Great "Caring and Sharing Celebration"

I have posted some pictures from our first "Care and Share" celebration.  The students had a super time creating magnets that were shared with friends in all three third grade sections.  I was very impressed at the creativity of the students, as well as how prepared many of them were bringing in their ideas and crafts needed!  Nicely done.  I may be bias, but I think 3B had the most creative and neatly done magnets!  :)  While the students worked, they enjoyed great munchies sent in from parents as well as had the chance to walk around in the two other 3rd grade classrooms to take a look at their classmates' magnets.  Since we ran out of time, the actual magnet exchange happened yesterday.  As names were drawn, students went up and selected a magnet made by their classmates to take home.  It was a wonderful activity (the first time we have done this type of project for Character Counts), and we were very pleased with the effort the students put into their magnets to show their classmates they care about them!  Awesome job 3rd graders!

Just a little reminder that the end of November is tomorrow.  Please return Book-It calendars for the month of November by the end of this week.  I will then send home a certificate for a free personal pan pizza for your 3B student.  Remember that if your child participates in Book-It all the months involved, they will celebrate with a pizza party supplied by me, Mrs. Kerian.  So keep reading!  Look for the December Book-it calendar to be sent home Wednesday or Thursday.

We wrapped up most of our first Inquiry projects for our literacy.  Students participated in created a TV talk show in which they shared their findings about the history of Cresco.  While it was our first attempt at this type of project, the students did a nice job and were very excited!  Our only problem is that we have such quiet students that sometimes it was hard to hear them speak (we will work on that).  There is still one group that needs to present their TV talk show as they had a member of their group gone last week. They will present at the end of the week and I will post all videos of the talk shows on my blog then.  Look for them soon!

Students are finishing up their personal narrative writing pieces and we will be moving into auto-biographies before going into realistic fiction writing.  I am amazed at the passion many students in 3B have towards writing!  It is wonderful and great to see!  They are keeping me busy with my teacher conferencing, that is for sure!!!   We have been discussing point of view, description of settings, organization of our ideas, and adding detail.  I have seen lots of improvement since the beginning of the year in all the students' writing!  Keep it up!

This week we have many additional activities going on.  The high school students will be coming over Thursday to do their 2nd Food and Fitness presentation on beans.  Our first presentation last month was on broccoli, and the high school students did a great job with their presentation.  Many students were surprised to find out that they liked raw broccoli, as long as they had ranch to dip it in.  :)  We also have a lady coming from the county to talk about eating healthy and making healthy choices.  She will be here tomorrow morning to share more great information about healthy food.

Just a heads up on some of the strategies we are getting into with our second theme in literacy.  Students are loving this theme as it connects to science, and our first readings are all about sports and science.  Love it!  We will be jumping into summarizing, recognizing cause and effect, and reviewing antonyms this week.

Enjoy the sunshine and stay warm!  Thanks again to all the parents who supplied yummy snacks for our first celebration!  Our tummies thank you!  :)