Five For Friday {The Rewind}

 

Another crazy week has come and gone and it’s November.  I honestly don’t know where the time goes.  I feel like school just started a few weeks ago still.  I would have had this post ready on time…for the 3rd week in a row….but last night was the annual My Favorite Things Party that I go to, so that is my excuse!  So here it is…on a Saturday….in rewind.

 

 

Unfortunately, I don’t have any cute Halloween party photos to share.  We received an email from admin that said no dressing up, small parties, low key, and keep the day running as normal as possible.  Now, there is something you should know about me.  I am a rule follower.  If a rule exists or I am told something by my boss, I obey.  That’s just me.  And on top of that, someone down at district office decided, in their infinite wisdom, that Halloween would be a great day to open the reading benchmark testing window.  So, I took one for the team and took THE WORST testing dates available.  The afternoon of Halloween and the morning after the sugar coma.  I am proud to say that my kiddos ROCKED it.  Every. Single. One. improved upon their score from last time.  I see a big celebration party in our future!

 

 

Thursday, Cory came again.  Since it was Halloween and I was trying to to be a total Scrooge, instead of reading we played a game.  Usually we call this game, “Beat the Teach,”  and they are trying to beat me.  Today, it was, “Beat the Football Player.”  It’s a fun game to practice place value and comparing numbers.  They love it!  You can check it out in my TpT store, it’s super inexpensive!  Anyways, Cory finally got the hang of it and they played one last round.  And every last one of my students made a number lower than his, which was his challenge that round.  Not sure if he quite understood how it worked.  Here is a picture of all of their happy faces surrounding a pouty football player!

 

 

 

 

This week in reading we worked on The Planets in our Solar System, from our reading series.  We did our close reads, and on Wednesday it was time for our culminating task.  I gave them the prompt and a place to organize all of their sticky notes from our readings and they got to work.  I was so impressed as I walked around the room.  They just blow me away with the hard things they can do!

Here is one of the diagrams……

 

 

One of the things we worked on this week was non-fiction text features.  Part of their task was to use the text as a resource to create an illustration or diagram of the Solar System and label it.

 

Then, using the text as their resource they had to write a summary that included some of the most important details they read.  I loved this kiddo’s desk.  He was organizing and then reorganizing his sticky notes until he had them in just the right order!

 

 

If you are interested in getting a closer look at this task, I included a link to a free download in last week’s visual lesson plans, you can check them out HERE.

 

 

We started the week with our annual character pumpkin gallery walk.  Parents were invited to come check out our pumpkins.  We had spent the previous week working in class on writing our character descriptions and support our ideas with evidence from the text.  I had some amazing and creative pumpkins.  But, I must say that I was far more impressed with their writing!  I couldn’t believe what an amazing job they did using text evidence!  I was one very proud teacher! 

 

 

The popular choices this year seemed to be Greg Heffley and characters from our favorite read aloud, Sideways Stories From Wayside School!

 

 

More Character Pumpkins!

 

 

I had to save Stick Dog for last.  This is from one of my gifted kiddos!  Talk about thinking outside the box.  She wanted to know if she had to use a pumpkin, she was thinking that a squash better fit her character!  Just one more reason I love teaching these kids!

 

Happy November everyone!  Have a great weekend and I’ll see you Sunday with more visual plans.

Visual Plans {Freebies Included!}

I can’t believe it’s already Sunday morning!  I spent yesterday in my second home……

 

 

If my classroom is my home away from home, then my car wins as my second home.  I spent 3 and 1/2 hours driving yesterday to get my daughters where they needed to be.  God bless my busy teenagers, and PTL I drive a small Honda that gets great gas mileage! 

So, here are my plans for the week, I’m linking up for the “Peek at My Week Linky!”

 

 

All of the pictures and links are clickable and lots of them will take you to FREE stuff, but you have to download them from Google Docs first.  Just click on any of the pics to do that!

 

 

 

 

ELA

 

In ELA this week, we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled programming of main idea to go back and review describing a character.  It’s time for our annual pumpkin book character project, and we will be working on that this week.  You can check out last year’s pumpkins HERE.

On Monday, we will review character traits by using the “Costumed Characters,” from my Halloween literacy centers.  During our writing time they will work to describe themselves using character traits and I am going to have them make face frames that I saw on Pinterest.

Tuesday, we will review describing characters with Lilly from Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse.  We will use an anchor chart to brainstorm character traits that describe Lilly.  They will then work with a partner to find evidence from the text and write their evidence on sticky notes to add under the traits on our chart.

 

 

Wednesday, we will review yet again, but they will be doing most of the work this time!  We will read A Bad Case of Stripes or maybe we will watch it….I love listening to Sean Astin read it, he does such a great job using accents for the specialists!  Check out Storyline Online by the Screen Actor’s Guild!

The rest of the week will be spent getting our own character descriptions finished for our pumpkin projects.  The link to my project freebie can found in my visual lesson plans.

 

  Our grammar this week will come from my favorite pack….Jivey’s Mentor Sentence pack.  I am still IN.LOVE. with this and I just saw that the story our mentor sentence comes from is on Storyline Online!  So excited.  I am telling you, if you haven’t checked out her mentor sentence stuff yet, get on it!  The link is in my plans!

 

Math

 

We will spend our time in math this week on addition with regrouping.  First, we will work on using addition properties and we will make a flap book in our interactive notebooks.  You can grab the flap books for free by clicking the link in my plans.  I copy two on a page to conserve paper.  We go through paper like C.R.A.Z.Y. at our school and are encouraged to conserve whenever we can.  I have them cut out the rectangle and then cut the flaps. We put glue down the strip on the side and glue it in their notebooks.  They use the lines on the notebook page to write their notes.  It saves paper and using the notebook page with lines helps them be neater!  Reading it back, those directions are slightly confusing….I will take a picture of their notebook this week and post!

Our math workstations this week will all come from my Halloween themed workstation pack.  I always put review skills in workstations.  I plan on blogging more about how my math workstations operate later this week, including what I do for my gifted kids who need to be challenged during station time!  You can click on the link above or the pictures in my plans to check out the Halloween workstations.  For the next 4 days, everything Halloween themed in my store will be 20% off! Click the pic below to check it out!

 

 

Have a great Sunday everyone! 

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year…..

No, I am not one of “those people,” playing Christmas music already.  From now until right after Christmas is my absolute favorite time of year.  I love all of the parties, decorations, and fun memory making activities.  Of course, life at school gets pretty crazy for the next couple of months with assemblies, holidays, class parties, and projects, but these are the moments that my third graders will remember.  20 years from now, when they think back to our short time together they will remember these memories that we make.  I am sure you all have some things that you do every year to celebrate the holidays at school.  I have seen the character pumpkin idea all over Pinterest and have been waiting for October so we could do it.
Here is one of my favorites from Second Grade Shenanigans….

I tweaked the project a bit so that it relates to third grade curriculum. Instead of doing a full on book report my kiddos have to pick their favorite book.  They will make the character pumpkin at home and in class they will work on writing a character description, which happens to be our writing skill for the week of Halloween! 
Here is the little packet I made to use with my class. Click on the pic to download it for free! 

Can’t wait to start making some more fun memories with my kiddos this season!