We are FOURTH GRADERS!

     Well, by the end of tomorrow, you will all be fourth graders!  I can't believe that the end of the year is is here!  I have enjoyed teaching all of you!  Please remember to read, read, read this summer and sign up for the Morley Library summer reading program.

     Have a wonderful summer!

--- Mrs. Huminsky

Spring Performance and the Life Cycle of Honeybee

In case you missed yesterday's musical, let me tell you- it was an amazing show!  The students worked very hard and all that work paid off.  We listened to their music and dancing to music of the 50s and 60s.  It was wonderful!

Also, earlier this week we reviewed the skill of finding the main idea and details as we watched a video about the life cycle of the honeybee.  

The students showed some evidence of good thinking on this as well.  Still going strong on room 407!

Have a great weekend!  Be on the lookout for information coming home about our 3rd grade picnic Tuesday!  We have a fun week ahead as we wrap up third grade and get ready to be FOURTH GRADERS.

States of Matter: Solid, Liquid, Gas

Today we talked about how the particles in matter are spaced, depending on which state of matter these particles are found.  We had fun using cereal to demonstrate this:

(and worked very well for snacktime too! :)  )

By request, I am including our solid, liquid, gas music video:

Odds and Ends...

We are down to our last few weeks in room 407, but are still going strong!  In math, we've done some work on graphing changes in temperature over time and predicting patterns in an extended series.  Also, we've been taking on the latest Accelerated Reader challenge by storm!  Science has us exploring matter and we've continued exploring maps and the United States in Social Studies. 

Dates to remember:

May 27th- Memorial Day, no school

May 30th- 3-5th Grade Music program at 1:30 in gym

June 6th- Last day for students

We will be planning an outdoor third grade picnic for that last week of school as well so stay tuned!

Geography Fun

Our students have taken quite an interest in the geography of the United States.  (Could be brought on by one student's recent trip to Illinois and another's upcoming trip to Hawaii!!)

Here's a great interactive website on the subject:

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/web_games.htm

Enjoy!

Something to be Proud of...

I just wanted to brag a bit.  Today, 25 students went to the library and took the Accelerated Reader comprehension quiz on The Tale of Despereaux.  I set the goal- if 18 of students could get a 70% or higher on the quiz, that we would have a movie morning on Monday.  Well, TWENTY of those 25 received a 70% or higher!  (With most not very far behind and several with 100%!)  If you are keeping track, 80% of the students in room 407 met that goal!  Awesome!

Which brings our class word count to just over 3,600,000 words!  Definitely something to celebrate!  

Have a great weekend!

Mrs. H

 

The Tale of Despereaux

After Spring Break, I began reading the book The Tale of Despereaux out loud to the students during snack time.  It's a wonderful story of mice, rats, royalty, good and evil.  It has many twists and turns and qualities of a old-fashioned fairy tale!  Along the way, we have discussed so many of the language arts skills we've learned this year: characters, setting, inferences, vocabulary, just to name a few.  The students (and myself!) have really enjoyed reading this adventure!

Today, we made and ate soup!  Why?  Because many of the story's events are connected to soup.  Here's the graphic organizer we made during our class discussion:

After reading our chapters for today, we tasted soup just like the characters in the castle in which Despereaux the mouse lives.  The students then had to write a paragraph predicting the end of the book.

They did a great job and had many interesting ideas as to what the conclusion to this story could be! Stay tuned!  We will be finishing this book soon and after we take AR tests on it, we will have a "Movie Morning" in which we get to watch the cartoon version of this story. :)

(Parents, if you'd like to read a really good book about the advantages of reading aloud to children of any age, check out the book, The Read Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease.  I highly recommend it.)

Have a great evening!  See you tomorrow, Third Grade Thinkers!