Five For Friday - Stone Fox, Black History Month and More

Happy Weekend!  It's Five For Friday time!

Here's a look at five events from my teacher life this past week.

We started Stone Fox as a read aloud.  I LOVE this book, and so do my students.

To invoke curiosity about this book before we begin reading I put a potato, a dog collar, and a tax bill in my classroom mystery box.  I pull out each item and explain that each one is somehow important to the story.

On to number two!

I'm part of a teacher book club, and this was the book we read this past month.

I'll admit that it was hard to read, but it really got me thinking.

The author spent time living in two separate poverty-ridden areas in Milwaukee.

We had a great discussion, and all agreed there are no easy answers for solving the problem of housing in low-income areas.

We do a poem a week, and this is our poem from last week.

I created a template of the poem for students to revise, putting their own spin on the concept.

I loved their ideas.

We just don't get to do enough poetry!

I have ten iPads in my classroom, although obtained through grants.

Recently, the screen on one of our oldest iPads shattered. 

I heard about a match offer on Donors Choose from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The crux behind the match offer is that the project must support student/parent communication.

We use the Seesaw Learning Journal app to communicate with parents throughout the school day, so it seemed like a no-brainer to write the project with this idea in mind.

The wonderful parents and grandparents of my students funded this project in

LESS THAN 24 HOURS!

We are so lucky to have such supportive families. 3>

Black History Month has begun, and we will soon tackle some research about Famous Black Americans and their contributions.

My students love the projects within this packet.

There are guidelines for working through the projects, as well as rubrics for scoring.

Take a look at this product here.

Below, you can see one of the projects included in this packet.

The product also includes a colorful display banner!

If you'd like to use the poem by Eloise Greenfield to begin your study of Black History Month, 

you can find it here.

Be sure to check out all the posts on Doodle Bugs Teaching!

Five for Friday - Fables for Third Grade and More

Hi Friends!

What do fables, Lakeshore Learning, subtraction, hand-washing, and Donors Choose all have in common?

Well, they're all a part of my Five for Friday week!

Hurray!  My Donors Choose project was fully funded on Tuesday morning, by the parents of students in my class!  And, this was before the big announcement from Donors Choose about the #bestschoolday.

So I posted another project on Wednesday night to obtain iPads for our room.

I was lucky enough to have that project posted on the Caring Classrooms site.

It has actually been the #bestschoolweek ever !

We completed our traditional literature unit this week.

Fortunately we have quite a few books in this genre for our students to read.

I created a reflection book for the unit that can be found in my TpT store for only $2.50.

Here are some sample pages from the reflection booklet:

There are more "I Can..." posters and reflection sheets that directly relate to the Common Core standards in reading.  You can find this product here.

Our school nurse did a lesson on hand-washing this week.

She used a black light to show them how dirty their hands really were.

Yuck - I think she made her point about using soap!

We used these clips from Lakeshore Learning while reading some Tall Tale books.

The kids loved using these while they read in small groups.

After they finished the book at our Book Club table, we went back and discussed where they had put the clips and why.

Since we were using these for the first time, I only took out the "New Word" and "Question" clips.

Do you use the box method for subtraction?

My students are really loving it.

To subtract from 100 or 1000, box all the digits to the left of the ones place, and think of how many 10s there are.  For example 100 is 10 tens, and 1000 is 100 tens.

Then cross that out to ungroup the tens, and you can subtract much more easily.

See the sample problems in the picture.

Hope you had a great week!

Check out all the Five for Friday posts on Doodle Bugs Teaching!

Currently - Groundhog Day

I've been on a Currently hiatus the last couple of months, and am glad to announce that the hiatus is over!

Did you by any chance notice that we have a SNOW DAY today??

Hence, the reason for my suspended Currently hiatus.

Winter Storm Kayla has graced my area of WI, and I couldn't be happier.

I just made Cake Mix Cookies because I had the ingredients in my kitchen.

So easy...

My cookies did not not turn out this perfectly, but they were good.

While making the cookies I had Millionaire on in the background.

Former Bachelor contestants were playing - I didn't realize Chris Harrison is now the host of this show.

I posted a Donors Choose project earlier this week, and was sad to realize that there is not a code for matching donations during the first week of my project.

I thought that was standard practice during the first week of new projects.

Does anyone know of any codes that work right now?

I wanted to send the info to the parents of my students, but hoped to send along matching 

dollar amount codes.

Here is a link to my project called......

Coding and Collaboration.

We would like to go beyond the Hour of Code by programming robotic balls through 

maps and obstacle courses.

Does anyone know of a Facebook page where you can post products?

Thanks for any help anyone can provide.

I presented a Genius Hour type project to my students on Monday.

I have to do some more research on the topic to move forward.

My students are very excited about it!

We have a few new teachers on our staff this year, and they have been great additions.

I have really connected with one, and we ventured out in the snowstorm today 

to have breakfast and chat.  

Hope you're having a wonderful Groundhog Day!
Check out Farley's new blog here!

Five for Friday (Finally) and a Character Banner Freebie

Well, these first few weeks have a been a whirlwind, and it's the first time this school year that I've been able to hook up with Doode Bugs Teaching's Five For Friday. 

Here we go!

 

1.

Did you know this past week was Fire Prevention Week?  We don't pay as close attention to it in third grade as I had when I was teacking K and 1, but I did want to work it in somehow.  We used this app during station time:

I also used some fire related books during guided reading time, like Firehouse Dog and The Great Fire.

 

2.

We did some lessons on context clues and I created this anchor chart:

I made up the word "derzle" and asked the students what it could mean based on the other clues in the sentence.  I love that someone thought that it could be a leaf blower!

 

3.

I found out my first Donors Choose project was funded!  Hooray!

I had requested subscriptions to Scholastic News as our school no longer funds them, and they are great for teaching non-fiction. And the students write and mark all over them.

The project was funded within a month by the NEA Foundation and U.S. Cellular!

 4.

We have conferences three nights next week (ugh) so we prepared some projects to hang in the hallway.  We are currently studying character traits so I created banner pieces share favorite characters and traits. 

You can access the banner piece here, but I'm not sure how to delete the bottom triangle so the students just cut that part off.

Can anyone help with telling me how you delete lines in powerpoint?

 

5.

My classroom is right across from our sensory room and next to a EEN classroom.

Yesterday one of the EEN students had a major meltdown which happened right outside our room and it got physical.  We were just on our way out the door to go to our weekly grade 3/4 gathering and were told we had to stay in our room until the situation was over.

We had to stay in our room for 45 minutes!

It was tense.......

for the people in the hallway I mean.

My students were great.

We turned on a video about Christopher Columbus and all was fine.

Only one person asked to get a drink of water but I discreetly told her we weren't allowed to go into the hallway just yet.

Apparently the principal hurt his back trying to settle the  EEN student.

What a way to end a week.

 

Hope YOU had a great week.