Betty White

I have been teaching many years and I have witnessed many famous people come and go as heroes in my classroom, but this year I am very pleased that their hero, in this case heroine, is Betty White!  The last week of school I allow the children to suggest activities that we did not get to do during the year, writing Betty White was one of their top choices.  One young lady in my class loves her so much that she even named her purple scooter "Betty."  When I announced that we would attempt to send her a letter they got so excited and thought she may come visit our class.  I explained to them that there probably wasn't a possibility of  her visiting us and they said if we sent it to "Ellen" she would do it!  The above video expresses the excitement of one of my students.

Vincent van Gogh Paintings

After reading several stories about Vincent and watching the adorable interview with Sophia, the children painted their own moon paintings.

While searching the internet for ideas on Vincent, I ran across the most adorable video by Sophia interviewing Vincent van Gogh.  It is often very difficult to find elementary age appropriate information on many of the great artists of our time. Though she was several years younger than my students, they thoroughly enjoyed the interview. 

The Tale of Peter Rabbit

One of the best video series I have ever viewed with Beaitrix Potter stories is  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MisrUJX3QGU&feature=related  By the end of the video just about every child in my class was speaking with a British accent, which was pretty interesting.  You may think that Peter Rabbit would be below their interest level, but I have always found the opposite response.  There is something almost calming about these simple stories.  Some of our activities included writing character traits for Peter, reading the play of Peter Rabbit (http://www.kidsinco.com/2008/07/the-tale-of-peter-rabbit/), text to self/text to text/text to world, and a creative writing project on how we disobeyed our parents. 

Word Nerd....Acting?

Our word nerd for today happened to be salon. One student had a definite opinion of what salon may mean!

More Word Nerds!

We had some interesting choices for word nerds this week and I loved some of their word illustrations.  I think we have a tendency to limit vocabulary in our society and underestimate their capacity for understanding new vocabulary.  I hope you enjoy the illustrations!

Attack of the Word Nerds!!!!!!!

We celebrated our first Word Nerd Friday.  Each child was asked to bring in the most unusual word that they heard this week.  The winner for Mrs. Harmon's class won with, discombobulated.  My class voted moron as their favorite word.

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.

Mr. Popper's Penguin's

For the next several weeks we will be reading Mr. Popper's Penguins.  Some of our activities will include researching and writing about penguins and becoming more familiar with the continents and oceans of our planet.
Magellan Penguins  http://www.theschoolbell.com/Links/animals/penguins/index.html
Penguins around the World http://www.siec.k12.in.us/~west/proj/penguins/index.html
Penguin Notes  http://www.adelie.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/species_notes/PENGNOTE.htm
Penguin Facts http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~kpt/terraquest/va/science/penguins/penguins.html#A