Wow! Where does the time go? I can't believe that tomorrow is Wednesday already. Gee! The days go by so quickly!
Hopefully you have had a chance to listen to our 3B podcast. The students were so excited last week to find out who their Luther podcast pal was and introduce themselves via a podcast! You can listen to your child's podcast, as well as other
3B or Luther podcast, by going to my web page. They are listed on the link "Podcast 09-10". The first podcast was meant to be an introductions. The next ones will all be 3rd graders orally reading and Luther students podcasting suggestions back and forth! Very cool!
We will also be starting our individual book blogs! They are so excited about this! Each student will have a blog page on my web page in which they will blog about books they are reading, share thoughts, and comments. Eventually, I hope to have the students also share some of their writing through their blogs but we go in baby steps. I will be modeling blogging about books before letting the students jump in, but you can look for some of their book blogs to be up next week! (I wish I was in elementary school to enjoy all this great stuff!)
Last week we jumped into Connections as a comprehension strategy while reading. We have learned about and discussed Text to Self Connections and Text to Text Connections. I think the students really love listening to various picture book read alouds and making connections with them. They come up with some great stories to share . . . . sorry Mom and Dads. hehehe Your stories are safe with me. Anyway, connections is one of the various comprehension strategies we focus on in 3rd grade. I am anxious to share some of their work with you at conferences. . . .which will be here soon! With literacy, we have also been working on "Tuning In To Vocabulary". Vocabulary always seems to be an area that our school district falls short of when it comes to standardized testing. So to work on expanding our vocabulary, students are "tuning into" interesting words that we can discuss and learn to increase our own vocabulary. Sometimes we pretend we have on binoculars and look for words by "tuning in" that way. The students love that! I have created a "word crawl worm" where we will add 2-3 words a week to work on. Each week, the worm will grow and grow with new vocabulary words that we have learned. I am anxious to see how far the worm gets by the end of the year! I haven't shown it to the students yet but plan on doing that tomorrow! The Daily 5 continues to be going very well. . . next week we will jump into "Listen to Reading" as the last component of the Daily 5.
We are almost wrapping up our science unit on Plant and Animal Populations. Today we did a great simulation of a food chain with aphids, ladybugs, and birds. Students were one of these and had to try and survive. I think it was the most concrete and beneficial experience the students had within this science unit thus far, and they totally enjoyed it! We have watched predator-prey relationships by watching damselfly nymphs eat daphnia and ladybugs eat our aphids. Gross but cool! I wish all activities were that awesome! Anyway, we will be wrapping up science with some activities this week, a project to be done at home, and preparing for the test set for next Tuesday - depending on how far we get this week. Look for study information to be sent home by Friday.
My last comment revolves around the new "Habitude" that we are discussing in 3B. Since school started, we have been conversing, reading, and writing about how important imagination is. Now we are moving into the habitude of "curiosity". I would love to see the students become so curious about something and set up an activity in which they can find answers to their questions. Think of the learning that could happen! I am part of a book club that discusses the six Habitudes that students of the 21st century need to possess. (written by Angela Meiers) It is really interesting to think about how we encourage students to use their imagination and explore when they are young, but that attitude seems to disappear as students get older and progress up the educational ladder. What happens? Not sure. My goal is for the students to understand how important curiosity is and to never let anyone stop them from being the curious one. . . . maybe they will come up with some great discovery or cure in the future from simply being curious and couragous! Wouldn't that be great!
Enjoy the rest of the week!
No comments:
Post a Comment