So much fun was had this morning as we started our day with a whimsical breakfast in honor of Dr. Seuss. It was such a joy seeing so many superstar families!
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Wow! so much has happened since my last blog post! The superstars and I have been busy learning and growing together. This is a busy week at Elmwood! We kicked off March is Reading Month on Monday with some flashlight partner reading. It was perfect for our theme: Spotlight on Reading! Snowflake Wars is in full effect! the superstars have already purchased 125 snowflakes and we are tied for 8th place. We are striving to win some scholastic bucks and maybe even the grand prize... a movie party with Mr. Lyman! All proceeds go directly to Elmwood. The battle concludes this Friday. Elmwood PTO is hosting a Green Eggs and Ham breakfast tomorrow to celebrate reading month. It begins at 7:30 and ends at 8:15. There will be coffee! Hope to see you there! The superstars have been working on division and are just rocking it! They know 5 different methods for solving division equations and understand which ones are most efficient. We are finishing up an author study on Eve Bunting. The students have fallen in love with her books! So far we have read: Fly Away Home, December, Wednesday Surprise, A Day's Work and Some Frog. Ask your superstar to tell you about their favorite! Our Valentine celebration was fabulous! thank you to everyone who donated supplies and helped out at the party. It was truly a day filled with love and kindness! Pictures coming soon. We have been surviving indoor recess and keeping our minds ready to learn with brain breaks using gonoodle.com We have way too much fun singing and dancing! PHEW! It has been a busy couple weeks and I am behind on my blogging. Lots to update you on. In reading, we have been working on identifying text type. I do not want the students to rely on the pictures to determine text type. They often think that if the pictures are drawings and not real photos then it must be fiction, but this is not always the case. I want them to use the elements on the chart below to identify and prove text type. We have this exact chart on display in our classroom. We ROCKED our Reading Street last Friday! The kiddos set a goal of 71%, but exceeded it by 10 percentage points with a class average of 81%!!! WOW!!! Our highest score yet!! Way to go Superstars!! In math, we have continued practicing all of our ways to add. We have also moved onto rounding. Students should be able to round to the nearest ten and the nearest hundred. Examples: 48 rounded to the nearest ten is 50. 463 rounded to the nearest ten is 460 524 rounded to the nearest hundred is 500. We have used number lines to help us round. We think about the tens or hundreds our number is between and use our midpoints (numbers that end in 5 or 50). We also refer to the rule: 1-4 you round down, 5-9 you round up. Chanting this song also helps us remember: Rounding Chant Chanted to the marching cadence of “Sound Off” Rounding’s not that hard to do. Let me tell the rules to you. For the digits five through nine, Round that number up the line. For the digits four and less, Round that number down, oh yes! Chorus (chant twice) Round up! (Five through nine!) Round down! (Four and less!) Enjoy the videos below with your superstar! They will review the steps we take to round to the nearest ten and the nearest hundred. We will be taking our addition/rounding test this Thursday. We have also used our chrome books to create a digital representation of our rounding. Check out this awesome work... Our spelling scores have taken a bit of a dip. I had fallen behind in grading, but will be sending the past 3 spelling tests home on Wed. Oct. 29th. Our class averages are as follows: Unit 1 Week 5 = 13.5 Unit 1 Review Week = 13 Unit 2 Week 1 = 12.5 The Superstars have set a goal for their spelling test this week. They would like to achieve a class average of 14. I KNOW that with a little hard work and some extra studying we can reach this goal! Hat day was a GREAT success!! The Superstars helped me collect, organize and count the money. Students were responsible for thanking the Elmwood staff and students for their support. We raised a total of $214!!! (we received an extra dollar the day after the event). We had families who donated extra money and students who donated a dollar without even bringing a hat to wear. Our class was blown away by our community's generosity! Funding for our 3rd grade shirts is coming along! Our next fundraiser will be a Gum Day in November. We are continuing to get more comfortable with the Chrome Books. The students have made word clouds about themselves and we attempted to post them onto kidblog. Students are welcome to try making a word cloud at home about a topic that interests them. The link to our word cloud making site is under the resources tab / useful websites. They enjoyed commenting on each others' posts. The students also had a chance to write back and forth with Mr. Lyman via our classroom blog. (check out the comments from the blog post on Oct. 13th) Our Fall Festival is this Friday from 12:45-3:00. We will be doing games, activities and snacking from 12:45-2:00. Then, we will get ready for our Reader's Theatre performance. Our performance begins at 2:15 and all are welcome to attend. However, please do not arrive prior to the performance if you have not signed up to help with the party. Too many bodies in the room during our activities will make for chaos :) The Superstars will be performing The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything as well as Piggie Pie. Check out the book trailers below... I need to take this opportunity to give a special shout out to MICHELLE MATA for helping with the Superstars weekly homework packets and to VICKI HOWERY for helping out at Sports Day and for helping prepare our new testing pages! Also, major thanks to all the families who are helping with the fall festival! This year simply would not be as successful without the help of all of you! Sorry for the long post, but I think we are all caught up! Hope you enjoyed! Please feel free to leave a comment. :)
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!! As always, we had another learning-filled week in the superstar classroom! The kids rocked this weeks spelling focus with long vowel teams such as ee, ea, ai, ay, ow and oa. The class average was 16.5 out of 15!!! 110%!!! WOWZA! Keep up the great work! Our Reading Street test was a bit of a struggle. We will be focusing on some test taking strategies in the weeks to come to help improve our scores. Please make sure to work on our weekly vocabulary words with your superstar. They can be found on the website. Students need to know multiple ways for explaining what each word means (just memorizing the definition won't be enough). They need to be able to use them correctly in a variety of sentences and contexts. Listing synonyms (words that mean the same) would be another great way to study! We had our first homework club celebration on Friday! 19 of the 24 Superstars stayed in the club for all of September. We had a picnic in the classroom, listened to music and enjoyed doughnut holes from Ms. Davidson. What a great time!! :) Everyone rejoined the club for Oct. So far 21 out of 24 kids are still in the club. This week, the superstars had their first experience with a sub. It was not a perfect day, but they definitely got some quality work done. When I am out, please keep in mind that I explain the clip system to the sub in my plans, but they most likely will not implement it in the same way that I do. Some may choose not to use it at all. Just keep that in mind when looking at their behavior chart for days that I am out. We had to cancel Sports Day due to rainy weather so we are really looking forward to next week. In math, we focused on learning new addition strategies to add to our math tool belts. I love to arm students with as many ways to attack a problem as possible. Some of these ways may seem unusual or different from what you and I learned in school. However, I have seen the powerful impact they can have on a child's number sense. We are trying to create flexible and creative mathematical minds. :) In reading, we focused on comparing and contrasting. We practiced using sentences to prove our thinking: ____ and ____ are alike because they both _____ ____ and ____ are different because ____ is ___ and ____ is ____. Here is an example the kids came up with using characters from James and the Giant Peach: The earthworm and the centipede are alike because they both love James. The earthworm and the centipede are different because the earthworm has no legs and the centipede has 42 legs. So looking forward to another beautiful week with these awesome students!! :)
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! The Superstars had an AMAZING first week! I was blown away by their helpfulness and kindness. Everyone worked hard and supported one another. We had a blast doing some meet and greet activities. We began learning about what it takes to be in the Superstar classroom. We focused on teamwork, respect and honesty. The students already began practicing museum behaviors and doing an artifact study to help us prepare for our week-long field trip to the Michigan Historical Museum in January. Several wonderful books were read which sparked many character building activities. Check out this audio/visual version of one of our favorites, The Crayon Box That Talked... I hope everyone enjoyed working on the puzzle after the first day of school. The students did a beautiful job on them. I am also hopeful that you were able to spend a little time reading Our Promise to Each Other (if you missed it, check it out under the "behavior plan" tab!). Thank you to everyone who has already returned all the important beginning of the year paperwork. I LOVED reading all the parent/student surveys! Also, I greatly appreciate all of the amazing donations we received!!! Everyone has been so very generous! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU!
This week I will spend some time assessing students so I can determine how to best meet everyone's needs this year. We will also begin some regular instruction while continuing to practice routines and work on more character building. I am so looking forward to another wonderful week! Way to go!!! You have succeeded in the first part of your secret mission! You found the superstar blog on our class website! I am impressed! Since you made it this far, I will give you a little inside information about me, your teacher, Ms. Davidson. :) First, you should know that you are extra special because you are my TENTH class! You are also the last class ever that will get to call me Ms. Davidson. I am getting married next summer and will then be known as Mrs. Haney (That is going to take some getting used to!) You should also know that I am OBSESSED with books! ALL kinds of books! Our classroom library is my favorite spot in the classroom as it holds all of my treasures (my books!). I believe setting goals for yourself and striving to meet them is extremely important. Here are some goals I have set for myself: -Swim with dolphins -Publish a book for children -Travel to Costa Rica and zipline through the rain forest -Run a 5K (without stopping to walk) -Take a cooking class -See the Northern Lights in Iceland -Learn to paddle board To complete your superstar top secret mission, check out the pictures below. Then, leave a comment on this blog by clicking on the blue word "comments"(it may have a number in front of it). In your comment, tell me your name and answer these two questions: 1. What was the most interesting thing you learned about Ms. Davidson from this post? 2. What is a goal you have for yourself? |
Ms. davidson and the superstarsWhat's happening in room 201? Archives
June 2015
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