Playing with Dreidels!

Today we spent some time learning about Hanukkah and playing with dreidels! Each student made one and brought one home today! Dreidels are great family games!

Christmas Decorations Around the Room

Since we are going to be taking down our Christmas decorations tomorrow I thought I probably should post some pictures so everyone could see them before they are gone!

This is a picture of the snowflakes the students made hung around the room. They make a very wintery touch to the room without the frigid temperature!

This is a picture of our class Christmas tree with ornaments the students made. Look at all of the presents we have! This is a spoiled class! :)

Here are some more snowflakes. They are very beautiful and sparkly with glitter! Nice work!

Two More Additions!

Congratulations, Mary for getting into the Thousand Page Club! Great Work!
Excellent work, Ezekiel! Keep your sights set high to that Two-Thousand Page Club!!

Christmas Concert Tonight!

I haven't posted in a while (and I am sorry for that!) but tonight will be a quick one and more detail tomorrow. Tonight we have our Christmas concert starting at 7 o'clock p.m. It is important that the students are at Frontier at 6:30 p.m. so we can get ready and line up together before the performance. After the performance is over the students will come back to our room and get their goody bags from Santa. If you want to take group pictures, after the concert would be best!

The families can also pick up their students from our classroom after the concert is over to avoid too many traffic jams. :)

Thank you for coming tonight and can't wait to see all of you guys looking great!

One last note, there will be a bake sale at the concert as well to support the music program at Frontier! Yum!

Spelling Words for Dec. 14 - Dec. 18

The following words are for PF, SW, TB:

cram crab crash crib brag brat
grip slip slid slap clock blob
flag flop flock spill spin spot
snap trick trash truck

The following words are for BL, DV, EZ:

best left neck bell bled yet green
wheel sheet need bleed teeth creep
speed mean team deal reach beach
steam clean bean

The following words are for KB, CB, MB, IB, KK:

toy boy joy coin foil boil
spoil noise point town clown brown
gown frown howl sound mouth scout
round couch loud hound

The following words are for EU:

photograph phonograph telegraph graph
lithograph graphite autograph phonogram
hologram television telephone telegraph
telephoto telescope telepathy telethon
tropics tropical phototropic heliotrope
tropophilous thermotropism

Good luck and happy spelling!

LATE START TOMORROW!

Due to the weather that we have been having lately, we are starting school an hour later than normal. School and the buses will run an hour late and so school will start at 9:00 a.m. Please try not to send your students early if at all possible!

Today we had a pretty good day. We were trapped inside for recesses because of the frigid weather outside. I think the students are getting used to it because they don't really complain as much when we hear that we are inside. I think they realize the alternative is freezing outside so the gym looks pretty good! :)

We got new spelling words today which I will post online shortly. We spent time making Christmas books for three classmates today. The students have such a creative mind when it comes to what they are going to get each other. You can definitely tell they know each other very well!

Tomorrow I will be sending home a note with your students about our Christmas party. Keep an eye out for that one in your student's backpacks. Also, a quick reminder that our Christmas program is December 17th (Thursday) and students need to be at school by 6:30 p.m. but the program does not start until 7 p.m. Students need to wear dress clothes. No athletic gear, tennis shoes, or jeans please.

Hope all of you are staying warm and aren't having too many weather related issues (though hopefully none!). Can't wait to see you an hour later tomorrow! Sleep in and get some extra rest to ward off the colds that are floating around!

Another Thursday Behind Us

Today we worked really hard on a variety of things related to the holiday season. The Christmas concert is coming up next Thursday, December 17th at 7 p.m. so the third and fourth grade classes got an extra 40 minutes to practice their performance together with Mrs. Drummond. It was really fun to sneak a little peek at the kids while they were practicing. Things are looking great so far!

This afternoon we spent time working on more Christmas and winter art projects. We started the paint part of our crafts today so we can finish them later. We started making gingerbread people and a little penguin. It will be fun to see how things turn out! This is quite an artistic class so they never cease to amaze me at their artistic talents and creativity.

A couple of quick reminders.....

1. Book orders are due Monday, December 14th either online or in paper form. I will submit the order Monday after school to make sure we get our books by Christmas time. Remember, books make great gifts!
2. Also, some students have been asking me what I "want" for Christmas. There is really nothing extra special that I am wishing for and honestly while I do like getting presents it isn't necessary to get me anything. If you decide that you want to get teachers a present it is a great idea to visit www.donorschoose.org and search for Montana schools. This website is an amazing site that allows people to donate money for materials and supplies that the classroom needs. I have three projects on the site (2 should be coming soon and one is already there) and I would love if you wanted to donate to the site. That way the whole class is benefiting!

I hope you all stay warm and have a fantastic evening!

Book Orders Due Dec. 14

Book orders were sent home with your student yesterday. Book make excellent gifts for the holidays and I am more than happy to arrange pick up time with you so you can be sneaky!

The sneakiest way to order is online through our class page. The web address is:

scholastic.com/bookclubs
Login name: FrontierThirdGrade
Password: order

Every time you make an online order we also get free books for the classroom so it is a win-win situation! Best holiday and shopping wishes!

A Note on Spelling

It has come to my attention that spelling is an issue with this group of students overall.

Since the beginning of the year we have done spelling words so the whole class has the same list every week and they are all expected to know the same words. However, I am noticing this isn't really successful for the students: either they are failing week after week, doing great some weeks and very poorly others, excelling every week, or doing about average every week. Also, there doesn't seem to be the transfer from their spelling test to their writing. So starting this week we have some changes...

The students will be split into groups based on the things they need to work on in spelling (for example if there are three students who can't spell words that have the /ay/ spelling at the end of the word they would be grouped together and would be working on those words). They will be given a spelling test on their words on Friday like usual. However, this time, the words that they do not spell correctly on their spelling test are going to be on their spelling list again next week. They will continue to get those words until they are spelled correctly. That way students are getting practice with words that they need help with and are getting additional practice on words that are giving them trouble. I will try to post the spelling lists with student initials next to the groups so that you can still access spelling lists on the site (since many of you have expressed an interest in doing that!)

I hope this is clear for all of you and as always, if you have any questions feel free to call or email anytime. I check my email several times during the day so that is the easiest way to contact me. Hope to hear from you soon!

Oh the weather is getting frightful...

Well it has been a couple of days since the last post so I will get us all caught up together. Sorry about the lack of posting!

Monday we started our Christmas project for our classmates. Instead of having each student buy a gift for another student we are going to be making Christmas books for each other to avoid the extra holiday costs. The books say, "If I could get you anything for Christmas, I would get you..." and there is a piece of wrapping paper attached to the bottom where the students can lift the flap and draw a picture of anything that they would get their classmates. This way the students can use their artistic and creative talents at a free cost! The students will also be working with fourth grade to draw "Secret Santa" gifts but, again, students will be making the gifts as opposed to going out and buying a gift. This way the emphasis is on the spirit of giving and thoughtfulness rather than the dollar price tag on the gift. Every day we will be working on the books for one or more students.

Yesterday we started a science experiment (given the current temperature of Wolf Point) to find out what happens to water when it freezes (besides that it turns to ice). To do this experiment we filled a vial with water and placed a cap on it. We also filled a syringe to 40cc of water. Today we found out that the water EXPANDED when it was frozen! The syringes expanded to 45 cc of ice and the ice was raised out of the vials so much the caps were busted off. Wow! The students were surprised that the water would expand when it froze!

A quick note about the weather...
Please make sure that you are sending your student to school dressed for the weather. So far we have been okay but as things get colder make sure kids have heavy coats, hats, gloves or mittens, scarves, and snow pants if you have them. I do have a drawer filled with gloves that the students can borrow if they choose to while at school. All of the students should also have hats since my grandma made each student a hat. Hats are so important to make sure they don't get sick or have headaches after coming in from the cold outdoors.

Also, emphasize to your student that it is a REALLY bad idea to stick their tongues to frozen metal poles. We had an incident today with a student doing that and it is not pleasant and causes a LOT of blood. We want everyone to be safe and healthy at school. No one wants that unpleasantness to happen, especially to themselves.

I hope you are all staying warm and cozy at home and the weather isn't treating you too badly. Can't wait to see all of your smiling faces tomorrow morning!

Two More 1000 Page Club Members!

Congratulations Caeland! Nice job! Keep up the great work and keep reading to get to the next level!

Congratulations Dani! Keep up the great work and go for the 2000 page club! :)

Friday

Friday was a great ending to the week. The students had spelling, vocabulary and a grammar quiz. They did a great job overall!

We ended the day with our classroom store. The students all really like to have the chance to spend their hard earned money on items from the store. The popular items were some twisted pens and the "mystery bags" as per usual. The mystery bags are paper bags that are filled with an assortment of goodies found in the class store. Sometimes the bags have really expensive items and other times they do not... it is all in the luck of the draw. This will be the last major class store before Christmas break. Our next time for classroom store will be December 18th. On that day we will be doing a small store selection and our classroom auction for the end of the 2009 year. We will be auctioning off posters, supplies, and class made books that have been made so far this year. It will be a time that students can get presents for their families as well. The students are really looking forward to that time because we haven't yet had an auction in the classroom.

I hope you all enjoyed the Christmas parade on Friday night and there is the craft bazaar at the Elk's Club today. Enjoy your weekend!

Thursday is here!

This week is just flying right by us! Goodness gracious!

Today we read some more to make it toward our goal of reading 100 books by the end of the month. Today we got to 77 books read so far this year so we are well on our way. Tomorrow several people are doing conferences with me too so we will get much higher tomorrow!

In writing the students spent time finishing their letters to our generous donors and our pen pals. It will be exciting to send another batch of letters to our pen pals. I remember being in elementary school and loving writing to the pen pals we had and these kids share that same enthusiasm. It is great!

This afternoon we had more art... this has just been the week of art projects! We finished our mini-Christmas trees and made some mini-snowmen. We are trying to make several ornaments so that we can decorate our class Christmas tree and also have some to send to Helena to represent our Roosevelt County tree at the Capitol! The kids have been doing a great job with these and they are really turning out very nicely! I am very impressed.

As the weather starts to get colder, remember to dress your student for the weather. If they are not dressed appropriately the recess duties will send them inside to sit on the bench rather than getting that fresh air and exercise outside. I do have some gloves that the students can borrow for recesses but hats and scarves are not in such high supply. Though all of them should have a hat since my grandma made them each one, many of them say that they don't have one here. It is chilly but not too bad yet so that's okay. Once the weather gets colder, snow comes, and the wind picks up that will be a different story though! To make sure that all of them get to run and play outside please send them dressed appropriately.

Tomorrow we have a spelling test so make sure your student is practicing those words! Next week spelling will be individualized to meet the needs of the students in the class (more detailed information to come!). This week, though, we are all doing the same words that are listed off to the right. Can't wait to see you tomorrow!

Glitter: The Mess that Keeps On Giving!

Well today we spent another day getting into the spirit of the holidays and continued to work on our Christmas tree decorations. Also, we spent time decorating our snowflakes with glitter. This is my first time really using glitter in a project and all I can say is wow. I didn't realize at the time how the glitter was going to get EVERYWHERE. :) Bless their hearts though, the students all got on their hands and knees with a damp paper towel and "swept" the floor. Even then, the glitter seemed like is was growing! :) It will be something you are going to see covering your students for the next month probably.

Looking ahead we are starting to think about our Christmas party. The party itself will be on December 22nd (which is the last full day before Christmas break). However, along with the fourth grade class we are interested in having some holiday craft stations in our rooms which all of the students can participate in and make something special for the holidays. So, we are interested in seeing if any of you are willing to run a station during the crafting time. If you have any ideas for a craft station you could run and supply materials for, please email me or send me a note as soon as possible so we can start to arrange the times and everything. We love to have you in our classrooms so feel free to let me know!

Have a great night and can't wait to see you all tomorrow!

P.S. Midterm reports will be mailed out next week so keep an eye on the mail! If you are curious of your students grades sooner, email me and I will let you know on Friday when the grades are final. :)

Another 1000 page Club Member!

Congratulations, Mr. Chevy for being our newest member of the 1000 page club! Keep up the great work and look for that 2000 page club mark! You can do it!

December Already?

Well December is officially here... unbelievable! I am excited though for the holiday season. Christmas is my favorite time of year! We have a lot of Christmas music playing throughout the day in my room. Gets us all in the spirit of things!

Today we spent time learning how to summarize books that we are reading. The students had a really hard time getting the understanding of what a main idea or major idea was as opposed to just an extra detail. That is something we will be working more and more on this week to really start processing the idea. We also spent time learning what a "third grade" sentence really looks like. Before this point in the year the students have written a lot of sentences like, "It was fun." or "I liked it." We are well into third grade though and this is not what is expected of them. The students need to remember that they CAN add detail to their sentences and therefore that is expected of them. I shouldn't have to ask a ton of clarifying questions about each sentence to find out the who, what, when, where, or why. Those are things that need to be included in their sentences. That is going to take some adjusting but I told them very clearly today that work not done at a third grade level will be turned back into them and redone. We are third graders after all!

We continued writing our thank-you letters and response letters to pen pals. The students are really doing a great job on these letters! Way to go!

In math we learned about horizontal, vertical, and oblique lines. We used all of the capital letters in the alphabet to find these lines. It is surprising how many have more than one type of line! Oblique also looks like a great bonus spelling word this week... hint, hint third graders! :)

This afternoon we spend another fast afternoon starting getting in the Christmas spirit. We have many art projects planned for this week to make ornaments for our classroom tree as well as ornaments to send to Helena. Each year in front of the capitol building there is one tree for each county in Montana. Last year all of Roosevelt county schools submitted one (yes 1) ornament. Needless to say our tree looked pretty sad compared to the other ones. So this year we are making several ornaments for the students to send off to Helena to proudly represent our county.

We also are making cut out snowflakes to decorate our room with. Today we read Snowflake Bentley about a man who photographed snowflakes in the early 1900s. We learned that no two snowflakes are the same so we each had time to make our own snowflakes. Tomorrow we will add glitter and add some sparkle to those snowflakes to add to the winter feel in our classroom. I am excited! We will get to be toasty warm but enjoy the snow inside! :) Best of both worlds.

Today with your students you should find (in addition to Spelling homework due tomorrow!) a newsletter about a pajama drive we are doing as a class. Every year the Pajama Program (www.pajamaprogram.org) donates pajamas and books to children and adults in needy situations around the holidays. These are mostly children who have been abused and abandoned to add to their holiday spirit for the year. We are asking you to donate NEW pajamas (for any age or size) to this great organization. For every pair of pajamas we donate, Scholastic Book Clubs will donate a book as well to give these young people a Christmas gift. If you (or friends, neighbors or relatives) are interested in donating pajamas to this great cause, please send the pajamas with your student to school and I will take care of the rest. We are sending the box in on December 19th, so the pajamas must be received by December 18th. Thank you so much in advance of your donation!

Tomorrow is PE so remember to get plenty of rest. Bring your backpacks please and enjoy your evening! Peace out little diamonds! :) (Ask your student about the reference there!)

Last Day of November

I can't believe we are already at the end of November! Is this year just flying by or what? I can't believe it!

Today was a pretty good day considering the kids have had 4 days off in a row (or 5 for those who left for their holiday weekends early!). We spent time reading and getting back into the routine of the days. Then we had time to start writing back to our pen pals. Last week our pen pals from Bellevue, WA wrote us back and the students were SO excited! It was nice to finally hear about what our pen pals had to say. We had a lot of questions for them and things to tell them! We also had two other letters to write to thank our donors for their donations. Earlier this year I submitted a project on a great website called donorschoose.org. It is a website that allows teachers to submit requests for materials for their classroom and donors from around the country can donate money to fund the projects. I submitted a project for some reading games, magnetic letters, and reading center materials and it got funded fully last week so we are getting the materials soon! It was really exciting and so we now have to write thank you letters to our donors to thank them for the generosity.

Once we were done writing we had art later the afternoon to learn about different textures we could make with the materials we had in our classroom and paint. We explored wax resisting by drawing designs with crayons and painting over it with water colors. The pictures turned out great! Then we painted with brush strokes, cotton balls, sponges, and pipe cleaners to create different patterns. It was great to see the different patterns and textures the students make.

Tomorrow is library so make sure you remember to bring your books. Also, make sure that you have your students bringing their backpacks - several students don't think they need to bring them anymore for some reason! :) See you tomorrow!

The Christmas Season is Here!

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with plenty of food and family surrounding you!

Since Thanksgiving is over, the Christmas season is here! I changed the background to reflect the Christmas spirit. It is my favorite holiday since my birthday is Christmas eve too, so the background may change often because there are so many to choose from! :) Hope you all are in the spirit too!

Thanksgiving and the Play

The Thanksgiving play yesterday went incredibly well! Thank you so much for the family members who were able to make it to the performance yesterday afternoon. The students were really nervous as they started to see our room fill up with staff, family, and the rest of the elementary students! In the end, they did a great job reading their lines and transitioning with the 5 scenes we had. Great job third graders! We will be doing more performances during the year so keep an eye out for the invitations in the future!

The kids are definitely ready for this long break (and so am I!). I hope everyone takes the time to rest and relax with family and friends this weekend and enjoy the things in their lives they can be grateful for. Today the kids all discussed what they were thankful for and most of them said they were thankful for their grandparents. I thought that was so sweet and then I asked why. Unanimously it was because they "weren't dead yet"! Oh goodness. Well I suppose that is something that we do need to be thankful for! I was just surprised at how direct and to the point they were about it! :)

Happy Thanksgiving to all and we will see you Monday, rested and recharged!

A Crazy Monday

Today was a wild Monday... mostly for behaviors. The upcoming 4-day weekend bug has infected all of the students and made them not very excited to do anything that involves any effort! Yikes!

Luckily we made it through the day together. We spent a lot of time practicing our scripts for tomorrow's play (which is tomorrow at 2:45 p.m. if you want to join us!). The students also got time to finish their backdrops for the performance. I am excited to see how much effort they are putting into the backdrops and how they really are taking pride in their work.

During writing we finished writing our "How to Cook A Turkey" stories, which turned out very well. It is always fun to see how each student uses their very own recipe to cook their turkey. Keep an eye out in your student's bags tomorrow for a copy of this to be coming home with them! Definitely a great Thanksgiving read!

This afternoon we started learning about gallons, pints, quarts, and cups but making a friend for "Gallon Man" - a superhero who is very lonely. We will be finishing these projects tomorrow so Gallon Man won't be lonely anymore! He will have 13 new friends!

Third graders also received some really exciting news... we are getting 3 computers for the classroom! This will be an amazing addition to the room to be able to fit more technology integrated into the activities we do every day. This will also be a great motivator for students when they are doing their writing since they can publish on the computer and print their writing off. There is something about seeing your writing in print, as opposed to handwriting, that is incredibly motivating!

Hope you all have great evenings and can't wait to see you all tomorrow!

Thanksgiving Performance

I just wanted to update you all on the Thanksgiving Performance we have coming up.

On Tuesday, November 24th at 2:45 p.m. we will be putting on our Thanksgiving play for family and students at Frontier. You are all welcome to join us and see your student's hard work this week. Keep an eye out on Monday for the formal invitation to be sent home. We just finished finalizing it on Friday so it will be coming home Monday. I hope you all can make it!

Last Friday in November!

Today we had a great end to a long week for us. With conferences being so late on Tuesday we were all feeling pretty exhausted. Especially with the upcoming holiday weekend next week, we were all feeling ready for the weekend.

Today we had a vocabulary quiz and a spelling quiz. We also had our Thanksgiving raffle assembly this afternoon which was a lot of fun. It was hard for some of the students to understand how they could buy so many raffle tickets and not win anything. That is definitely a hard concept to understand, especially for younger students. And really, how do you help them understand? I suppose it is just something that will come with age and experience. It may be a good talking point for the dinner table, though. To hear from family members that we always don't get what we want, and that we don't always get to win is an important concept to understand.

Looking ahead, we have a short week coming up next week with the Thanksgiving holiday on the horizon. Monday and Tuesday are standard full days. Wednesday, however, is an early release day with students out of school at noon.

I hope you all have fantastic weekends and can't wait to see those smiling faces in school in Monday! Rest and stay healthy!

Book Orders Due Tomorrow!

Just wanted to remind everyone that Scholastic book orders are due tomorrow in class or online. I will be submitting the order after school. Thank you for your orders!

Just as a reminder...

The website is.... www.scholastic.com/bookclubs
Login name - FrontierThirdGrade
Password - order

Thank you!

Two Days and No Post!

I am so sorry that two days have passed without a post on my part! Things have been so crazy lately.

It was great to meet with so many of you last night for conferences! It was good to know that we are on the same page and both just want the best for your student and their education.

The past two days we have been learning more about the first Thanksgiving. On Monday we spent time comparing what the Pilgrims ate on the first Thanksgiving dinner with what we eat. That sure made some of us feel thankful we didn't have to eat barley, eel, and shellfish as part of dinner! :) The students were also surprised with how many things were similar to what we eat at Thanksgiving. Corn, wild turkey, and deer were all part of that first dinner! Yum!

Yesterday the students were introduced to a Reader's Theater play that we are starting about how the Pilgrims finding their way to the New World and what they had to do to get along in the New World. I don't think the students realized that there wasn't hotels and people waiting for them with a hot dinner ready!

Today the students were assigned their parts and so we practiced reading the script through a couple of times. Groups also started designing the backdrops for the play. The students are really excited to start with the play and the process of preparing for the play. It is great to see such enthusiasm and excitement to perform from even the more soft spoken students. We are going to perform this play for the rest of the elementary wing on Tuesday, November 24th in the afternoon (the time right now is unclear). Families are more than welcome to attend and I will keep you updated with times as I get more information.

Hope you all have a great evening!

Book Orders Make Great Gifts

Just wanted to put out a quick reminder that our book orders are due November 19th by the end of the day. The students were sent home the paper copies of the book orders for the month last week. You are also encouraged to order books online from scholastic.com/bookclubs. For every order you make online, our class gets free books to add to our classroom library. On the book club site, you will use the user name FrontierThirdGrade to login. The password is order.

Since the holiday season is right around the corner, book orders are a great way to order gifts for your student that are relatively inexpensive, entertaining, and also educational. Here are some popular books and teacher recommendations

From the Arrow Flyer

1. The Robe of Skulls - $4
2. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days - $7
3. Diary of a Wimpy Kid Duo - $12

From the Lucky Flyer

1. The Absent Author - $1
2. Christmas in Camelot - $3
3. Junie B. Jones 9 book set - $20
4. Diary of a Wimpy Kid Trio - $15
5. Talent Show from the Black Lagoon - $2
6. The Talented Clementine - $3
7. Magic Tree House Boxed Set -$14

If you want to order any of these books for your student I can arrange for a time for you to pick them up before or after school so they are a surprise for your student. Thanks! Happy shopping!

A Great Friday!

Today was a fabulous end to the week for us in third grade!

Today we spent our morning reading and doing our vocabulary and phonics quizzes. Our afternoon was filled with math, a spelling quiz, class payday, and our class store! The kids were excited as usual to get paid (especially knowing that the new $20 and $50 were up for grabs). Classroom store went well but students were more interested in bartering with one another than buying things from the class store this week. Some students learned the power of being a good sales person for their product though and really cleaned up! Others didn't do a whole lot to market their items and were disappointed with their returns. It is a learning process I suppose.

This afternoon the students were also awarded by our janitor for having the cleanest room in the building for the first quarter! Mr. Dempsey brought us a certificate and a bag of candies to share! Now maybe I won't get so many groans and grunts when I ask students to clean the floors! They made it their personal goals to keep our rooms the cleanest all year... Excellent goal in my opinion.

Just as a reminder, we are still collecting Boxtops for Education, Campbells Soup Labels, toilet paper rolls, paper towel rolls, wrapping paper rolls, unwanted (but child appropriate) magazines and empty egg cartons. Thank you for all of those families who have donated so far!

I hope you all have a fantastic weekend full of rest so we can all be healthy on Monday! See you then!

Animoto.com

First Day of Conferences Over

Congratulations to Kassie for being the first third grader so far to join the elite "Thousand Page Club"! She has read more than 1000 pages so far this year! She earned a certificate, $100 Dunnies, and a free homework pass! Awesome work!

Today was great to meet with some of you today to talk about your fantastic students. I can't wait to meet with the rest of you on Tuesday evening. I love to see that we are on the same page with your students' education. They are a very smart group of students and I expect to see that every day in their classroom participation and work.

Today was a super short day for the kids which made things go by so quickly! We spent time finishing sorting "bossy R" words (which are words with ir, ur, ar, er, and or). Each student got to make a book of the words that they sorted out. Such creativity from the students!

During reading, the students had 3 more conferences with me so we are well on our way to our hundred books! I have challenged the class to try and get the hundred books read by the end of the quarter (which is January 18)... we are in good shape to get there!

The kids are also really excited today because our classroom economy was given some new money - a $20 and a $50 bill! I have never seen students so excited for some fake money! They are eager to keep earning money, so that is a great thing. Tomorrow we have our classroom store planned which is really exciting for the students. If you are ever interested in donating materials for our classroom store, send it in with your students. They love candy, books, pencils and more! I always love seeing what they choose!

Have great evenings and get plenty of rest... we are all starting to get sick around here and we want us all to stay as healthy as possible!

Conferences Start Today!

Sorry for a lack of posting yesterday. Preparations for conferences were in full swing, and in an effort to try to ward off the coming sickness I completely forgot!

Today I am excited to meet with some of you to talk about all of your wonderful children! They have made such an amazing amount of progress in only 53 days of school. I am impressed!

Today I have the following conferences scheduled.

1:00 - Semarah
1:15 - Billy
1:30 - Imani
1:45 - Mary
2:00 - Kirsten
2:15 - Theo

Thanks for making it in and I can't wait to see you all this afternoon!

Wild Tuesday

Today was a pretty wild day. The third graders must know that they have that half day coming up because boy were they crazy this afternoon! :)

Today we spend time doing a math assessment, practicing our spelling with a game called Cherry Pie (ask your student about this one... they beg to play!), and finishing an art project we started last week on warm and cool colors.

I am noticing a trend with the students lately. Not as many have been bringing in their homework. This would be a great dinner table conversation to have tonight to make sure students are doing their best. Homework is graded on an "effort" basis. If students do their homework, and it is complete, they get full credit. No homework turned in, means a zero in the grading book. While homework itself is only worth 5-10 points, not turning in homework will significantly change the students' grades over the course of the quarter. We have homework EVERY Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday. There are few exceptions to that rule, and generally occur when we have a short week or a holiday week. If those exceptions are the case I will keep the blog updated with no homework.

Students are also required to make up any missed homework and assignments when they are gone. While I support students being gone when they are ill, so the rest of the class does not get infected, it is extremely important that students are here EVERY DAY. When students miss school they are missing out on valuable learning time and are being put behind of the rest of their classmates when they are absent. It is much harder on students who are gone because they are expected to pick up where the class left off, rather than where they left off when they were last at school. Thank you to those families who are supportive in making sure their students are here, every day, and on time!

Another Monday behind us!

Well another Monday for the school year is gone! Today was day 50 so we are just cruising through the school year!

Today we spent time reading our new story for the week, "The Mysterious Giant of Barletta" by Tomie dePaola. Tomie dePaola is one of my favorite children's authors so I was very excited to share this story with the third graders! We also had an opportunity to choose new books from the classroom library. I love seeing the kids pick out new books... it is always fun to see what everyone chooses to read!

Today I also sent home book orders with the students! The book orders are due November 19th back in the school or online. I set up online book club shopping for the class and Scholastic fixed the online issue that we were having last month. To order online follow the link to

www.scholastic.com/bookclubs

User name: FrontierThirdGrade

Password: order

Every time you order online our class gets a free book for the classroom library so it is a great option. Plus, you have the convenience of ordering any time online.

Tonight was another great set of basketball games at Frontier. Great job to the boys and girls teams! You played a great game!

Perfect Attendance - First Quarter

Congratulations third graders with perfect attendance! Kassie, Paisley, and Theo! Great job and keep that perfect record going! Enjoy your free ice cream, too!

A Great End to the Week

Today we had a great end to the week!

We spent time reading this morning and the students spent time practicing the stories they wrote about an art project we did. The students made a "computer bug" and had to write about their bugs, telling all about the lives of the bugs. This week we have spent time recording those stories on my computer and I am in the process of making a slide show for those stories. So far they are really good!

This afternoon we had an assembly honoring the students that had perfect attendance last quarter - meaning they were at school, all day, every day. Three students from our class received that award so congratulations to Paisley, Kassie, and Theo! Great work!

The students who didn't have any write ups (which happened to be ALL of the third grade) were also given an extra half hour recess! Great work third graders for staying write up free all quarter. Let's keep up that amazing work this quarter!

Have a great and relaxing weekend! Pictures will be posted this weekend from the assembly!

Personal Space

Today we had a discussion about personal space. Recently the students have had a lot of trouble with understanding physical boundaries between one another. A great dinner table conversation would be talking about physical boundaries and what to do if another person invades that personal space. Lately, pinching, bear hugs, and hands in each other's face has caused several students to feel uncomfortable as well as become a safety issue among students. I absolutely enjoy the fact that students at Frontier enjoy seeing one another and enjoy being around one another (especially since we are such a small school and they are pretty much forced to interact). However, when students are feeling uncomfortable in a classroom because other students are always touching and hugging them (even if it is meant to be friendly) the classroom environment, and the environment of the school overall, is changed. I strive to make my classroom a place where students feel safe and cared for. We have had a couple of discussions as a class about the issue but the touching continues and seems to be occurring more often as the days pass. Thank you for taking the time to talk with these issues with your student to make our classroom and our school a safe and welcoming environment for everyone.

Reminders:

1. Tomorrow students have a spelling quiz so don't forget to practice those words at home!
2. Seventh graders are selling raffle tickets for the Thanksgiving raffle. They are raffling off pies, a turkey, and a ham. If you want to purchase those tickets, they are 50 cents each or three for one dollar.
3. If you have family or friends that currently or have ever served in the armed forces, send names and/or pictures with your student to add to our Veteran's Day bulletin board to support the amazing things our armed forces do for us each and every day.

Wednesday!

Today was another great day of behaviors for the students. I am so impressed with how well they have been doing this week! Keep up the great work third graders!

Today we learned about voiced and unvoiced /th/ sounds which the kids really enjoyed. Ask your student about these words to test their skills

• those
• they
• tooth
• think

We also continued exploring more about water with science this afternoon. We predicted which objects would be more dense or less dense than water between a cork, wooden ball, rubber stopper, and a penny. The kids were surprised to find out that the penny and rubber stopper were more dense and sunk, while the cork and wooden ball were less dense than water and floated! They then spent time experimenting with whether cold water was more or less dense than room temperature water. The cold water was dyed blue so they loved seeing the results right in front of their eyes!

Looking ahead slightly, we are collecting pictures for Veteran's Day (since that is next Wednesday already!) and making a bulletin board in the elementary wing of the building. If you have photos of any family or friends who have ever served in the armed forces for the US then please send pictures or names with your student as soon as possible. We are trying to collect as many as possible to really celebrate all of the wonderful things that are armed forces do for us. Feel free to email me with names as well if that is easier!

Also, seventh graders will start selling their raffle tickets this week for the Thanksgiving drawing. They are raffling off a turkey, ham, and several pies. The tickets are fifty cents each or three for $1.00!

Next week (the 12th) conferences start already! You will be getting notices home soon telling you about the timeline for conferences and the schedule we will be working with. I can't wait to see you (and meet some of you for the first time) and talk about your amazing students. What a great group of kids to start teaching with!

Have a great evening!

Halloween Party Slideshow

Here are a couple of pictures from our Halloween party last Thursday. The kids had a great time! Enjoy!

A Fast Day!

Wow! What a day!

Today we continued our reading of Dogzilla, which all of the students are really loving. We practiced our writing process skills and learned about antonyms (ask your student if they remember). Then, this afternoon we made thermometers and found out what happens when you put the thermometer in cold water and hot water. The kids were absolutely fascinated with the process and are doing extremely well with our current science unit of study, which is water.

Tonight the boys and girls basketball teams played (for 5th and 6th grade)! Congratulations to the girls team who beat Frazer 24 - 12. A great game to the boys team who played their hardest, but were defeated by Frazer.

Keep up the great work third graders! Tomorrow I will post the picture slide show from our Halloween party last week! Be on the look out!

Our Book Race

Congratulations to all of the third graders for being amazing readers and beating fourth grade at the end of quarter one on the number of books read! At the end of the day on Thursday fourth grade had 33 books read, and we had 45 books read this year. That is simply amazing and you all deserve a round of applause. Keep up the great work and the great reading!

November Already!

Today was a great day at school today! I was so pleased to see that the sugar rush from Halloween has worn off and all of the students were back in their normal routines. Congratulations!

Today we learned about Los Dias de los Muertos - a Mexican holiday where loved ones who have died are celebrated. To do this we made skulls that were decorated with a lot of different colors and patterns like the the ones made in Mexico on November 1st and 2nd. We also made tissue paper marigolds which are meant to help the spirits of loved ones find their families. The kids really liked learning some Spanish phrases and words. My Spanish is a little rusty (the last time I took Spanish was 5 years ago in high school) but it is great to get to practice it again and share it with my students who love it so much!

Tomorrow is library so don't forget to bring your library books!

Our New Online Home

Welcome to the new online home of Miss Dunwoodie's (or Miss D. as most kids call me!) third grade class for 2009-2010!

I will post daily to keep families updated about what is going on in our classroom so you have great conversation starters for your evenings together.

I hope that you enjoy getting a closer look at what your student does on a daily basis in third grade with pictures, video, and words!