Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Back to School on January 3rd!!

We had a blast today celebrating the book The Polar Express by. Chris Van Allsburg. We began the day by reading the book and the students visualized a picture in their heads of a picture that was described in the story. They drew a picture on a black sheet of paper with chalk and presented the pictures to the class. We re-read the book and then everyone took an AR test on it. We made multiplication bells with the facts that they were struggling with and read Twas' the Night Before Christmas. They then wrote an imaginary story as if they were the boy in the story. We drank yummy hot chocolate from a recipe that Mrs. Claus herself sent me. We created simile stars and ate pizza for lunch. We ended the day watching the movie The Polar Express. The students also did a artist walk of the heritage projects. These were awesome! I was so impressed with all of the projects. It was great to learn about everyone's heritage. Don't forget that we come back to school on January 3rd, 2011. See you then. Have your child check out the lunar eclipse on http://video.foxnews.com/v/4469887/total-lunar-eclipse/. Enjoy!

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Holiday Program

Tonight was the holiday program at school and the 4th and 5th grade chorus did a wonderful job. All of the students will get to see the performance tomorrow during school. I hope this will encourage many of my students to try out for the chorus next year.

In math class today, we reviewed for our multiplication and division test tomorrow. We are also creating multiplication and division holiday word problems. The second group of math students are creating power point presentations to our multiplication songs. We are putting animation and sound with each slide. We will be inviting the parents to see the presentations after the holidays. We are going to put these videos up on teachertube.com. This is youtube for teachers. The students are very excited to have their videos up for all the world to see.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Career Day

Today we had our career day in third grade. We had parents from many different occupations come and speak with our classes. We learned what it takes to become a computer technician and programmer, ballet dancer, pastor, hair cutter, after-school teacher, and paramedic. We are trying to encourage all of our students to graduate in the year 2020 and then go on to higher education. In March, we will be doing a project on colleges and careers. Today we created a 2020 poster with all of our hands. Tomorrow, we will add our own pledge to the poster "I will graduate in the year 2020."

We will have our Polar Express celebration on Tuesday, December 21st. We will have an entire day celebrating the Polar Express. The students will also be turning in and displaying their heritage projects.

We will have a multiplication and division math test this Friday. I sent home a study guide on Monday. There will not be any order of operations on the test.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Studying our Families

We have been discussing our families heritage in great detail in our classroom. They have all brought home a paper that ask the state where they are from and what it is famous for. We are going to map these all out on a giant map in our hallway, that way we can see where are grade level is from. We are also completing the heritage project at home, where the students will discover many things about their ancestors. I am trying to help them become more globally aware. I also want them to start bringing in newspaper and magazine articles that interest them from around the world.

Please continue having your child study their multiplication facts every night. This is vital in having them understand both multiplication and division facts.

We have also been discussing graduating from high school and which college they would like to attend. They have been writing journals about what they would like to be when they grow up, what college they would like to attend, what the mascot at the college is, and what they would like to study at this college. I am trying to encourage all of my students to graduate high school and push toward the goal of going to and graduating from college. They are the class of 2020!! What a neat group to be in.

The information about Polar Express day on December 21st, came home on Monday of this week. Please make sure your child wears their pajamas to school on this day. It will be a fun day for everyone.