Johnny Appleseed Day:
- Both third grade classes combined to do an apply observation activity. The students tasted 8 different kinds of apples and wrote down observations about the taste, color, size, smell, etc. of each type. They then ordered the 8 apples in the order they liked them best. Once this was done we took a poll to see what the favorite types of apples were. Then, we created a graph showing the third grades' favorite apples. The next day we wrote a paragraph about the activity and introduced the idea of topic sentences. My students did a great job! Their apple writings are proudly displayed in our room. This was a great activity for many reasons. One of them being that it combined English, Science, and Math all into one activity!
The next week was a short week as we teachers journeyed up to the ACSI convention. It was a good time of learning and fellowship. I went to a great seminar on Singapore Math which will help a lot as I prepare to teach my first every Mental Math lesson tomorrow and Bar Model lesson on Tuesday (scary!). I also attended a session by Carolyn Coil on differentiated learning. So many great ideas! But it was also very overwhelming as I really want to be doing all those things but just don't know how it is possible right now in this stage of my teaching life. I am determined to try to do some of them though!
Book report number 2 was due on our short week. The students did a great job with it! Those are also displaying nicely in our classroom for all to see!
And then it was Columbus Day. We had just finished our unit on Columbus so it was perfect timing! We, of course, had to celebrate! So I gave students the choice of a couple of activities they could do. They could draw a picture of Columbus sailing and his three ships. Or they could make a map of the world as Columbus thought it was. I set out a lot of construction paper and told them to go for it. WOW! They did an AMAZING job. I had no idea they were so artistic!! Several made 3D pictures, one made an actual ship, and all the others just did fantastic by cutting out construction paper and gluing it on the paper to make the scenes! These of course had to be displayed as well:
Then this past Friday was Grandparents' Day. As part of this school wide event there was a big program for the grandparents and parents and special guests who attended. For this program each class had to perform. Oh my! Thankfully I was able to join with the other 3rd grade and the 2/3 class for the performance. We sang a cute Grandparents' Day song. There were so many rehearsals to get this ready - but it turned out wonderfully! My students did a marvelous job and I made it through my first performance experience. After the performance all the grandparents, etc were invited back to the classrooms. So our classroom doors were open for all the visitors to come visit! Thanks to my wonderful parents a refreshments table was put together and we had a nice visiting time Friday afternoon. I loved seeing everyone and getting to meet the other special people in my students' lives. Good time of fellowship in the school family!
And now, I can breathe for a bit. But not for long. My class' chapel is coming up on November 4th. So planning and preparations for that are already happening. In fact, at this very moment I am procrastinating on working on that.....I've never planned a chapel before so this should be interesting! We will be presenting on Barnabas and what it means to encourage one another (something my class is really working on this year...).
Okay....okay.....yes....Here I go. Off to work on planning the chapel. Good night all!
PS Do you know how difficult it is to put together a decent seating chart? I've been trying to change mine every couple of weeks as we do table points and prizes at the end of every week and it just mixes it up for the kids...but goodness! This person can't sit anywhere near that person, that person needs a chance in the front, that one can't be too far away form me, etc etc. But I'm sure you all know about that!
OH YES! Seating arrangements were one of my very least favorite things! I would usually only change up the entire class at the start of each quarter (while occasionally switching a couple of students here or there). Then there were some years that once we FINALLY found something that worked, we just stuck to that (if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?) :)
ReplyDeleteYou have been busy! I'm interested in which apple won the taste experiment? :-)
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