Today at respect circle, two Superstars were chosen as bucketfillers of the month! Way to go Nicholas and Taylor! Superstars who turned in all of the February homework assignments in on time received their homework club certificate today. So proud of these kiddos!
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As usual, things are pretty awesome in the superstar classroom!! The Chrome Books have arrived!!! We were able to spend time on them Wednesday, Thursday and Friday last week. The students did a BEAUTIFUL job!! New technology always seems to be accompanied by lots of bumps in the road. We had some login and internet connection issues, but the kiddos were patient, understanding and definitely demonstrated their perseverance! No one got frustrated or gave up. By Thursday, everyone was able to login. Every superstar got to do a search for a topic of interest on Kidrex.org. We were also able to view of class webpage and take our Reading Street Test on our new chrome books. I have to give a shout out to my technology team, Kayla and Julian, for being AWESOME helpers with these great new devices. On Friday, EVERY SINGLE SUPERSTAR turned in their homework...completed and on time!!! YAY!!! This is the first week where every single student accomplished this task. I felt so proud!! No one had to leave the club. They earned a class point for that one. Keep up the great work on the homework front. Elmwood has hired a new music teacher and she began last Monday. Her name is Mrs. Pike. She has a fantastic behavior system in which the students can earn up to 5 stars during their class time. They earned all 5 on Monday and on Friday, they were SO QUIET entering the classroom at the beginning of class that she actually gave them a bonus star (SIX STAR DAY!)! if you ever see Mrs. Pike around, please welcome her to the Waverly Family. Great news on the Reading Street front. During Unit 1 Week 4 (two weeks ago), the superstars test average was 63%. 70-75% is passing. I obviously want our class average to eventually exceed 75%. Well, I sat the kiddos down for a serious talk last Monday. We discussed the need to focus on test taking strategies. We also set some goals for ourselves. I asked the superstars to shoot for a 68% average on their next test. Amazingly, they hit just that!!! On our Unit 1 Week 5 test on Friday, our class average was exactly 68%! 5 points higher than the previous week. We are moving in the right direction. We will spend a great deal of time on test taking strategies this week to help keep our scores going in this direction. So proud of the superstars for reaching this impressive goal on the first try! We are nearing the end of James and the Giant Peach. The students have LOVED every minute of it. Take a moment to talk with your child about this wildly creative story. Maybe even encourage them to make a comic strip that depicts some of the text's most interesting events. We will be having our Fall Festival on Friday Oct. 31st at 1:00. Please visit our sign up sheet. You can click on it from our website's homepage. I could definitely use some donations and helping hands to make the event a success.
So looking forward to another fantastic week with the best students in all the world!! Week 4 was very busy! We experimented with test taking on chrome books and ipads. It was exciting to get some technology in the kids hands. They did a great job of treating the equipment with care.
We talked about recess safety at Respect Circle with Mr. Lyman on Tuesday and the students were a great audience. Our spelling test average went down a touch this week (the words were extra challenging). Our average was 12.7 out of 15. Let's put in a little extra study time next week. We lost only one student from the homework club. At the end of September, 19 out of 24 Superstars are still in the club and will participate in the celebration on Friday. Everyone will rejoin the club for Oct. My goal is to have all 24 students at our next homework club celebration! This week we read an article about how we can grow connections in our brains. We made a commitment to grow our brains this year by doing things such as completing our homework, reading in our spare time, studying our spelling words, practicing math facts, researching topics that interest us, exercising, trying new things, getting enough sleep and eating healthy. We grew our own "brains" while we said our commitments aloud. (check out our pics in Superstar Photos) We worked on comparing and ordering 4-digit numbers in math this week and the Superstar SOARED!!! We ended the week with an awesome teamwork activity which you can view pics of in Superstar Photos. To cap off the awesome week, we held our first ever 3rd grade sports day!! The Superstars and Mr. Blundell's class hit the fields for Two-Ball Soccer and Scatter Ball. We are hoping this weekly event will be a chance for students to collaborate, get to know one another and practice good sportsmanship. It's also a great chance to get those bodies moving and to work on problem solving and strategy. We had a blast this Friday and the students impressed us with their kindness towards one another. Looking forward to next week! Week 3 was yet another amazing week in the superstar classroom! Since the 1st day of school, we have been working together to earn class points. The class can earn points for receiving class compliments from another adult or by impressing me with exceptional behavior and tremendous effort. They can lose points for noise level and being off task. Our goal was to earn 15 points. The students voted on their reward and chose to work for ice cream! Well, on Thursday, we met our goal!!! Which led to a fabulous ice cream celebration on Friday (visit the superstar photos page to see pictures of the fun!) We are now working towards a stuffed animal day. We only lost one friend from the homework club this week, so we currently have 20/24 students in the Sept. Homework Club. One more week until our September celebration. I hope all 20 kiddos will stay in the club. Our spelling scores improved slightly! We had a class average of 13.5 out of 15 (last week our average was an even 13). We are moving in the right direction! Last week we finished taking our beginning of the year assessments which help guide my instruction for the year. We also worked on a problem solving strategy called "Make an Organized List" (which you saw in the homework packet). We have so much fun using our new Promethean Board to act out these problems. We spent a lot of time on place value and the superstars became experts in expanded notation. (3,000+200+10+5=3,215) We enjoyed reading a fable in our Reading Street text called What About Me? We also had a blast trying to use all of our amazing vocabulary words whenever we got a chance. We are absolutely LOVING James and the Giant Peach!!! They often BEG for just one more chapter when I close the book for the day. Things just really began to get exciting now that James and his new friends are about to start their adventures. Each day I ask a student to go home and illustrate the chapter we just read and bring it in to share. I love seeing their imaginations come to life on the page!!! Visualizing what we read and hear is a very important comprehension strategy. We are working on a plan for all of these beautiful pieces of art. The Superstars are authors! We continued work on our Best Part of Me project. Each student planned and posed of their picture to accompany their writing piece. I CAN NOT WAIT for everyone to see these! They are turning out so beautifully!! Last week, we focused on responsibility. We read The Little Red Hen Makes Pizza to see how being responsible can benefit the whole group. I would like to end this blog post by thanking all of the superstar families for taking an active role in your child's education! Just visiting this webpage and taking the time to see what we are up to goes a long way. This group of students is one in a million! They impress me everyday with their kindness and respect towards myself and each other. To illustrate my point, please check out this beautiful diagram created by Miah {Everybody that I love as family = the entire class}
Another great week in the books! This week we focused on honesty, perseverance and the importance of being a unique individual. We are going to work hard this year, set lofty goals and have high expectations so it is crucial that the superstars practice using perseverance. We read The Little Engine That Could and attempted several challenging brain teasers/puzzles to test out our "we won't give up" attitude. To celebrate being a unique individual we read Chester's Way. The students were inspired by how the characters in the story learned from each others' differences. We also discussed having different opinions and how to politely disagree. To further celebrate our uniqueness, I read the students The Best Part of Me. It has inspired a writing assignment in which students describe the best part of themselves. Check out the photos below to see what direction our writing project is heading. We dove into our Reading Street curriculum and experienced our first story, When Charlie McButton Lost Power. There was great discussion about the importance of trying new things. The Superstars completed their first "Think Critically" which required them to cite evidence from the text to prove their thinking. (This may have been our toughest challenge yet!)
Our first homework assignment went home and I was very pleased with what was turned in. I saw a tremendous amount of effort!!! 22 out of 25 Superstars are still in the homework club for the month of September! YAY! The first spelling test of the year was given. The class average was a 13 out of 15! (There are actually 20 words, but 5 are bonus words, so I score it out of 15). Great job third graders!! Let's try for an average of 14 next week! |
Ms. davidson and the superstarsWhat's happening in room 201? Archives
June 2015
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