I hope everyone had a lovely weekend!  I won't be posting every day, but here is a peek at today so you know what kinds of things we are learning!

Please send in student information forms, insurance forms etc. that were sent home the first week of school!

Today we started a new way to recognize the good things that happen in our classroom and on the school yard.  Since we read the book about filling others' buckets, we each have a bucket on our desk.  When a student demonstrates traits of a good classmate by making another person feel special, showing good character, following instructions, or is working hard, they may get a pom pom to fill their bucket.  Students can trade in pom poms on Fridays for tickets to put in a draw. Many pom poms were handed out today!

This morning all of the students received a personal dictionary filled with words that grade 3s often use in writing.  It is a working dictionary, meaning words can be added to it throughout the year.  We talked about how the dictionary is organized alphabetically and practiced finding words as a class and with a partner.  Many students were already making good use of their dictionary today!

Today we learned how to pick a book using the acronym I PICK.

I pick a book.

P urpose - Why am I reading this text?

I nterest - What am I interested in?

C omprehension - I understand what I am reading.

K now - I know most of the words.

The students then picked 3 books to store in their personal book boxes.

Today we read A Bad Case of Tattle Tongue.  We learned the difference between tattling and telling.  It is telling if someone is in danger, or a situation is important and an adult needs to be involved. It is important to tell an adult in these situations.  It is tattling if the problem can be solved without an adult, it is not important, or the purpose is just to get someone in trouble.  When faced with a problem situation, I am encouraging students to express to others how they are feeling and make attempts to solve problems independently when appropriate.

In math we worked on using math language to discover a mystery number between 1 and 100.  Each student got a hundreds chart and had to ask questions using math language (odd, even, greater than, less than, tens).  Based on the answer, they had to eliminate all of the numbers that it couldn't be until they knew the mystery number.  After a few practice rounds as a whole class, the students partnered up and played again, picking their own mystery numbers.  We have also been working on representing a number in different ways.