KE.  We'll need several volunteers from each class to help with cooking, weaving, and other craft stations that small groups of students will participate in throughout the day.

Donuts for Dads - Friday, March 8 - Students invite their dads (or grandpa/uncle) to spend the afternoon in third grade (12:15 - 2:45).  Dads get to participate in our Friday stations with the children, and (of course!) eat donuts!

Mother's Day Tea - Friday, May 10 - Moms (or grandma/aunt) get their turn to come to school for Mother's Day Tea, also from 12:15 - 2:45.


More information and volunteer forms will be sent home prior to each event, but we thought it may be helpful for you to know the dates in advance in case you need to rearrange your schedule to help or participate.  We may also add other events - so stay tuned. :)

ipad fun!

We are sooooooo fortunate at KE to have acquired two ipad labs containing class sets of ipads!  Today the third grades were lucky to be the very first classes to use the ipads.  Mrs. Casper, our former KE teacher librarian who currently helps us with technology,  came to our language classes to introduce the ipads to us.

Students learned how to carefully get the ipads from the cart, how to use the special covers, and about some of the basic ipad apps.  We are very excited to use ipads in our classrooms!

The ipads are housed in a cart for all classes to share

Mrs. Casper explains the special ipad covers

Practicing rolling back the cover

Practicing with apps

Students also learned how to use the keyboard on the ipads to type

Learning how to "pinch" the screen to make images bigger or smaller

Looking at pictures on the third grade blog

Taking a spelling test on Spelling City (not all Spelling City games will work on the ipad since the require flash player -- we hope to download the Spelling City app soon!)

This 'N That {Reminders}

The first week of school is in the books, and we're having a great time getting to know one another and are settling into our classroom routines.

Some of the "beginning of the year" activities we did this week include:

• get to know you class scavenger hunt

• working as homeroom classes to create class rules

• reviewing/practicing our school wide refocus procedure

• learning how to "switch" classrooms

• using the mobile laptop lap to review how to open a word processing document and learning to save on our flash drives

We've also completed most of our beginning of the year assessments (we'll do MAP testing and DRA reading assessments in September - more on both of those later), and are ready to split into reading groups (which we'll begin on Monday).  All students will receive the same core instruction, covering 3rd grade skills and reading shared stories from our reading anthology and working on reading strategies.  Within the groups we will also spend part of our class time teaching guided reading, or smaller reading groups based upon students's reading abilities.  

Please take a moment to read the posts about other happenings this week - there are several new posts, so you may need to click "older posts" at the bottom to see them all.  In addition, if there are pictures on the blog that you would like, simply right click on the photo to copy/paste to your computer, or Mac users can just drag the image to your desktop.  The pictures are of high enough quality that you can get them printed (ie. for a scrapbook or photo album) if you wish.

We look forward to another super week!

Stations {Friday Fun!}

Every Friday afternoon third graders get to participate in stations.   Stations are simply a different (usually more fun!) way of learning in small groups.  Students rotate through 4 - 5 activities throughout the afternoon - typically the stations will include math catch up/games, reading, a craft, visiting websites to practice spelling words, and more!  Stations are a great way to wrap up our week.

Check out these pictures from today's stations . . .

(since it's the beginning of the year, one of the 3H stations was to practice using/putting away our indoor recess games properly)