Anoles are here!

As I’m sure you’ve heard by now, we have two anoles sharing our classroom this month. They arrived last week and boy were my students excited! Students created terrariums and have been learning about food chains, food webs, and plants. Little did they know that soon these terrariums would have a real purpose.

We used the document camera to make our anole bigger than life. This way ALL students could get a good look!

Students have been using observation strategies to understand the anoles’ habitat, characteristics, and dietary needs. We are also using the scientific method to conduct plant experiments with variables and controls. Check out some pictures of our new guests!

Team 203 is learning that every living thing is part of a larger food chain or web. Some students felt sorry for the crickets that we observed later in the week that ended up being our anoles lunch. These two read alouds really help students understand each animals bigger purpose in life.

      

Interviews and biographies

To begin studying biographies students read, Rocks in his Head and then conducted interviews with friends in class. Afterwards students turned interviews into written biography reports. This activity is the kick off for our BIG third grade Wax Museum project this spring. 

    

You’re a star in Team 203

This star is so loved by his classmates that we decided he needed to have everyone be a part of his special week! Can you spot our star . . . ? He has the biggest smile in the middle of this team photo! This star shared his favorite book, Make Way for Ducklings. The most impressive part of this read aloud was that our star knew almost every word by heart, wow! Family, family, family. . . . this was the common theme that we saw when we celebrated this star. He also has many passions like Teletubbies, movies, and DANCE. 

Everything at Once

Team 203 listened to this song called Everything at Once today. It is FILLED with similes. We are using the song to help launch our poetry unit and get students familiar with poetic language. As a class we found over 25 similes in this song. How many can you find on your own?

Stay tuned for our simile illustrations based on these lyrics.

Star of the Week

This star shared many things with our class and surprised us with a zany pirate read aloud. He is showing off his karate certificate in this picture which proves his dedication and responsibility to the sport. The Peace Builder of the Month did a great job sharing his interests with our class. 

Read Across America and Leap Day 2012

Officer Harris volunteered on Read Across America Day and he read the Dr. Seuss classic, And to Think I Saw it on Mulberry Street to the entire third grade. It was great to see adults in all different types of work talk to our students about how important reading is. Officer Harris told us that he likes to read on vacation, awwww don’t we all.

Thanks for donating your time Officer    Harris, what a great day!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We celebrated Leap Day by practicing our listening skills and testing our patience with some Leap Day origami leap frogs. Students had a ball designing their frogs and making them leap across the classroom. A few friends even made GIANT leap frogs out of full sized paper. 

Star of the Week

We had a great time learning about our star last week. He brought in parts of his sea life and beach collection to share with the class. We couldn’t help to notice that it started to snow as he was reading the classic book, The Mitten by Janet Stevens. This was a perfect choice to read aloud and our star was well prepared to read with expression, show the beautiful illustrations, and read fluently! Well done 🙂

Simply symmetry

Sam and Nate C. were the creators!

Here are a few shots of some explorations in symmetry. Students used pattern blocks to create one half of a design. A partner had to make the other half of the design and keeping it symmetrical.