I would have used red to write Happy Birthday, but the red marker was all out of ink so black had to do :(
When the kids came in I gave each of them a bookmark that said, "The more that you read, the more things you know. The more that you learn, the more places you go." -Dr. Seuss
I searched high and low to find the book The Lorax (which I thought I owned, and quickly realized that I did not). After checking every library in the area and hearing "Ma'am, tomorrow is Dr. Seuss birthday, every known book of his is checked out," about a thousand times, I found an option even better than the actual book...an e-book being read online! The guy had a British accent (which the kids got a kick out of) and there were tons of sound effects and the kids viewed it as more of a movie than a book being read. They even clapped at the end of it! The book I used can be found here.
After hearing the book, I had the kids fill out a story sequence sheet out of truffulas! After they wrote the events from the story, they glued them to a piece of construction paper and could draw in the actual trees. They love art, so they had fun with it :)
We have been learning about ecosystems in science, so I had the kids write about what they would have done to save the ecosystem from the story. I got some really good responses!
And isn't that worksheet just adorable? I found it from a K-5 unit study on the Lorax! The entire unit can be found here. And, the whole unit has a free downloadable so you can use whatever you want from it!
After lunch we had a grade level read-in where all the kids went into the pod area with pillows, blankets, and books, and got to celebrate Read Across America for 30 minutes as a grade level. It was a huge success, and the kids really were reading!
In math, we have been doing some work with patterns this week, so the kids got a sheet with 100 truffula trees on it, and they had to create different number and color patterns. They had lots of fun and it still tied into our book for the day :)
Elsewhere this week, we finished up arrays making a giant array chart as a class! The kids were amazed how big it was and cool it looked when we were done :)
We have been preparing for the state assessment and the kids really struggle with understanding how to effectively retell a story. So, I created some re-telling sticks to help them along.
Each table group got a bucket of 10 sticks...
...and each stick had a different question on it such as, "What was the main idea? What happened in the beginning? If you could re-title the story anything, what would it be and why?" All of the questions correlated to re-telling, and after they had answered every question on the sticks, they had the correct information to re-tell the story! It was a HUGE success and the kids loved it :)
I have been struggling to find fun activities for the kids to practice their spelling words. Last week we did some rainbow spelling which was fun, and this week I found the template of a keyboard online, and ran with the idea to create an activity to practice spelling.
I printed off the keyboard on colored cardstock and then put them into a clear sleeve. The kids used their dry erase markers to write the word AND type it out. They got a kick out of the keyboards, and they got to practice their words in two different ways!
Most of them were actually typing too...SUCCESS! They said the computer teacher would be proud they had practiced their key-stroking skills :)
It was another fun week in 3rd grade and I'm teaching full time now, so I feel like the "real teacher!" It's 3 days with the kids this week and then 1.5 days of meetings and teacher work day and then SPRING BREAK!!!! (I think I get just as excited as the kids do :))
Have a great rest of your weekend, get a lot rest and relaxation!
Happy Teaching!
Ms. Boyers
