Celebrating International Dot Day!

I am sure your 3B child came home Friday with news about how we celebrated International Dot Day! It was a super day of talking about and sharing our individual creativity and uniqueness!  I have made a quick video on Animoto to show some of the activities we did as well as various pictures of the students!  I LOVED how they really "got into" the day and many came covered in dots!!!!  Way to go 3B!  (Some of my pictures did not turn out so I don't have an equal amount of everyone.  Sorry.)

Enjoy!  Thanks 3B for a fun day!  Remember.....each one of you is creative in your own way!

The Sid Shuffle/Continental Drift....A Brain Break

I shared this with the students during a "brain break" today and asked them if they would practice it so that we can do it together on Monday as part of our group activity for our Morning Meeting.  They loved it!!!  So here it is 3B.  Have fun and be ready to do it on Monday!!!

Proofreading.....Important!

Just apologizing for the proofreading, or lack of, mistakes in my last post.  That is what happens when you rush, don't reread, and too much on your mind in too little of time.   My bad......I have corrected the necessary mistakes, and I am sure Mrs. Foster won't let it happen again!  Haha!  Thanks Mrs. Foster!  The power of peer editing!  We all make mistakes......

Wow! Great Start!

Hello everyone.  Hope your three day vacation was enjoyable as it was beautiful outside.   The students said they had fun weekends, which is great to hear about when they return to school.

We have been busy as ever getting into our routine with lots of learning along the way.  As many of you know, students are loving their emails.  Last week we "added personal touches" by adding out profile pictures and changing our backgrounds.  After a few more lessons on the details of using email, students will be ready to utilize it for various activities throughout the year.  Just remember that at this time, they can not email outside the school district. Sorry. I will start to email various thoughts and assignments next week that students will be responsible for checking at home.  Those students without email access at home will do the work at school.

Everyone is getting into their independent blog pages and becoming more comfortable with that as well. Thanks to all the parents, grandparents, and friends/relatives who have commented on the student blogs!  Their faces light up when they see that someone has commented!  Wonderful!Keep them coming and spread the word!  Please be patient as we work on our typing skills as well.  We will try to get more in-depth in our post.  :)

We have also been fortunate to utilize some iPads the last two weeks.  I will start putting a list of apps on my blog page that students have been introduced to and using. They are loving this new component of our learning!

As I mentioned earlier, we are getting into a pretty good routine.  We have also jumped into Daily 5 within our literacy, and I am impressed with the students Read To Self stamina this early in the year! Awesome job 3B!  We had our Read to Self stamina up to 18 minutes last week and took a little backwards dive this week.  Now we are trying to build that back up.  We just started the "Work on Writing" component this week so hopefully our stamina in that will continue to build as well.  I have a few more assessments to do but hope to get started on guided reading soon.

I have gone over how to pick books with the students for their book bins in the classroom.  The strategy we have used is called "I Pick".  It stands for
        I - I chose a book
       P- Purpose.  Why do I want to read it?
       I - Interest.  Am I interested in it?
      C- Comprehend.  Do I understand what I am reading?
      K - Know the Words.  Do I know most of the words?

Students have been selecting books to read in the classroom and will start selecting a book to read at home as well starting next week.  While we do not have a lot of homework yet in 3rd grade, I would like to see the students reading every night at home!  It is so important!!!!

Everyone is loving science!  We have planted various seeds in preparation for some guest we have coming in two weeks.  Students also dissected a seed to analyze the seed coat and parts of the seed, which was very cool.  Today we are going to determining what a "Mystery Object" is that students will be given.  Who knows what it is??? Stay tuned!

Last bit of information involves Twitter.  Some of you know what Twitter is while others may not.  I have started a Twitter account for the class that is regulated by me.  We use the account to communicate and follow people and other classes around the world.  Currently, we are building up our "followers" and who we are "following" so that when we do post something, there is someone who may respond.  Sometimes we just post what we did that particular day in the classroom, but the main tool is communication.  We are following classes in Canada and all around the US thus far.  The students are excited every day to check our Twitter account and learn knew things, see who is following us, and making a post.  If you have a Twitter account and would like to follow us, our account is "Kerian3B".

Just a reminder that pictures are Tuesday, September 11th.  Please remember your order form and money if you will be purchasing pictures.  If you are not, please note that your 3B child will still have his/her picture taken for the class composite.  :)  You can send the money envelope early and I will hold on to it, or you may send it the day of pictures.

Orders for Homecoming tshirts were sent home today.  There is not a picture of the t-shirt on the order form so I have shown the students an example on paper.  The front says "Cadet Homecoming" while the back says "2012".  They are neon yellow t-shirts.  If you plan to order on, please have your child return them on the necessary due date.  Thanks!

Enjoy the rest of the week and weekend!  Thanks for sharing your students with me!

Fun at the 3rd grade Olympics

Everyone Reads....Even LeBron James!

This is an excellent video about LeBron James, currently the best NBA basketball player there is!  He is a great example of the power of reading!  What do you think his message to kids, and everyone, is?

Great Start to the Year!

We are off to a wonderful start to a new school year!  I am very excited!  The students have tried many new things in the past few days that they are approaching with confidence.  We have had some frustrations, as there always is some, when you are dealing with technology.  We have also had a lot of fun learning.

If your 3B child has not mentioned it, they have started their blog pages.  We made our first attempt at accessing them and making a very short post last Friday.  Some did it successfully while others will review it today.  They are very, very excited to have their own blog pages and were excited to know their audience is the world!  We will be sharing writing, thoughts, pictures, etc. throughout the year via our blog pages.  Students would love to have their parents check the blogs and comment!!!  You do not need to sign in to comment.  Just read the blog post and comment at the bottom, but be sure to sign your name.  :)  They are waiting for some comments to be made.  Encourage grandparents and relatives to comment as well!  Thanks!

Slowly but surely, we attempted to access email as well (for those given parental permission).  I think most are getting the hang of it now.... it will get easier with practice.   The computers weren't cooperating at first, but after some tweaking, everything went super! I wanted to let parents know that email for school is used only for students to email within the school at this time.  That is just for monitoring purposes.  So, while it would be nice for your child to email you outside the school, that is not allowed at the current time.  You may send them emails but don't expect a response back as we are just working out the "bumps" and becoming familiar with it for the students.  Thanks for your understanding.

Today we jumped into our schedule a little as we had a few things to finish up from Friday.  I do have great pictures to share from our Olympics that I will be posting tonight as well. Although it was very hot, I think the students had a super time! Look for those pictures soon!  Everyone turned out to be a winner!

Please remember to return all papers that were sent home to be signed.  I am sending one today asking for parent emails as well as if you would mind checking my blog page via internet instead of me sending paper copies home.  Read through the letter and return it tomorrow.

We are off to a great start! I am loving all the smiles every day.  One of the 3B students stated, "The day is just flying by, and that was because we were having fun learning!"  That is what school is all about!

Have a great week!

3B Student Wordle About First Few Days

Here is our Wordle about the first two days of school.  The bigger the words are (except 3B), the more often the students said that particular word.  Great start to the year. (Click on the Wordle to see it enlarged).  Have a great weekend!

Welcome to the Future!

Wow!  I had a super night tonight at Open House meeting all my 3B family!  I am so pumped for this year and know it is going to be fantastic!!!  I will post photos from the Open House tomorrow with all the smiling faces of the students!

It is an exciting time to be a student at Howard-Winn as we have a new superintendent who has passion and motivation to make our school district stronger than ever!  Yesterday, at our teacher's meetings, he shared this video by Brad Paisley called "Welcome to the Future"!  Funny thing is that I posted this video on my blog a year ago, thinking, "Wow.  This really is a fitting song for our schools."  His showing of the video yesterday reaffirmed that.  And it is worth showing again.

Your child in our 3B family is the future!  The sky is the limit!

Thanks for a great Open House and I am looking forward to teaming up with all of you throughout the year!

Welcome to 3B!