Creative Cartographers

I loved seeing all the creative maps come in from our Map in a Month project.  It was so much fun listening to all of the fun presentations as the students played 'travel guide' and told us all about their country and which places we should visit.  The students even made travel brochures for their new land--a chance for us to practice both descriptive and persuasive writing.  I am so lucky to have such a creative bunch of students to work with this  year.  Take a look below at the amazing maps from my favorite cartographers--just click on the picture if you'd like to see it larger.

Book Drive

The 4th grade Leadership Forum is sponsoring a book drive to benefit School on Wheels, an organization in the Indianapolis area that supports students experiencing homelessness.  Indy School on Wheels provides tutors, school supplies, uniforms, and family support to children who don't have a place to call home.  Our original goal was for each student to donate one book which would give Carmel Elementary 500 books to donate to this worthy cause, but we already surpassed that goal on day 1--we brought in over 600 books!  Wow!  Now we are excited to see just how many books our school can collect.

Check out this link to see a video our Leadership Forum made: https://voice.adobe.com/a/4mgQ3

Please consider looking through your books this week to see if you can find one to donate.  CE and School on Wheels will appreciate your gift!

Making 'Word Work' Work for Us

We are making some exciting new changes in our word work program in 3^rd grade.  We had noticed that while the students are really good at memorizing the 20 words on our spelling lists for a weekly test, they struggled with applying these rules and patterns to other words, and they are not spelling these words correctly in their writing.  In order to be responsive to these struggles, we are changing our word study work so that it focuses on applying rules to as many words as possible and also focuses on spelling words correctly in our daily writing.  We have tried out these changes for two weeks, and we are so happy with what we are seeing in the students’ spelling and writing. 

Here are some key points to our new word work routine:

·         A few days a week we will be using sound cards with the students—you may remember these from 2^nd grade.  We will be adding to the deck of cards all year so that the students will be continually reviewing rules and patterns from this year and previous years so that we can retain these skills.

·         The first two days of the week will focus on learning new patterns and applying them to many words at varying levels of difficulty.  For example, when we learned the ‘oi’ pattern during the first week, some students brainstormed words like coin and boil while others got to disappointment and moisture--students are so excited when they apply these patterns to more challenging words.

·         On our third day we will do dictated sentences where we can apply this week’s patterns along with reviewing previous weeks’ patterns.  This will also give us time for some grammar review.

·         Thursday and Friday are spent writing stories where we focus on applying all of the spelling (and grammar) rules to our writing—first with a partner and then independently.

Students will no longer be bringing home a list of 20 words to memorize for a Friday test.  They will get a new rule, pattern, and/or word part that will be the focus for the week’s word study work.  There will be an at-home activity that will take the place of the old spelling contract that will need to be completed at some point during the week.  The formal assessment for the report card will be done in the same way as it has always been assessed since the standard is for spelling correctly in daily writing; however, students will be a little better prepared for this since our focus is being switched to spelling in our writing.  Informal assessments will be taken by teachers viewing the word lists, dictated sentences, and writing—not for grades, but so that we can see what we are doing well and what we need to work on more.  We see so much potential for this change to improve students’ spelling where it counts—in their daily writing.  We are very excited about how the rest of this year will go!

Mineral ChatterPix

We wrapped up our rocks and minerals unit with a fun project using ChatterPix.  Each partnership researched a different mineral from our field guide.  They decided what was most important about that mineral and then created a script in first person, as if the mineral was speaking.  Using ChatterPix, they took a photograph of their mineral, recorded their script, and decorated their mineral with digital stickers.  They were very excited to create these, and I was very excited to see them working together and researching minerals.  It was the perfect way to wrap up this science unit!

A few students wanted to research additional minerals and make more ChatterPix projects to add to their websites, so you might want to check out their science tabs in the coming weeks. I love seeing them so excited about learning! 

Together is Better

This week we focused on habit 6--Synergize.  We read books about characters working together to achieve goals.  We also came up with a chart about what helps us work together and what hurts us when we work together.  I was so impressed with what great ideas the students came up with for both sides of this chart.  We were all excited to see that the other habits we have learned appeared on our list of what helps us synergize.  It turns out we've been learning the skills to be a good team player all along!  We then put these skills to work on a fun team building/tower building challenge.  Each group was challenged with the task of creating a tower out of spaghetti noodles that could hold a marshmallow at the top.  They made a plan, built it, tested it, tweaked it, made a new plan, built it, tested it, and so on.  I was so impressed that while the groups were working together, I saw them keep a positive attitude (Be Proactive), listen to other group members' ideas (Seek First to Understand), make a plan for the tower (Begin with an End in Mind), stay focused on the task (Put First Things First) and compromise when they had different ideas (Think Win-Win).  This all came together and the groups worked together beautifully.

Next week we are going to focus on habit 7--Sharpen the Saw.  We will talk about how important it is to have balance in our lives.  As part of our work on this habit, we are going to create a class display of photographs of our class sharpening our saws, and I need your help.  Over this next week, look for a time when your child is doing something for this habit, snap a picture, and e-mail it to me.  I'll print it and add it to our class display.  Look at the poster below for more information about this habit.

 You could get a picture of your child eating a healthy snack or meal.  You might catch them getting exercise at soccer practice or playing in the backyard.  A picture could be sent of a family game night or your child practicing the piano.  The possibilities are endless!  Don't worry if you can't send a picture.  If we are missing any students, I will take a picture of them here at school practicing the habit so that each child can be part of our display.  This will be a fun habit to practice this week--I can't wait to see our display come together!

We've Got Spirit, Yes We Do! We've Got Spirit, How 'Bout You?!

Homecoming Parade

It was a fun, spirit-filled week here at Carmel Elementary.  We enjoyed dressing up to show our support for CHS Homecoming.  Pictures of our class from these spirit days can be found on the "Pictures" tab on our class blog.

Workout Wednesday

College Go! Day

This week wasn't just fun spirit days, we also fit in a lot of great learning.  This week we focused on Habit 5: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood. We practiced being good listeners and trying to see things from others' points of view. 

We were excited to start our Mineral Field Guides in science.  After observing our minerals, we described their appearance, feel, and smell.  We will continue our work in our field guides this next week.

It was a great week in math as we continued our unit on computation.  We learned two different algorithms for addition this week, and we will learn two different algorithms for subtraction during this coming week.  Our test will be the following week, and students will get to choose their preferred methods of adding and subtracting on the test. 

Modeling Partial Sums Algorithm

We also had a very successful problem solving day in math.  We continue to work on the process of solving tricky multi-step problems, and we are focusing on learning some of the different strategies that we can use to help us solve problems.  This week we practiced the strategy of drawing a picture, and we learned how drawing a picture in math is different than drawing a picture in art.  As one bright mathematician summarized, "When you draw a picture in art, you are trying to make a masterpiece.  When you draw a picture in math, you are trying to make sense of the problem."  How perfect an explanation is that?!

Drawing in Math

I have been especially happy with our work in writing lately.  We have been working on having strong leads that hook our readers.  See if your child can share with you some of the different types of strong beginnings we learned.  We have also practiced giving and getting descriptive feedback.  We then use the descriptive feedback to set goals for our writing.  Ask your child to tell you about the descriptive feedback he has received and what he is trying to do in his writing.

Writing Partners Giving Descriptive Feedback

Overall, it was another fantastic week in 3rd grade--I can't wait for the next one! 

Recess Fun!

Are You in the Loop?

Do you have an e-mail address?  Can you spare 3 minutes?  That is all you need to set up a Twitter account and follow our class--this will keep you in the loop for all the great stuff going on in 3rd grade.  I post most school days--this year I have tweeted (or retweeted) over 50 times. These tweets will not only give you a peek inside our day, they will also help you get past the "Nothing" response when you ask your child what we did in school that day.  We are always doing something--I promise--encourage your child to talk about it.  Talking about what we are doing and learning in class is an imperative step in helping students make sense of their learning.  If you haven't been following our class, here are some of the tweets you've missed.

+40 more....Don't miss any more tweets--follow us today.  

Hopefully you are convinced that you want to see our tweets.  If you have a Twitter account, follow us @Grade3atCE.  If you don't have an account, all you need is an e-mail and 3 minutes.  

There is a way to get our class tweets sent to you by text message.  If you text follow Grade3atCE to 40404, you will get a text each time I tweet.  This is a good option if you have an unlimited texting plan and really don't want to get a Twitter account.  However, I have found the best option would be to sign up for a Twitter account and follow our class. First, I tweet a lot (over 50 times already during the first month of school) and you may not want that many text messages.  Secondly--and most importantly--if you sign up for a Twitter account, then you can also follow others to keep you up-to-date with all the happenings at and around Carmel Elementary.  Once you get your account and start following us, consider also following the following:

Carmel Clay Schools @myCCS
Carmel Elementary  @CE_Tigers
Carmel Elementary PTO  @CarmelElemPTO
Mrs. Rodriguez, art teacher @CEArtTeacher
Mr. Murphey, PE teacher  @CE_wellness
Mrs. Williams, media center teacher  @CarmelElemMedia
Nurse Diane  @DianeBraun1
Carmel Elementary Student Council @CE_StuCo
Carmel Clay Public Library @CarmelLib

It's going to be a great year--join us for the ride! 

SUPER!

If there is one word to describe this last week, it is SUPER!  Super class, super learning, super week, and, of course, superheroes.  

The class came decked out in our favorite superhero gear on Friday to support a Carmel boy who is fighting cancer.  It was so great to see all the Carmel Clay elementary schools come together to show support for this local superhero.  If you haven't had a chance yet, check out #BeBraveBrooks on Twitter to see pictures from across the district.  

The superheroes in our class showed their super hearts (and super art skills) to make some super cards and color some superhero pictures to send to Brooks.  I am sure these will put a smile on his face.  What a super group of kids!

Check out some of our favorite superhero photos from Friday.

In addition to all the superhero fun, there was also a lot of super learning going on this week.  We learned about Habit 2--Begin with an End in Mind.  Have your child share with you some of the goals she set this week.  After some work on goal setting, we also had fun with a group challenge where we had to plan how to save Sammy, the worm.  See if your child can share the plan her group came up with to save Sammy.

Making a plan to save Sammy 

We spent the week in writing learning ways to brainstorm writing ideas.  The class will use these strategies all year long when they need an idea for writing.  We learned how to make lists, write around a person, and make a treasure map of story ideas.  Ask your child his favorite way to brainstorm ideas--and then have him share some of the story ideas he used this week in writing.

Making lists to brainstorm writing ideas

Have a SUPER week!