End of Busy Week of Blogging, Podcasting, and Just Plain Busy

The students just left to go out for a quick recess so I thought I would try and get my blog for the week done today. I am extremely pleased with all of the activities and learning that has taken place the past week, especially considering that Halloween is tomorrow. The students have been real troopers and working hard with everything I put towards them. Great job 3B!!!!

I wanted to share a few reminders about events coming up just in case you forgot. Please remember that if your child is going to be participating in the new reading incentive of reading at home and earning a free slice of pizza, he/she should return his/her reading calendar by Monday, November 2nd, for the month of October. I will then fill out a Casey's coupon for those students who return their calendars. Remember that students who return their calendar every month will earn a pizza party from me!!!! So keep reading and remember to return the calendars. I am sending home the November calendar today so that your 3rd grade student can get started recording his/her reading on Sunday. I did make a mistake in not redoing the calendar from October and just changing the month. . . so while the dates are off but the idea is the same. Sorry about that.

Parent-teacher conferences are next week, and I am excited to meet with each of you! Report cards were sent home yesterday so we will be going over those as well as sharing information from MAPs test and Dibels results done this fall. If something comes up and you are unable to make it to conferences, please call the school and let us know. Hopefully we can all stay "sick free" and have some great conversation next Tuesday and Thursday. I have lots to share!!!

We plunged our way through the science assessments. I could really tell who studied at home and who did not. I will be sharing the assessments at conference time as well as going over them with the students on Monday. I still have a few more to correct as there were three parts to the assessment.

Book blogging is going well; yet kind of slow due to our lack of experience with typing. That's alright though. Hopefully by the end of the week next week, every 3B student will have a book blog posted. They are totally enjoying posting their own blogs, and I am enjoying reading them. I still haven't figured out how to enable the "comment" section through the iWeb program we are using, but I am working on it. I would love to be able to comment to the students and have a "digital discussion" with them about their books. Always something to do. . . :)

Our most recent podcast are up also. We haven't heard back yet from our Luther Pals but will hopefully have some reading suggestions and responses from them by next week. The students are anxiously waiting as they check all the time to see if their partner has posted a podcast response. Let's cross our fingers for next week.

Have a safe and enjoyable Halloween weekend!

Exciting News!!! Book Blogs Have Begun

I am excited to say that the students have started their book blogs!!!! Shane, Alison, and Emily wrote short blog post about the books they are reading during Read to Self. You can check them out by going to 3B Student Blogs and clicking on their names. Due to our lack of typing, don't expect very lengthy post at first, but we will get there. I encourage the students not to type their blog post like book reports. Instead, share a few events from the book and then share your thoughts about it. This could include connections, questions, favorite parts, etc. I am using iWeb for their blog pages and at this point it does not allow for me, or anyone, to comment about what they have posted. I am looking into how we can change that because I would love to pose thoughts and comments to each student about the book blog they post. It would be like an online book discussion. So, students are schedule to book blog once a week! Better than an old fashioned book report I'd say!!!

We have also made a recent podcast post to share with our Podcast Pals from Luther. For this reading, students were all given the same passage and had to orally read and retell the passage without practice. The Luther students will be podcasting back suggestions and comments for their 3rd grade pal to apply, practice, and record the same passage again, hoping there will be improvements in various areas. After that, students will be recording readings of passages at his/her guided reading levels. The goal is to make an oral reading podcast weekly, give and take some weeks with vacations, building not only reading fluency and word attack, but comprehension through retelling and responding. So far we have been doing them right on the computer using a program called Garage Band, but we will also start recording our readings and retellings on iPods. I have to say, I was very pleased with the students and their ability to get started on their podcast, record, and save without a lot of help from me. Next week. . . .they should be able to do it all on their own! Yippee!!

Busy! Busy! Busy!

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!

Snow in October? BRRR! It's Cold!

I was in for quite a shocker when I returned from New York City yesterday! It was in the 60s and 70s while I was in New York City and I came back to 30s in Iowa!!! Now snow!!! Not my idea of great weather to come home to but oh well. I am not a fan of cold weather, although I do appreciate fall. But I think we may have skipped fall and are headed right to winter. YUCK! Sorry those of you who are snowmobile fans. :) This cold weather brings me to a quick comment on attire for recess. It is cold, as we know, and students should assume they are going outside for recess unless it is raining or gets below 0. I had some students who were freezing today at recess asking for hats and mittens. I, not ready for winter either, had nothing extra for them. Please be sure that your child comes to school dressed for recess appropriately! Hats and mittens can always be taken off so it is better to be safe than sorry. Many students are outside before school, and it is much colder at this time. I suggest you send hats and mittens with extra layers (sweatshirts under coats) for added warmth while we endure this cold October and months to come.

Many people have asked how my trip to New York City was and it was fabulous!!!! I was confident that everything would go alright while I was gone, and it did, for the most part. The students were well behaved, polite, and had some fun with the Fall Fitness walk last Friday and Homecoming events. I was pleased to come back to positive comments from my sub. Way to go 3B!

Hopefully your child brought his/her new "Reading Calendar" home last week. This calendar is replacing the traditional "Book It" that has been done in the past sponsored by Pizza Hut. This year, students who reach their goal, which is written on the calendar, will receive a coupon for a free slice of pizza from Casey's. Each month from October thru March or April, a new calendar will be sent home. Record the amount of time your child reads and return the calendar at the end of the month. If he/she has reached or surpassed his/her goal, he/she will get a coupon for that month. At the end of March or April, all students who returned AND reached their goal EACH month will get a pizza party supplied by me, Mrs. Kerian. I am not requiring students to participate, but we all know how important reading at home is so I am expecting all to participate. So. . .get reading!!!

I still have one child who was gone all last week who needs to take the Unit 1 assessment test for math. Hopefully we can get that done in the next few days and I will be sending your child's unit 1 assessments home for you to see. We are currently working on adding and subtracting. It is vital that the students know their basic facts (both addition and subtraction) as we do not spend a lot of time on basic facts but jump right into adding and subtracting larger numbers. Knowing the basic facts will help out with these larger problems. I would appreciate you working with your child reviewing his/her basic facts at home if you have time. I also have many links on my web page that list some sites to go to for your child to work on facts by themselves during their free time. You will also notice that I will be sending more Home Links home with this chapter than I had in chapter 2. Please help your child build his/her responsibility by reminding them to complete their Home Links and return them. Thanks!

Book orders will hopefully be here this week. I sent them out a week after I received them so they should be here soon. I apologize for any inconvenience and not getting them out sooner. The students are anxiously waiting for them - as am I!!!!

I also want to apologize for not sending home your child's word study list to prepare for last week. I had them in the basket to go home with students but my substitute didn't think they should go home. Miscommunication. So I apologize. Look for this week's words, with /ar/ to be coming home tomorrow.

Homecoming! Go Cadets! New York City!

Can you believe it is October already! I can't! Wow! Time is going by so quickly. Soon it will be parent teacher conferences!

We have a very busy week with lots going on so I thought I would post everything. As you know, it is Homecoming week. To celebrate, students can participate in fun dress up days. Today was wear your favorite sports jersey or team. I had lots of kids in Iowa State colors! Yippee!!! :) Many in Vikings jerseys also for the big game tonight! Go Vikes! Tuesday is wear pink day for cancer awareness as the Crestwood Cadets volleyball team will take on Decorah in a battle to win as well as raise money for cancer research. Hope to see you there to support the Crestwood volleyball team! Wednesday is wear your favorite hat day. Thursday is wear athletic clothes (running pants, sweatshirts etc.) Friday is blue and white day . . .obviously. So we will be having a lot of fun with our dress up days to support the football team. Along with this, we will be having a pep assembly this Friday for Crestwood K-8 at 9:30 at the football stadium. The jr. high cheerleaders will lead us in cheers and activities to get pumped up for the big game.

On Wednesday, October 7th, students at Crestwood Elementary will attend a character counts assembly titled "Strength Training". This assembly will be held at the elementary school so no travel is needed. I'm excited to see what "Strength Training" will teach the kids about Character Counts as it is a large part of our guidance and behavior discussions!

On Thursday, the Crestwood K-8 students along with the high school students will participate in "Fall Fitness Day". This is a time set aside to encourage students to be more active. Our class will be matched up with a high school class that will lead us to different places/stations for walking and exercise. Thus the reason for "Fitness Clothes" on Thursday for Homecoming. We will be walking from 2:20ish until 3:00. The theme of this is "Keep a positive attitude! Keep your bodies moving! Have fun!" Being aware of food and fitness is a big push in education right now so I am sure this will not be the last of this type of fun activity. Please be sure your child wears tennis shoes on Thursday. Lucky us, it is a PE day so they should have them on anyway.

Friday, Homecoming, is a 3 hour early out. This is also the day of the Pep Assembly for Crestwood K-8. With the 3 hour early out, the hope is that students and family will have time to attend the Homecoming Parade at 2:30 then join the Cadets in cheering them on to a big win at Friday night's football game.

So you can see that our time will be choppy this week. I hope to send home Unit 1 math assessments by this Wednesday, but I still have a few students who were absent and need to finish. If you don't see them on Wednesday, they will probably not be sent home until next Monday. We will be moving into Unit 2, which is largely on addition and subraction of 2-3 digit numbers so please work on basic addition/subtraction facts with your child at home. I will be sending more Home Link activity sheets home as well with this unit for continued practice.

I am totally enjoying our days together and the students are in a super routine. I think a favorite time of the day has become our start, Morning Meeting, and literacy, which takes all morning. Students are excited to start literacy/Daily 5 and everyone is enjoying getting started at Guided Reading. We have built our "work on writing" stamina up to 22 minutes! Way to go 3B! Once we get to 30 minutes, I will introduce the last of the Daily 5, "listen to reading". Students are excited about this aspect of the Daily 5 as they will be using the computer and/or iPods to listen to reading. I am already seeing great progress since the beginning of the year in all areas!

On a final note, I wanted to let parents know that I will be gone this Wednesday, October 7th - Sunday, October 11th. I have a birthday this week so my sister and I are hopping on a plane and heading to New York City for a few days of fun in the Big Apple as a birthday gift from my husband. I have complete faith in my sub and have written everything out for her to the tiniest detail. My 3B students know I will be gone and also know that I expect them to be on their best behavior, like always. I will not be responding to phone calls at school so if you need something, leave a message with Linda and she will let my sub know. The other option is to send a written note for your child to give to the substitute. I always bring back gifts for your students when I take a trip so they are very curious on what they will be getting. . . . hoping they are the perfect angles that they are!!!! :)

Have a great week! Go Cadets!

Guided Reading and Strategy Group Instruction has Begun!

I am pleased to say, as the kids are so excited, that we have build enough stamina in read to self and read to someone that I can start guided reading groups and strategy groups! Yeah! I realize the importance of setting the foundation for routine and practice the first month of school, as it will make all the difference through the rest of the year, but it felt like we were never going to get started with guided reading. The students have been begging me and reminding me that we are ready, and I agree, they are! Not only will I be doing guided reading groups, but I will be trying to utilize strategy groups as well. The difference is that in guided reading groups the students are usually reading the same book at the same level. In strategy groups, you can have students reading different books at different levels focusing on one strategy for all of them. There is importance in both types and students will be involved in both this year.

We are working hard on getting our writing stamina increased. After just starting "work on writing" last week, we are up to 10 minutes. I am hoping to see our writing stamina increase a lot this week now that we are done with MAPs testing and can get back to business. Many students say this is their favorite so far of the Daily 5 - work on writing. Super! Having "choice" is an important component of the Daily 5 and it helps build enthusiasm and independence.

I hope your 3B students has filled you in on all of our wonderful science critters! We have aphids, daphnia, fruit flies, and ants all venturing to stay alive. So far the daphnia and ants have been unsuccessful. I'm not sure what happened to the ants in the ant farm - this is the first year they have died so quickly. We never have much luck with the daphnia, but at least they made it a few days for the students to observe and learn about. We have been charting the population of the different insects and thinking like scientist do. Why are some of the populations decreasing while others are increasing? What factors can contribute to this? We have had some great discussions! Next week we will have more visitors - the predators of these insects!!! Should be interesting!

Looks like we will be ready for our first math assessment at the end of this week also. I am pleased with the background each of the students has carried over from second grade when it comes to math concepts! They retained a lot so it has made this math unit of review go very smoothly! Our next unit is on addition and subtraction so start practicing those facts at home as I have noticed there is a little weakness in that area for many students in 3B.

Finally, it looks like summer is over and fall has hit. The wind was terribly cold today and many students were chilly at recess. Just a reminder to think about the weather when helping your child decide what to wear to school. Dressing in layers is the best bet as they can easily take off a sweatshirt if get too hot in the afternoon but can't do anything to stay warm without extra clothes. I am hoping it warms up a little bit in the next few days as I am not ready for winter! Yuck!

Have a great week!

Learning From 4th Graders in Virginia

Another great week has gone by. I am very pleased at how much we are getting accomplished, routines are going well, and students appear to be having a little fun along the way. :) We never seem to get everything done that I plan each day, but that's alright as I tend to overplan. Yesterday I had class all day revolving around the "Daily 5" that we are using to faciliate our literacy. It was nice to share questions, ideas, and thoughts with other elementary teachers although I would have rather been outside being it was a gorgeous weekend. I'm not going to lie about that.

There were many exciting events that happened this past week. One of them I need to give thanks to my "Twitter" PLN - personal learning networks. A teacher in Virginia had her students do a readers theatre about Constitution Day, which was Sept. 17th. She let those of us on Twitter know about it. I asked her if I could have a copy of the readers theatre and she said better yet, she would have her 4th graders recording of their readers theatre on her blog page for us to listen to. It was a story about some kids planning a camping trip and had to make decisions. They connected it to the way the Constitution was written and shared facts along the way. We, in 3B, thought it was such a great way to learn about the Constitution that we wrote some comments back to them on their blog page. Little did we know, we would be making friends with students from Virginia via the Internet. It was very cool, and the kids were amazed what they learned by listening to other students.

Our first set of "creatures" arrived this week for science also. The ants have made their home in our room in an ant farm. We will be watching them create a habitate and monitor how many of them exist throughout the next few weeks. Our seeds that we planted last week are growing, which is good. Our next set of visitors will be arriving this week. Wonder what they are. . . .

With literacy, we had our first week of word works - kind of like spelling but in a different way. The students have gone through the different routines and modes of learning and are set. I would have to say using Wiki Stix is a favorite. They could have played with those for quite a while. Next, we move into the area of writing with the Daily 5.

I am excited about writing as we have been talking about what writers do and the writing process. I wanted to try and find an author who would skype in our classroom, via the internet, and chat with the students about writing. After some time looking, I found a site of various children's authors that do just that! I can't wait ! I am working on getting it scheduled and arranged. The author will chat with the kids for 15-20 minutes free of charge. Very cool! The students will be able to have conversation with an actual children's author, asking questions and learning about what it is like to be a writer without leaving the classroom. Ahhh. . .the wonderful world of technology!

Here's to another great week of learning - for all of us!

3B's Respect and Responsibility I Chart

I forgot to put this in last week as I mentioned I would. Here is the "I Chart" that we came up with as a class as far as our expectations for our behavior and responsibilities. Hopefully you can see it. Sorry I forgot to post it earlier last week.

"Everything Would be Alright"

I am pleased to say that we had a very productive; yet fun, week! I am amazed that so much time has already flown by since the first day of school. Wow! Probably the highlight of the week for the students was listening to President Obama give a speech to students across the US about staying in school, setting goals, being respectful and responsible. We had a wonderful discussion about his speech afterwards and ended up setting goals for ourselves for the month of September. This is something we would have done anyway, actually each month, but fit right in with what he was sharing. Then today rolled around, September 11th. I can remember I was at school when I heard about what happened that day and ran down the hallway to call my mom because I have relatives who worked at the World Trade Center. Still gets me kind of emotional. I finally found a short video on the internet that talks about September 11th at a level that the kids can understand. They loved it! Our discussion afterwards was wonderful. We read different books, I showed pictures I had taken 1 week after it happened as I was there for a football game, they wanted to share what they knew. . . everything. I have some very curious little minds in 3B! Hopefully you will have time to discuss the events of September 11th with your child and connect it to some conversation about peace makers. Because the the book we read today said, "We knew everything would be alright."

Some other news is that we have increased our Read to Self to 30 minutes!!! Yeah! We have increased Read to Someone to 18 minutes and will be starting "Word Works" next week. I plan to have all facets of the Daily 5 in place in the next 1-2 weeks and then begin guided reading. I did finished assessing students on Dibels and will be doing one on one conferencing with the students this coming week, maybe doing some small group instruction also based on demonstrated needs. It is so great to see their faces when they finish reading a book they have enjoyed! They are so pleased with themselves. That's the great part of the Daily 5, you need to get better at reading by reading and that is what they are doing! Along with all of these "happenings", we have been busy with other mini lessons as well that have focused on reading the punctuation and coaching on what to do if stuck on a word. Our literacy time is all morning and that time goes by so quickly. I am very proud of them!

If you were not aware, Mrs. Hartberg did have her baby last week. She had a girl, Allison Elizabeth! She is adorable. Mrs. Hartberg will be out until sometime in November and her sub is Mrs. Becky Trautsch. The nice part is that a lot of the students know her as she has subbed a lot in our building. She will be coming in for 30 minutes every day to co-teach writing with me. So if your students talk about someone named Mrs. Trautsch, that is who they are talking about.

I couldn't end my blog for the week without encouraging everyone to cheer for the Cyclones tomorrow!!! Big game of Iowa vs. Iowa State! It's been fun to talk "sports" with some of the boys who are dedicated Hawkeye fans! :) Go Cyclones! Have a great week!

Progress in All Areas! Fantastic Friday!

I am writing this post on Monday, Labor Day, but it is a reflection of last week. (Just pretend I am writing it last Friday.) After our morning meeting today, we had a discussion on respect and responsibility. The students and I created an "I Chart" if what a respectful classroom looks like. Students did a wonderful job coming up with phrases to finish the statement "I show I am respectful/responsibility by. . ". They also thought about what the teacher does to show respect. I will take a picture of our chart to include in my next post. Everyone signed it in agreement that that is what our classroom will look like. (A teacher can never "assume" students know what to do all the time and review is constantly needed.) We hung it in the classroom so that we can always be reminded about our "job" as student and teacher. Great visual to have! On a different note, I was so excited with the progress the students made in our Read to Self and Read to Someone stamina!!! They increased their Read to Self stamina to 23 MINUTES!!!! Incredible!!!! They also increased their Read to Someone to 13 MINUTES! The students were so excited when I told them how long they made it! Way to go! In the afternoon we started some math stations in which students work in small groups applying math skills we learned in the previous lessons (telling time, measuring, calculator use, reviewing addition and subtraction). The students were sad when it was time to stop and have recess. . .some wanted to stay in from recess! Wow! It was too nice to stay in. During science, the hunt was on looking for living organisms outside by the butterfly garden. The sun was shining so it was wonderful to be outside. But no matter how much we rushed, we couldn't get our Friday podcast done. . .so stay tuned for it next week. The students love to do podcast!!!!