Presidential Campaigns

After reviewing the OREO process for writing persuasive paragraphs, the class completed their campaign posters.  We discussed what our target audience would be, fellow classmates, and tried to make our campaign reasons and examples address their needs.  Apparently food was a big persuasion item among the third grade set!

Story Mapping

Who doesn't love Betty White?  While listening to her read Harry the Dirty Dog at storylineonline.net . One of our goals for next week will be to complete a map on our own. I spend several days modeling the process with them, though most start to pick it up pretty quickly. 

Word Nerds!

I absolutely love the internet as a resource for ideas.  I recently ran across the idea for Word Nerds and started it with my third grade class today.  I was amazed at the response and creativity from my students.  A lot of research points to the fact that a child's vocabulary strongly correlates with their academic success. I know many parents often wonder why I send home a National Vocabulary List every week to review, this is why.  This is also why I think Word Nerds will be a great idea!

VOTE for ME!!!

This week as we are discussing President's Day and the 3 Branches of Government, we are writing persuasive campaign paragraphs to encourage our fellow students to elect us as President.  We are using the "O.R.E.O." method of persuasive writing. (Opinion, Reasons, Examples, and Opinion)
Check back later in the week to see some samples of our campaign posters.

Great Site

Recently we have been doing Character Traits and Character Study in our classroom.  the children have throroughly enjoyed visiting the Screen Actors Guild Site at http://www.storylineonline.net/

Adjectives!

What is a better to learn about adjectives that to describe the nouns we know best?  Today we created character study of ourselves by using adjectives.

Camilla Cream Cause and Effect

I promised some of my students that I would provide the link for our project Camilla Cream and the Bad Cause of Stripes. 
The story can be found at:
www.storylineonline.net/stripes/story.swf

At this site your child can listen to members of the Screen Actor's Guild read children's stories.

Our goal today was to discuss the meaning of cause and effect.  After reading A Bad Case of Stripes, written by david Shannon and read by Sean Astin, we discussed some of the instances of cause and effect within the story.  The children created their own Camilla Cream characters and wrote several cause and effects found in the story.

Book Link at Amazon
 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0439023289/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

                        

Goundhog's Day Predictions!

I always try to sieze the excitement of a special day to provide a learning experience and have a little fun to boot!  Groundhog's Day was no exception! Is there a better day to discuss predicting?  Unfortunately, my homeroom was very upset about Punxsutawny Phil's prediction for six more weeks of winter. They overwhelmingly voted for an early spring.