Wise Update
Week of Feb. 1-5
Classroom Update
This week we will also be visited by teachers from Northside Elementary School. We are conducting a visitation for their teachers to come see our school in action and another day where we can go see their school in action. So many times you hear about great things happening within our district, but you don't get to go see it yourself. This will be a learning experience for both schools and we are very excited to host our part. I am excited for Northside to see our math block and our makerspce in action. :)
Our Studies ...
Reading- Makerspace "Toy Makers"
Science- Earth's rotation, moon phases
Writing- Writing about character traits
Word Study - As teachers we are forever learning ourselves. I am constantly looking at my third graders and asking myself how can I meet all student needs. Our word study block has been on my heart as an area I wanted to better serve the third graders. This is such important aspect to our learning as readers and writers. I have done some reading and thinking that has lead to an idea of change in this subject area for our class.
I would like to try two things with our words that we call "Spelling words".
1) I would like to bring our word work into our reading groups. This means that each reading group will focus on common word development patterns that are seen within their stories. These words and the patterns they teach us will be our "spelling words". This means that the days of spelling homework and Friday spelling tests will no longer be the case for us. We will study patterns and then be asked to write to analyze how well we are processing what we learn.
2) No excuse words (or the words we just need to know ... like have, they, get, etc.) These words are going to be self driven. Each week we will look at our own writing samples and find 5 words that appear to be spelled incorrectly and occur misspelled often. These we will adopt as our own individual no excuse words. We will use the week to practice them and write with them. We can even bring these home for our families to help us. On Friday we will be asked to use the words in a writing piece to see how our progress is coming.
My wish is that this new approach links reading and writing. Also that it gives personal purpose to each third graders area of need and growth. Should you have any questions I would love to discuss this further with you.
Friendship Day ... aka ... Valentines Party
We will celebrate Friendship Day on February 11th (as I will be out of town on Friday the 12th).
Students can bring in a decorated box and Friendship Cards to exchange from 1:00 to 1:30.
We will start at 1:30 and go to 2:30. We will have 6 stations where we play different friendship games. Below you will find a list of items that we will need for the various games. You can contact Glenna Hollis (Brayden's mom) at glennahollis@gmail.com if you are able to send in any of the items. If you are available to run a station please let us know as well. We can use lots of help! :)
Items needed:
Bags of Conversational Hearts (Candy Hearts) - 10 bags
2 packages of Oreos (If there are pink or red filled that would be great)
3 boxes Little Debbies (25 total)
3 Cans of Shaving Cream
3 bags Cheeto-balls (generic okay)
paper plates
Friends in class for Friendship Cards ... (hard copy of list will go home also)
Michael, Reagan, Jackson, Kayden,
Jayden, Logan, Preston, Shelia,
Jaiden, Payton, London, Douglas,
Chloe, Kobey, Brayden, Chris,
Klaire, Kamen, Chelsea, Seth,
Alexis, Noah, Alex, Makayla,
Isaiah
Up Coming Dates ....
2/11 Friendship Day 1:30-2:30
2/15 Class Picture Day
2/15 School is in session - make up snow day :)
3/3 Family Night 6:00-7:30
3/4 Spring Picture Day
Shawna Wise - Third Grade Teacher
Email: shawna.wise@cps.k12.ar.us
Location: 36 Pond Street, Cabot, AR, United States
Phone: 501-743-3564
Twitter: @wiseowls4ever