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!

Don't Forget, Math OAA Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is our final OAA!  We have been preparing all year for this.  Today we did some review work as teams.

We are ready.  Don't forget to arrive to school on time, get a good breakfast, and a good night's rest.  Also, NO EARLY DISMISSAL tomorrow.

See you in the morning!

OAA Information...We are Ready!

The OAAs (Ohio Achievement Assessments) are just around the corner.  This Thursday, April 25th we will be taking the Reading portion followed by the Mathematics on Tuesday, April 30th.  Here are some important things to keep in mind:

*  Please get a good night's rest!

* Eat breakfast

* Arrive to school on time

* There will be NO EARLY DISMISSAL on Tuesday, April 30th (2:55)

* Remember to take your time on each question

There's no doubt the students in room 407 work hard.  Here's a slideshow of just a little of the hard work we've done.  We are ready!!

Monday Fun Day: Celebration and Thinking about our Thinking

Today we celebrated achieving our class goal of 2,500,000 AR words!  It's incredible how quickly we reached this goal.  Not only did we reach this, we are almost HALFWAY to our next goal of 3,000,000 words.  Room 407 cannot be stopped!  Keep reading!

Also, today we talked again about something called metacognition.  Here at Maple, we encourage students to think about their thinking and be aware of their learning.  It's important for them to take ownership of their education not only in third grade, but every year after.  After a review of metacognition, we practiced with some thinking stems and a reading article.

They did wonderfully.  Great job, third graders!  Happy Monday!

Happy Friday!

By popular request, I am adding a link to some Mad Libs games.  (We practiced words/parts of speech this week using this game)

http://www.itsamadlibsworld.com/

Have a great weekend!

Being Botanists at the Holden Arboretum

     What a beautiful day!  The weather was perfect for a field trip.  We got to be botanists and study about the life cycle of plants.  From seed, to seedling, to mature plant, to flowering plant, to plant with seeds, and back to seed again!  I couldn't be happier with the students' behavior either.  They were all very respectful examples of Maple Elementary students!

Here are some images from our trip.  Students, can you tell a grown-up at home about each picture?

Field Trip Tomorrow

We are all set and ready to go on our exciting field trip tomorrow!  We have spent some time learning about how plants grow, both with our own seeds and our terrariums.  Now it's time to see some nature in action!  The Holden Arboretum is a beautiful place, and we are very fortunate to have the opportunity to return.

Some things to keep in mind for our trip:

* Students may dress down.  This means dress for the weather and plan to be outside most of the day!
* Please arrive to school on time tomorrow.  We will be leaving right after our awards assembly in the morning.
* Remember, if you did not sign up for a lunch from school, you must bring one.  You are more than welcome to use a lunch box, but I recommend a disposable grocery or brown bag as it is less for the students to remember to bring home with them.
* Be ready to have fun and learn!

See you in the morning!

-Mrs. H

Fraction Review Song

Watching Seeds Grow: The Follow Up

Remember this?

Our seeds  have been busy.  Today we made our observations:

How Four Friends Can Share Seven Brownies

"How can four friends share seven brownies equally? How many brownies will each person get?"  

That is the problem we worked through today in math.  We started out by discussing it, drawing diagrams, and cutting paper brownies until we solved it...

I was impressed at how much effort the students put into solving this problem.  Perhaps the subject of sharing brownies is of very high interest?  :)

After some independent and partner work, the majority of the class came up with 3 answers:

1) Each friend gets 1 and 1/2 and1/4 of a brownie.

2) Each friend gets 1 and 3/4 of a brownie.

3) Each friend gets 7/4 of a brownie.

Were they all right?  Yep!  How?

Third grade... can you explain to your grown ups at home how ALL of these answers are correct?

Fraction Action!

If you were to come into room 407 for math time during the last couple of days, you would see a flurry of fractions!  We are making our own fraction models with paper.  Fractions can be a difficult concept to master, especially when they are abstract thoughts.  However, when they are concrete pieces we can manipulate, suddenly they are less intimidating!  Check out some pictures of our fractions in action:

Here are some of the questions we discussed during our fraction exploration:

What happens to the size of a fraction when the denominator increases or decreases?

How many ways can we add fractions to equal one whole?

What does it mean when the numerator changes?

How does 1/6 compare to 1/3?

Great thinking, class!  

Spring Break!!

I hope everyone has a wonderful spring break!  Be sure to complete the math practice packet I sent home.  If you do a little each day, it will be a very easy task.  :)

Also, don't forget to READ!  I cannot believe it, but we are nearly at our next Accelerated Reader goal of 2,500,000 words.  You all have been reading like crazy.  I love it!  (note:  I just checked, and our class word count is 2,456,958 words!)  Keep reading and you can take those AR tests when you get back.

I leave you with a picture of a bit of the jelly bean math we did today....

See you in 11 days, third graders!!!

The Mysterious Case of Maple's Missing Penguin

Be sure to take your AR test tomorrow! Click here to watch the missing penguin video.

Author's Purpose

Today we discussed author's purpose.  That is to say, what is the intention of the writer in a piece of literature?  We learned that there are three reasons a literary work is written.  Do you know what those are?

Persuade, Inform, or Entertain!

Next time someone asks, just remind them to have a piece of PIE!  :)

Watching Seeds Grow

A couple of weeks ago, we dissected lima bean seeds.  Now that we've identified what is inside a seed ready to sprout, we have created our own classroom experiment on growing seeds.

Each baggie contains a paper towel soaked in water and three different kinds of seeds.  I can't wait to watch these grow!  How about you?

We are Mentors and Role Models!

For the past several weeks, we have had the opportunity to do some learning activities with the Kindergarten students in Ms. Roberts' class.  By reading and writing with them, our third graders have demonstrated leadership and role-model qualities.  Peer mentoring has many advantages for both groups, including reinforcing academics as well as social skills.  I have to say that I am incredibly impressed with how seriously our third graders take this opportunity!  The feedback we have gotten so far has been very positive. Ms. Roberts and I plan to continue this mutually beneficial practice as much as we can.  Stay tuned and awesome job third grade!!

Springtime State of Mind...

In case you are distracted by the current wind and snow and haven't noticed, tomorrow is the first day of spring!  In room 407, we kicked off our study of poetry with an acrostic poem.  Wishful thinking?