We are thankful!

We have a lot of gratitude. We have written five things we are thankful for.  The Pilgrims had a tradition of putting five kernels of corn next to their plate on Thanksgiving to represent a blessing: autumn beauty, love for each other, God's love, friendship, and freedom. The first winter the Pilgrims sometimes only had 5 kernels of corn to eat a day. They found the corn buried in a basket in the sand that the Native Americans had left stored there. The corn helped them to survive that first long cold winter.

We have a very kind class this year. I am very grateful for how well they work together and support each other. They are really "filling each others buckets". Ask you child how they fill each others buckets!!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy working on those book report cubes.

November Informational Book Report

November Informational Book Report

The students have been preparing just over a month to be able to complete this particular book report.  They learned about sequence words (first, next, then, after, finally, second, third, fourth, last, etc.) and completed a writing project giving detailed instructions about something they were already experts on.  The informational book report takes things to the next level, by having the students read about something they aren't familiar with and create an information cube.  Below is a brief overview of the instructions, as well as a photo of a sample book report.

1.  Students choose an appropriate informational book on their reading level related to history/social studies, science, or the arts.  They should not choose topics they're already familiar with or that are too complex for a third grader to clearly outline in four steps.

2.  The topic they choose should include some type of process or sequence they can explain to others.  Here are a few simple examples:

History – "Ruby Bridges goes to the William Frantz Public School" or "The First Flight of the Wright Brothers" or "Man Lands on the Moon"

Science – "The Life Cycle of a Butterfly" or "How a Tornado Forms" or "Mining for Copper"

The Arts – "The Beginning Positions of Ballet" or "What to Prepare When You Audition for a Play" or "How to Draw Charlie Brown Cartoons like Charles Schulz"

3. Students then complete the cube according to the rubric in their homework folder and prepare to present it to the class.  Students are encouraged to practice their keyboarding skills by typing the sequence or process on the computer and gluing it onto the cube, as shown below:

Part of a sample cube book report before the cube has been folded.

October News

The last couple of weeks we've had some fun events! To begin with, we had our first math celebration lunch. Every student who earned at least one percent higher on their Place Value posttest or kept their score at 100% (sometimes harder to do than anything!) got to eat lunch with the teacher and enjoy a special treat.  We will continue doing the same thing for each math unit.  Second, the students completed their first Art Through the Ages project. Thank you to our parent volunteers!  Finally, we had a windy, but wonderful field trip, where we worked on math, science, and writing in the wetlands environment. Thank you to our volunteers who came with us!

Jog - A - Thon Assembly

We met our goal for raising money for our school! Thank you for supporting our school. We have outstanding parents who support us! We all received Altara T-shirts!  We also won 5 out of the 7 prizes given away for bringing in Jog-a-thon money. Oh, and did I mention if we met our goal we got to slime Mr. Jameson! He is such a good sport!

Current Event - Get Ready!!

Watch the Current Event Video for an example. Mrs. White is always fun to watch!

Book Reports

The book reports were fabulous! They were so much fun to listen to. They weren't as scary as many of the the students thought! We gave them more than once to many different students. I'm looking forward to listening to everyone's Current Event this month. They will present in front of the whole class.

Wow! What a Week!

We have reviewed all of our first unit in reading and tested on it. We have completed our 2nd topic in math which was addition with regrouping along with rounding and estimating and tested on it. We have also finished math differentiation groups going over place value and tested again! So basically, we've finished and tested on many, many subjects. The kids brains should be full of knowledge!! The good news is that if their test score for math differentiation went up (improved at all) we celebrate that gain by eating lunch with the teacher!  Yeah!

Jog - a - thon
We had fun running around the neighborhood! A Big Thank You to all the volunteers and parents who came to support us. Thank you for donating to our school. We really do have an amazing school with incredible parents who support us!

September Book Report

September Book Report

Sample Book Report

Many of you have been looking at the book report assignment that the children will be turning in on Thursday, October 4th.  (I moved the date back a week to give them more time!) A fantasy is a fictional story where there is a struggle between good and evil that often involves magic or creatures that don't exist in real life.  The characters or objects do things that couldn't happen in real life. Adventure stories have a character who lives by his wits and skills and is constantly placed in dangerous situations.  An adventure story may or may not be fantasy, since there are nonfiction adventures, as well.

The students may use books at Altara's library or any other location.  They should choose books they haven't read before that are appropriate for their reading levels (not too hard or too easy).

Use toys or other objects in your container.

Remember to check the rubric in your homework folder for instructions.  If you have any questions or concerns about the book report requirements, feel free to contact me.  Happy Reading!

September 10, 2012

What a great class! We are really bonding and working well together as a class. I'm so sorry about the reading calendars. They have the wrong dates on them. It slipped right past all the 3rd grade teachers and the copy aides! Please just make sure you are reading 100 minutes a week and fill out the calendar for the month. I will try to get the calendars changed by October. Thank you to everyone who signed up to help in the classroom. Our class wouldn't be the same without you!

New School Year

Wow! What a great way to start a new school year at Altara. Our class is already awesome!  We are figuring out how to work together in class and how much fun we can have learning. We are learning that it is fun to try new things. You never know you may be good at it and really like it!