It's beginning to look a lot like......

Last week, our parent volunteers helped students leave their mark on our class tree. After the handprints were dry, I assembled the tree, added lights, and surprised them with personalized snowflakes ornaments hanging from the lights. Students get to start their day with a beautifully "hand" made lit tree!

Adding to the festive decorations is a shining compass rose on the ceiling. We continue to work on Cardinal (N, S, W, E) and Intermediate (NW, SW, NE, SE) directions. The snow flakes and shimmer just make it more fun!

Writing through the seasons!

In science we are learning about the weather and in writing we are writing about it and the seasons with poetry! Our first poem style was the cinquain. After brainstorming nouns, adjectives, and gerunds for each season students wrote about Fall. The class then honed their keyboarding and collaborating skills on the Chromebooks when they typed up their poems and shared them via GoogleDocs with me. Finally, students took their publication to the illustration stage. We used leaf shapes and colored pastel chalk to add beauty to our poems!

As you can see, together their poems make an impressive and beautiful display!

Our next poetry style was acrostic. Students wrote acrostic poems for Winter. Look for pictures soon!
Currently, students are in the process of creating diamante antonym poems with the seasons as their topic. Students brainstormed word banks for related nouns, adjectives, and verbs (not just gerunds). Many students have already taken their first diamante poems to the publishing stage. By next week, all students should have them in the illustration stage. We will illustrate with winter themed shapes and colored chalk pastels.

Math decorations-learning is fun!

Third grade has had a lot of fun decorating with their math knowledge! Students used poinsettia shapes to show off some of the ways they can demonstrate their understanding of multiplication. Ways used included: simple multiplication equation, arrays, groups of, repeated addition, addition tapes, and number bonds. They make a beautiful addition to our pillars of success vine! Two classes chose to use the poinsettias and one chose to use holly leaves-what a cheery way to show math knowledge!

Math Happenings......

Students worked in pairs to show groups of as part of our multiplication learning.

What a fun way to work on math and get ready for the holiday season!

It has been a tremendously busy two months. Each day goes by so quickly with so much to learn and do. Before conferences students went through the writing, editing, rewriting, and publishing process when they wrote about their families. The difference in the before and after writings were amazing-many students surprised themselves. These will head home soon!