January
With a new year, the students came back with a full tank of energy and enthusiasm along with their determination to accomplish their New Year’s resolutions such as completing their homework on time, stop fighting with their siblings (You must be thrilled to hear this one!), reading their books every night (I am thrilled to hear this one as well!), and so forth.
In my class, we have a new reading initiative which started the second week of December. The goal as a team (my language arts class and all third graders) is to read more than 500 books by June. To count a book, the students must take accelerated reader (AR) quizzes and receive a score of 70% or above. If the team accomplishes the goal, they will have a pizza party in June. However, every student must read more than 40 books to attend the party. With our new reading initiative, our students showed up and determined to be bookworms for next five months!
This month, we continued reading our class books. We wanted to complete them by the end of February or March. We also started learning about nouns. We will continue learning about verbs, adjectives, and adverb next month.
November
In last three months, I’ve seen the students grow as I see they expand more knowledge, increase more confidence, show more initiative in reading and writing, and… also uncover their excitement for the upcoming winter break! They have enough of the weekly vocabulary homework and spelling tests, I suspect so. :)
In addition, the class expands into a larger number of students as two new students join in our language arts class. There are two reading groups: one group starts reading the book, Werewolves Don’t Go to Summer Camp written by Debbie Dadey and Marcia Thornton Jones, and another group starts reading the book, Holes written by Louis Sachar. Based on the books’ theme in camps, the students dreadfully miss summer as they forget how cold it is in Minnesota.
In the month of November, we learned the importance of gratitude and how to write a letter. We selected the person that we wanted to share our appreciation and thankfulness. We went through the stages of writing process: prewriting, drafting, revising, and publishing. After writing the letter, we took a meaningful video of ourselves reading aloud our letters. The students were very proud of their work as they knew their letters were very eloquent.
September & October
The last two months went by in the blink of an eye, but yet we learned so much in our language arts classes. We read the book “Seven Blind Mice.” This book is about having seven blind mice going to a pond and feeling different things each mouse then shares with each other the ‘feeling the Something.’ Each mouse has a different answer as they all feel different part of the Something. One last mouse decides to investigate, and finds out all parts are an elephant as a whole!
After reading the book, the students were working on creating their own version book based on the Seven Blind Mice book. The students picked their own animal, and created their own story. After writing their own story, the students read aloud their story in front of the class, and the class had to guess what animal in the story. If you want to have a bedtime story, ask your child to read aloud her/his book to you. :)
Beside creating our book, we have had our weekly spelling tests. The students worked so hard studying and memorizing their spelling words. The students and I made a deal; they would have to have no more than one mistake on their test; they would be treated with ice cream. As a result, the students aced their tests with flying colors! You could see how victoriously delightful the students were as the picture is posted below.
With a new year, the students came back with a full tank of energy and enthusiasm along with their determination to accomplish their New Year’s resolutions such as completing their homework on time, stop fighting with their siblings (You must be thrilled to hear this one!), reading their books every night (I am thrilled to hear this one as well!), and so forth.
In my class, we have a new reading initiative which started the second week of December. The goal as a team (my language arts class and all third graders) is to read more than 500 books by June. To count a book, the students must take accelerated reader (AR) quizzes and receive a score of 70% or above. If the team accomplishes the goal, they will have a pizza party in June. However, every student must read more than 40 books to attend the party. With our new reading initiative, our students showed up and determined to be bookworms for next five months!
This month, we continued reading our class books. We wanted to complete them by the end of February or March. We also started learning about nouns. We will continue learning about verbs, adjectives, and adverb next month.
November
In last three months, I’ve seen the students grow as I see they expand more knowledge, increase more confidence, show more initiative in reading and writing, and… also uncover their excitement for the upcoming winter break! They have enough of the weekly vocabulary homework and spelling tests, I suspect so. :)
In addition, the class expands into a larger number of students as two new students join in our language arts class. There are two reading groups: one group starts reading the book, Werewolves Don’t Go to Summer Camp written by Debbie Dadey and Marcia Thornton Jones, and another group starts reading the book, Holes written by Louis Sachar. Based on the books’ theme in camps, the students dreadfully miss summer as they forget how cold it is in Minnesota.
In the month of November, we learned the importance of gratitude and how to write a letter. We selected the person that we wanted to share our appreciation and thankfulness. We went through the stages of writing process: prewriting, drafting, revising, and publishing. After writing the letter, we took a meaningful video of ourselves reading aloud our letters. The students were very proud of their work as they knew their letters were very eloquent.
September & October
The last two months went by in the blink of an eye, but yet we learned so much in our language arts classes. We read the book “Seven Blind Mice.” This book is about having seven blind mice going to a pond and feeling different things each mouse then shares with each other the ‘feeling the Something.’ Each mouse has a different answer as they all feel different part of the Something. One last mouse decides to investigate, and finds out all parts are an elephant as a whole!
After reading the book, the students were working on creating their own version book based on the Seven Blind Mice book. The students picked their own animal, and created their own story. After writing their own story, the students read aloud their story in front of the class, and the class had to guess what animal in the story. If you want to have a bedtime story, ask your child to read aloud her/his book to you. :)
Beside creating our book, we have had our weekly spelling tests. The students worked so hard studying and memorizing their spelling words. The students and I made a deal; they would have to have no more than one mistake on their test; they would be treated with ice cream. As a result, the students aced their tests with flying colors! You could see how victoriously delightful the students were as the picture is posted below.