Welcome Back 2016-2017!

Welcome Back to the 2016-2017 New School Year!

Yesterday was our first day of school!

We jumped right in and started our adventure! 

In the morning, students and families lined up to meet the teacher and hear a few opening remarks from the principal.

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

In class, we began by getting to know each other through teamwork and games.  

We also got started right away with the introduction of Daily 5. Daily 5 is a structure as a way to teach reading and writing by giving students choice in the goals they are working on. We started with the first choice, Read to Self. During this time, we discussed the reasons we do Read to Self: because it's fun and it makes us better readers and writers. We also talked about a few rules to help us reach our reading goals. Read to Self is part of the Daily 5.
To learn more about the Daily 5 and the Sisters you may go to the link. 

Below, you can see students staying in one spot, reading quietly and reading the whole time. 

Photos by Ms. Tulbure

After recess, we opened up and categorized all the supplies. Later, students had fun "building" using the Kleenex boxes and the paper towels. They used teamwork and perseverance to build a pyramid. 

What does perseverance mean?

Photos by Ms. Tulbure

The tissue boxes are rectangular prisms, while the paper towels are cylinders.

Magnificent balancing work!

Parents & Students


Here are some links for you to peruse as we start our year of learning together:

This educational blog is the centerpiece of our classroom community. It is a wonderful space for sharing and learning together. Here is a link to an article Mrs. Yollis wrote about the benefits of classroom blogging. I hope you'll have a chance to read it before our Back to School Night.

Let's start blogging!

Students, please leave a comment telling us about yourself. What did you do over your summer break? What adventures and experiences did you enjoyed?


If you are one of our blogging buddies, please introduce yourself to my new class. Where are you from? What have you been up to?



Remember to proofread your comment with a parent before you publish!

BreakoutEDU!

Mrs. Minicozzi came to our room last week with a fabulous game. 

It was called BreakOut EDU! 

Photos by Mrs. Yollis 

Photo by Mrs. Yollis


TEAMWORK was important!
It you finished your task and unlocked one lock, you were free to go and help other teams.

 Everyone was intrigued with the locks.  

How do we get them open?

Students were given 45 minutes to solve the puzzle and unlock the box.

We loved this type of collaborative learning!  A tip of the hat to Jeanine Huebner for the BreakOut EDU tasks! 

Take a look at our teamwork and problem solving in the slideshow below. 

Breakout EDU on PhotoPeach

Landforms and Islands As Far as the Eye Can See!

Our landforms unit has been an adventure indeed.

According to Dictionary.com, a Landform is:

noun, Geology.

1.a specific geomorphic feature on the surface of the earth, ranging from large-scale features such as plains, plateaus, and mountains to minor features such as hills, valleys, and alluvial fans. 

Depending on your environment, or where you live, you may see different landforms outside your window.

Watch the below Brainpop video for more information about landforms

The class was inspired by the various land and water features they learned about that they created their own....on an island.  (Thank you to Linda Kamp and her wonderful TPT store packet)

Check out the slide show below of students making the islands out of salt and flour dough, painting their landforms, then creating a wondrous world of adventure!

Salt and Flour Islands on PhotoPeach

What kinds of landforms were on your island?

What is your favorite kind of landform?

Have you visited any land or water forms? Which ones?

The Year in Review

We have had a lot of adventures this year in third grade.

We have challenged ourselves with math, created various math projects.

We have improved our reading and writing stamina, writing pages and pages.

We made crafts such as these fun candle holders for our Winter project (then we decorated and ate some delicious cookies)



Winter Crafts on PhotoPeach

 
 We also visited the Chumash way of life and made jewelry, listened to stories, played games, and made acorn mush.


Chumash Field Trip on PhotoPeach

 We also got to exercise and challenge ourselves at our Moove-a-palooza
 Mooveapalooza on PhotoPeach



What was your favorite activity this year and why?


 

Learning About Compound Sentences

Adding compound sentences to your writing can make your stories and essays more interesting. 

What is a compound sentence? 

*       *       *       *       *

A compound sentence:

1. Combines two shorter sentences (so has TWO subjects)
2. Joins the two sentences with a conjunction (and, or, but, so, yet, nor, and for)   The comma goes BEFORE the conjunction.

*       *       *       *       *

Here is an acronym to help you remember some conjunctions: 

F A N B O Y S

(for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so)

 This image has information about WHAT each conjunction means. 

CLICK TO ENLARGE. 

*       *       *       *       *

For social studies, we have been reading a book called Badger Claws of Ojai. This realistic fiction story is about a Chumash boy who wants to become a brave. To prove he is worthy, he mustlive in the mountains for three moons, hunt a big game animal, and complete a service project for his community. 

Here are some compound sentence examples that will tell you more about this great realistic fiction story. 

Badger Claws could go and live with his aunt and uncle, or he could try surviving in the wilderness for three moon. 

Badger Claws was a young boy, yet he was able to survive successfully in Little Matilha. 

Old Silver Tip was stalking the women and children as they collected acorns, but Badger Claws was able to save the villagers. 

*       *       *       *       *

F A N B O Y S

(for, and, nor, but, or, yet, and so)

Vernal Equinox- 2016

One sign of spring is the abundance of colorful flowers that start blooming everywhere!

Rose photo by Mrs. Yollis  

Lilac photo by Mrs. Yollis 

Poppies by Mrs. Yollis 

The first day of spring is called the 

Vernal Equinox. 

Spring started on Saturday, March 19, 2016, at 9:30 P.M. (PDT) in southern California. It is called the Vernal Equinox. There are two times when the sun is exactly above the equator. One equinox is in September and the other is in March. Equinox means equal night and there are nearly twelve hours of day and twelve hours of night.

Here is a video from Discovery Education to

help explain the Vernal Equinox!

In addition, BrainPop offers six different informational videos about spring! 

What signs of spring have you noticed?

Do you have springtime hobbies or activities?

What did you learn from the BrainPop movies? 

Charlotte's Web Colaborative Cartoons

We just finished reading Charlotte's Web, by E. B. White. To complement the book, we made a collaborative slide show. Each of the twenty-two chapters got a summary slide. Students worked in pairs to create each summary slide. Cartoons helped tell the story!

First, students picked a chapter. Then they went to Scholastic's Charlotte's Web Make-Your-Own Comic. It is fabulous!

Once there, students picked a layout. We recommend template two. 

In addition, two comic cells per slide looks best. 

There are many comic options. For example, there are characters, objects, settings, and speech bubbles. Students clicked and dragged the items that went with their chapter. 

Students took screen shots of their comic cells and then inserted the screen shots in the collaborative Google slide show. 

Behold! Our Collaborative slide show!

After learning how to make a web, we decided to make two in our room! How did we make this web?

photos by Ms. Tulbure


 


Which slide was your favorite?

Which character do you like the best and why?

Which character changed the most? 

If you want to be clever, leave a comment from the point-of-view of a character.  :-)