First Day of School 2018!

Welcome Back to the 2018-2019 New School Year!

Today 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

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

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

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

After recess, we lined up and got ready to open up and categorize all the supplies. 
Later, students dove right into reading their 'good fit book' and explored the various seating around the classroom. Look at the quiet and magnificent reading happening!

all photos by Ms. Tulbure

 

Students are excited for more adventures this week! Keep visiting the blog to see what they've been up to. 

What do you look forward to learning in 3rd grade? 

What is your favorite subject?

What is your favorite book or series?

Parents & Students

Remember to proofread your comment with a parent before you publish!
Also remember to only use your first name...no last names! 

 

Welcome Back 2018-2019

Welcome back to a new school year!

 

Here's a video greeting from Ms. Tulbure!

Parents and Students

This 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.

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If you are a new or returning student, please leave a comment telling me about yourself. What did you do over your summer break? What adventures and experiences did you enjoyed? Be sure to limit personal information! 

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

:-)

Happy Blogging!

Badger Claws Clauses

Badger Claws Clauses

A tip of the hat to retired teacher, Mrs. Ranney for this repost!

Ms Tulbure's students have been reading about a Chumash boy named Badger Claws. It's been a great way to learn about the Chumash culture! We've also started learning how to improve our writing using dependent clauses. 

What are dependent clauses?

Dependent clauses start with special words:

After, Before, Since, While, When, If, During.

A dependent clause ends with a comma and cannot stand alone as a sentence. It must be followed by an independent clause, which is a sentence that can stand alone!

Here are some excellent examples of sentences with dependent clauses from our story about Badger Claws. 

1. If mischievous Badger Claws had not gone into the hot sweathouse, he would not have been caught by the Shaman!



2. After the Shaman left the brave Badger Claws in the high mountains, Badger Claws took a nap.



3. If Badger Claws shoots the fluffy, furry rabbit, he will have to skin it, clean it, and cook it before he eats it.



4. Since Badger Claws couldn't shoot a furry rabbit, he practiced shooting down the bumpy trail.



5. After Badger Claws shot a furry, little rabbit, he needed to skin the rabbit's soft fur.



6. When Badger Claws woke up in the freezing night,
he saw two monstrous "grizzly bears!"


7. Since brave Badger Claws found out the tracks were littleraccoon tracks, he was laughing like crazy!


8. Before Aged One got home, he devoured several acorn cakes and then lied about it. 

9. During the first two moons, Badger Claws was able to construct an ap, make acorn cakes, and adopt an orphaned raccoon. 


10. While Badger Claws slept, the little raccoon escaped and ate several acorn cakes.  

How did you like our dependent clauses?

If you have a sentence with a dependent clause that you'd like to share, we'd love to read it! (Hey, that was a dependent clause sentence!)

Maybe you can leave a sentence with a dependent clause about your biography subject! 

Again, dependent clauses start with special words: After, Before, Since, While, When, If, During.

Fantastic Flip Grid Fractions

Fantastic Flip Grid Fractions

The class has been studying fractions for a couple of chapters. 

Fractions are a part of a whole. When you take a slice out of a whole, like you would take a slice out of a pizza, you are using fractions! 

The numerator, or top number in a fraction, represents how many pieces are used/shaded. The denominator, or bottom number, shows how big each piece is. 

photo by Ms. Tulbure

Fractions can be used often in our world. For example, when you have a party and want to know how much food to make, or how many pieces out of one pizza a person will eat, you will use fractions to decide how to divide up the food. Or perhaps you're making goodie bags and you've bought a pack of pencils- you need to find out what fraction of the total pencils you'll give to each person. 

Sometimes, you need to compare fractions. You may compare fractions with the same numerator, or the same denominator. What a whirlwind of learning!

Students used Flipgrid to show their knowledge of comparing fractions. 

Below is the Flipgrid for Comparing Fractions with the Same Denominator

Below is the Flipgrid for Comparing Fractions with the Same Numerator

Finally, here is the Flipgrid for finding Equivalent Fractions. 

More Flipgrids to come as they get published. 

What strategy was new to you?

What new information did you learn about fractions?

Global Play Day 2018

Today, our class participated in Global School Play Day! 

Thank you to the Bedley Brothers and Twitter for introducing me to this project!  The power of a Personal Learning Network (PLN) triumphs again!

I was heavily influence to participate in #GSPD after listening to this eye opening presentation: 

The Decline of Play TED Talk from psychologist Peter Gray. 

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On Friday, I emailed parents and asked for games to be brought in for our #GSPD event. On Wednesday, we had a few curricular blocks, but we were able to have two solid play sessions.

The sessions were sensational!

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First, we talked about

 sharing and allowing all to play. 


Then, students sorted their games and items into categories


Stuffed Animals:

all photos by Ms. Tulbure

Board Games:

all photos by Ms. Tulbure

Engineering:

all photos by Ms. Tulbure

Let's Play!

all photos by Ms. Tulbure

Cards were played.

all photos by Ms. Tulbure

 Wizard Chess was a favorite as well.

all photos by Ms. Tulbure

 Engineering with Legos

all photos by Ms. Tulbure

 A play was created and performed complete with playbills and tickets.

all photos by Ms. Tulbure

all photos by Ms. Tulbure

 

What is your opinion of Global School Play Day?

Would you recommend it?

Convince me!

Turkey Takes a Vacation

Ms. Tulbure's class loves to be creative. In December, students created fanciful stories about a creative turkey and used technology to take the turkey to another land where he would not become Thanksgiving dinner.

Steps Taken to Complete Turkey and Research

First, students choose a book they read in November, and decorated a turkey to look like the main character. 

photo by Ms. Tulbure

Second, students selected an exotic vacation location for turkey. (If he left America over Thanksgiving break, he would not get eaten.) Some turkeys stayed home.


Third, students researched a vacation destination using reference books and World Book Online.

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

Fourth, students wrote the first draft of our turkey narratives. Students opened up their Google Docs and started typing their story. A link with a writing prompt was provided in Google Classroom. 

photo by Ms. Tulbure

Steps Taken to Complete the Vacation Photos 

First, students were guided in adding the application Google Earth to their GAFE (Google Apps for Education).

Next, students located the country they had researched, and used the man icon to get a street level view. 

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

Then, students took a screen shot of their selected location.

Lastly, students uploaded their photo onto their Google Doc. 

To Bring it all together.....

We used the app Green Screen to superimpose the turkey onto the Google Earth image

. 

Below are the published pieces (more to come soon)

Turkey swims to the Pacific Ocean:

by Belana 

Turkey visits Israel: 

by Amit

 Turkey visits the Grand Canyon:

by Sam

Turkey goes to Scottsdale, Arizona: 

by Tyler

 Turkey jets off to Canada:

by Cameron

Where would your turkey go if he tried to escape Thanksgiving?

Which story did you enjoy and why?

 

What are Text Features?

Ms. Tulbure's class is learning about informational text. 

Informational text, or nonfiction writing, is based on facts, real events, and real people. There are many helpful text features found in nonfiction writing. Some common text features are:  headings, subheadings, captions, diagrams, timelines, maps, charts, table of contents, index, and the glossary.

In class, we used published informational texts as mentor texts.


Here are some headings, photos, and captions.

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

Look closely. Here is a diagram and a heading! 

photo by Ms. Tulbure

Here is a map with a key. I wonder what the arrows means? Check the key and it will unlock the meaning.

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

It's easy to stay organized. Just look at the Table of Contents for clues on chapters or in the glossary for meanings of words. The index will also help you find specific topics or guide you to answers to your questions. 

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

 

 

Wow! Text features are everywhere and you can sure learn a lot if you pay attention to them.

Photo by Ms. Tulbure

What are your favorite text features and why?

(Headings, subheadings, captions, diagrams, timelines, maps, charts, table of contents, index, and the glossary.)

What are TWO facts that you learned from a mentor text explored in class? Be sure to tell us the text feature you used to learn the factual information!