My Plans in Pictures {September 5-9}

This week is a super short week.  Monday is Labor Day and then Tuesday is another day off for students.  Our district moved to full day professional development days for teachers last year.  The days usually back to a 3 day weekend giving our families a 4 day weekend.  Teachers are given choices and we get to sign up for professional development classes that will be most meaningful to us.  Tomorrow I will be taking a class on building my classroom website and then a class on planning instructional units for ELA.  I'm looking forward to learning a lot and getting a lot of work done!

Here are my plans for Wednesday-Friday in pictures!

Spelling: We will be working on phonograms {we use the Spalding program} and high frequency words.  We won't have a normal spelling list or test because of the shortened week.

Grammar:

We will be learning all about abstract nouns using my Abstract Noun Pack.  There is a flip book to put in their interactive notebook, a slideshow to use to teach and practice, a write the room to practice and then a culminating art project.

Reading:  In reading this week we will be learning how to use context clues.  The activities in this pack are always a huge hit, especially the made up words.  

My kiddos always love coming up with made up words of their own and writing their own sentences.  It is an amazing way to practice and they don't even know that's what they are doing they are having so much fun!

Writing:  This week we will be finishing up an opinion writing piece.  We will have a mini-lesson on stretching out our sentences and will use that to revise our opinion piece.  We will use the activities from my S.U.P.E.R. Sentences pack.

Math:  This week in math we will begin learning the strategies for multiplying and dividing by 2 and 5.  You can read more about the strategies I use to teach multiplication HERE.  And HERE. I'm so excited for my kiddos to start wearing their multiplication and division wrist bands as we learn!  

M.A.T.H. Centers:  In centers this week we will be reviewing arrays using my Hip,Hip, Array pack.

We will also review division as equal sharing using my division task cards.

Science:  In science we have been learning about the types of rocks and how they are formed.  This candy comparison is always a huge hit!  There is just something so engaging about making a lesson yummy!  This activity is part of my rocks unit, you can check it out HERE.

It's going to be another fun and exciting week in third grade.  It will all be capped off by our local high school rivalry football game!  The two high schools are a mile apart.  The K-8 school I teach at feeds to one of the schools and my husband teaches/coaches and our daughters  attend and are on the Pom Team at the rival school!  It's going to be an exciting way to end the short week!

Today and tomorrow you can grab all of the products that I will be using for 20% off in my store!  Use the links to go check them out.

Happy Labor Day everyone!

Word Detectives

One of the skills that we are working hard on this week is using context clues to determine meaning.  I tell my kiddos that they are “Word Detectives,” and just like police detectives look for clues, it is their job to look for clues to help them determine the meaning of a word.  The first thing we did was work together to make this anchor chart….

Oh. My. Goodness…I can’t even tell you how much fun they had doing this.  I gave them the sentence and we brainstormed words that could fit.  Then I gave them the same sentence with additional clues that narrowed it down to only one possibility.  They LOVED it!  After we made the chart I read aloud this book…

Another HOMERUN!  They ate this book up.  It is filled with “alien,” words and they had so much fun trying to figure out what each of the words meant.  You can click on the picture above to see it on Amazon!
Finally, we went back to our desks and did an activity to practice using context clues.  They were lovin the made up words so much that we used an activity from my “Becoming Word Detectives,” pack. We used context clues to determine what zerples, ermps, and faffen might be.  It always makes my heart happy when I hear things like, “this is so much fun,” as they are actually working hard to learn something! 
 

Fall Break = Lots of Planning Time!

WooHoo!!!! Conferences are done and Fall Break is here!  I am so looking forward to a solid 3 days off from school.  Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE my job and my school kiddos, but this teacher is tired!  So many of our friends are leaving town for the 3 days….not me.  I am super excited to sleep, catch up on housework, and jump ahead on some lesson planning.  Call me crazy but I love being planned way ahead of time and not running around at school like a crazy woman!  We are also 24 days away from the official start of basketball season (I say “official” because in our house the season sure does feel year round!).  Anyways, once season begins life gets crazy and I like to have a good head start going into it.  So, I have been working on some activities for teaching a practicing context clues.  In my room we always talk about being “word detectives.”  Detectives look for clues and that is what we do when we try and figure out what a word means or if it makes sense in the sentence.
Here is my “Becoming a Word Detective,” pack.  Now available in my TpT store.  You can grab it for 20% off the regular price for today only! 

Here’s to a relaxing, yet productive Fall Break!