The Happenings in 3S

There was a lot happening this week on our classroom! From Boosterthon to Map testing we still found time to fit in a lot of learning!


This week we kicked off this year's school fundraiser Camp High Five! Camp High Five is all about building a community of friends within our school and really promotes kindness throughout Hunt Club. Our students are raising money by asking for pledges for the Fun Run. Each student will participate in the Fun Run on Wednesday, September 18th from 9:15-10:30. Parent are ENCOURAGED to come and show their support during our Fun Run!! Our students are raising money for our Home and School Organization to provide Hunt Club with many great activities this year! For the past three days our class has been in lead for the Third Grade! We've already earned no homework, extra recess, and pajama day! Let's see what else we can earn this week by getting more pledges! Parents- I hope to see you there on Wednesday!!!

Sophia even got to participate in the assembly 

Were up to $35 per lap!

Miss Silis' Cheetah Runners 

Daily Pep Assemblies 

Extra Recess and Lunch with Teacher! 

It just so happened that on Friday our class earned extra recess! We took our extra recess on the playground and got to enjoy the beautiful weather!!! It was a nice brain break from learning too.

 

Writer's Notebook 

We are still adding entries to our writers notebook. This week we wrote about nouns, September 11th, chocolate, and created our Authority Lists.  Authority List are things we know A LOT about. In my writer's notebook I added things like country music, golf, teaching, children's books, and even dogs. It was neat to see what each student knew a lot about. I found out a lot a things about our students that I didn't know before too!!  These topics will serve as future writing pieces because they will be personal to the students and we they will know a lot about the topics. 

September 11th

In honor of September 11th we talked about the importance of remembering these moments in our nations history. We also watched a short Brain Pop video about September 11th and then students reflected about it in their Writer's Notebook. We also read two amazing books about September 11th. One was called 14 Cows for America and the other was Fireboat: The Heroic Adventures of  the John. J. Harvey.  I was very impressed at how knowledgeable the students were about this moment as well as the insights they provided during their reflection and our discussion about this day. 

Celebrations! 

We had a lot of celebrating to  do this week as well! Our first scholastic book order came in and we got over 50 books to add to our classroom library!!! We also earned 8,000 bonus points for scholastic books!!! Thanks to all the parents who ordered books and contributed to our classroom library! 

We also need to celebrate Rory completing Xtra Math addition and well as Matt being the first one to complete Xtra Math subtraction! Congrats to both of you. Many of you are very close to completing addition...keep up the good work! We also earned extra recess and lunch with the teacher. 

So many great reads! 

Wade was the Star Student this Week 

Don't let the pigeon distract the students!

This week here at Hunt Club we have been taken over by the Pigeons!! Second graders were studying Mo Willem's and they created their own pigeon sayings that reminded our students to follow school-wide expectations. We enjoyed walking through the school seeing what the Pigeon had to say.... here are a few of the ones we love!

Don't let the pigeon fill the drinking fountain with lemonade. 

 We also have a lot to celebrate this week!! We had two birthdays this week and another one this Monday. 

Happy Birthday Matthew and Kevin :) 

We are also celebrating Matt being the first one to complete Xtra Math addition in our class! Followed closely by Joshua and Kameron. Congrats on your hard work and memorization of your basic facts! 

                  

Writers Workshop

This week in school we continued to add entries into our writer's notebooks. We first learned what nouns are and even learned a fun song! Ask them to sing it for you.. and you may even find yourself singing it at times. (ohh a noun is a name, yes, a noun is a name for a person or a place or a thing!)

Noun- person, place, or thing
We even learned that proper nouns get capitalized.

One of our writers notebook entries was writing from a noun. Each student selected a noun and wrote  it at the top of their entry. They then wrote about that noun for 20 minutes. They were able to write whatever came to their mind regarding that noun and everyone came up with great information. We realized how as writers it is important to collect your ideas in a notebook and that it's okay for your thoughts to vary into other stories because you never know when a brilliant idea is going to come to you!  Some noun we wrote about this week were.... pickles, minecraft, youtube, pikmin, and many other things. Ask your child what they wrote about? 

  

Our favorite time of writers workshop is when we get to share! I especially love hearing everyone's ideas and seeing how different their entries were. Some wrote facts about their noun while others wrote stories  r even lists about that noun.

In reading workshop we are continuing to build our reading stamina and work toward 45 minutes of independent reading time! I introduced reading logs to students as well as Genre Bingo. My goal is that students vary the genres that they read and Genre Bingo  is a fun and encouraging way to do that! If they get a Bingo they are able to earn a ticket toward a raffle of a book! I have three different books that I will raffle each month to students who earned a Bingo because they read a variety of genres.  I am also continuing reading conferences to get to know your children as readers. Of course, we enjoyed library time and reading lounge as well! 

Reading Conferences

Reading Lounge 

Yay for Library day!

First week of School!

What a wonderful first week of school it has been!!  I have enjoyed getting to know each and every student this past week and am looking forward to a wonderful school year filled with excitement and learning! Here are a few of the highlights from this week in school!

Saving Fred!

Saving Fred was a team building activity that the students got to participate in. Fred's (gummy worm) boat was capsized and he was left on top of the boat ( plastic cup) but the problem was that his life jacket ( life saver gummy) was trapped under the boat! Students had to work together to Save Fred! The only catch was they were NOT allowed to use their hands. They had to use four paperclips to save Fred. Check out some of the pictures from this activity! All students were able to eventually work together and save Fred!!

 

 

 

Spaghetti Tower

Another fun team building activity that we attempted to do was the Spaghetti Tower! Each group was given 20 uncooked spaghetti noodles and 25 mini marshmallows. The goal was to make the tallest tower they could! They started out strong but  then after awhile the masrshmallows began to melt and everything collapsed. Note to self next year: use stale marshmallows. Overall it was a fun activity and the groups learned a lot about how to work in a team and collaborate!

 

 

 

Reading Workshop!

After many mini lessons and learning about our classroom library we FINALLY got to start our first reading workshop and get books in our book boxes!  Reading Workshop is a time where I share a mini lesson and then the students go practice those skills during their independent reading time. At that time I have reading conferences or meet with our guided reading groups. Then we come together at the end and share what we have learned! I was able to get in 7 reading conferences this week and have already begun getting to know your child as a reader! They have taught me so much this week through their reading interests as well!  The students were so excited to finally read. We even took our first trip to the reading lounge :)

Director's Chair- Lucky You!

Nothing better than a pillow and a book :)

We love our Book Nook Spots!

Reading Workshop

Happily reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid!

Whatever is comfortable for you...
 

Unexpected VS Expected behavior

This year our school is using Michelle Garcia Winter's Social Thinking model as our school wide and classroom expectations. This week we spent some time going over our school expected and unexpected behaviors in different situations throughout the school day.  Of course we had to make it fun by modeling what our "Expected" vs "Unexpected" behaviors are throughout the day! I even joined in on the fun  :)



Unexpected Read Aloud Behavior

Expected Read Aloud Behavior



 



Unexpected hallway behavior



Expected hallway behavior

 

 Unexpected Carpet Behavior



Expected Carpet Behavior

What a wonderful first week of school!! They are doing very well on their expected behaviors in the classroom. Keep up the good work!

I Mustache you a Question... How do you set up your room?!

This year is my first year being able to stay in the same classroom and I was surprised at how much easier it is to set up your classroom! Now don't get me wrong it was still A LOT of work but it has gone by relatively quickly. It is my third day in the classroom and I am pretty much set up for the most part. It helped that last year I really liked my layout and it worked nicely.... but of course I can't do the same thing two years in a row! So I had to switch it up a little. I am VERY happy with the results. I only made slight changes to the lay out but I think  it is enough for me to feel like its different :)

One of my favorite things to do before the school year starts is to look at different classroom set ups and get ideas for mine. I always map out my layout before going in. On the first day back, if I at least get my furniture where I want it I am happy. I mean let's be honest I have spent the majority of the time back at school chatting with all the other teachers!!

I am also very lucky to have had some great helpers to set up my classroom who do the things I dread doing each year.. and that is putting up stuff on the wall! If I never have to roll another tape ball again I would be happy.. but I know that's not going to happen. So for now, I settle with having my family and friends come in and do that with me. Surprisingly they are eager to do those things!

Today the power went out at school so I had to leave early but I snapped a few pictures of the room so far. there area a lot of minor details I need to work out but I am not going back til next week to think about that! I want to enjoy the last few days of summer doing something fun!

Here are a few pics of the new areas of my room! This is my Classroom Library..aka my pride and joy! I absolutely love this are of my room because it is where we spend the majority of our time and where I get to share the magic of stories with my students. There is something about this time that is so special and I love that this area invites students in. This year I've finally gotten some pillows for my students to share!

Last year I did Genre of the Month and I absolutely LOVED it! It allowed my students to be exposed to a variety of genres as well as held me accountable for reading all the genres. I always tried to tie the genre to the reading strategies that I am teaching but sometimes it just doesn't work out. Instead I make sure  my read aloud is from that area. Wondering where I got my library labels.. from the Wonderful Beth Newingham!! Where I get all my fabulous ideas.. that aren't actually mine.

I love having pictures in my classroom because I think it makes it feel more home-y

Another great idea I "borrowed" from Beth was Book Recommendations. I allow students to do 2 book recommendations during Reading Workshop. It is a great way  to build a community of readers in your classroom and the students get really excited to both write and receive recommendations from their peers. I also write some personal recommendations as well as some staff from my building and parents during conference or open house.

At the end of school last year I found these amazing common core I CAN statements that matched my classroom theme! Of course I decided to use them right away and ended up adding magnets to use them on my white board because I had no more space on my walls!  I did not use them to the full potential that I could and I am excited to start this year fresh with a Learning Objective board where I can post the I CAN statements and my students can refer to them easily.



Check out my new posters?! I found them at the Chalkboard and I LOVE the sayings on them. I am not sure where I want them in my room but I placed them there because I couldn't wait to put them up. It'll do for now lol...


Another area where I spend the majority of my day is at my small group table doing Guided Reading or Guided Math. Therefore I needed to create an area that was perfect for both of these times. I am so excited at my new set up. Last year I had it on the other side of my room and I felt very close to the students desks. It is now in the back of the room where I can see the whole class during Reading Workshop. I also found a shelf at Target that is perfect to store my Guided Reading Materials and Math Materials as well.

Guided Reading Table!

I Love the new Mustache Mania set I found on TPT. It's a fun way to spice up my Guided Reading area. I also love how you can post your Common Core Objectives near the Guided Reading table so you can show what skills you are working on.

So I Mustache you... How do you set up your classroom?!