Teller Trainees

Our twelve 3rd grade students visited TS Bank to receive training for their teller positions next year. We cannot wait to begin saving with them for our futures!

Reading with Tellagami

Listen to our students share responses to reading using Tellagami!

Vegetable Taste Test

Today, students tasted vegetables that might do well planted in our People's Garden. After tasting, students voted for the vegetables that they would like to plant. Winners? Carrots, tomatoes, cucumbers, green bell peppers, and romaine lettuce. Last, we came up with questions we would need answers to before finally planting any of these vegetables:
- How much space does the plant need to grow?
- When is the best time to plant it and when could we expect to harvest it?
- How much food will the plant produce?

WOW!

Now, I do not cry in front of the students, but, there have been a few times lately when I have had to hold back tears in the classroom.

Today, I had a student so excited to show me the writing he worked on last night. At first, I thought he was talking about accessing his Google Drive at home and adding to his draft. Even that alone would be exciting. He continued to tell me that while eating at Ruby Tuesday's last night with his family, he used his iPod, figured out how to use Chrome and their free WI-FI, and wrote his lead with a purpose in mind to add more interest for his reader. Amazing!

The other time recently I found myself with weird eyes and goose bumps was when I could not keep up with moderating the comments that were coming into my e-mail about my students' writing. Not a bad problem to have at all!

I am looking forward to many more of those moments with our students! Just wanted to share.

Perimeter "Tellagami" and "ShowMe"s

Today students received their math problem from a weird version of Mrs. Crain. (Click on video to watch our Gami.)

Students were to design a variety of gardens using only 24 feet of wood. Diagrams needed to include the dimensions and perimeters. Once they were finished they needed to decide which design was best and be ready to share their choice and reasoning.

Here are some "ShowMe"s of the most common designs.

These students thought this garden would allow more vegetables to be planted.

These students thought this garden would be easier to weed.

What were not good ideas for garden designs? stars and triangles. Why? You can't plant much in the corners!

Rue Writers and Commenting

Today we visited Mrs. Yollis' blog to learn how to leave quality comments. We learned that comments should:

1. Compliment the writer in a specific way.

2. Add new information.

3. Make a connection.

4. End with a question.

5. Be proofread.

Thanks to Mrs. Yollis and her students for teaching us how to leave superb comments. To learn more about blogging, you can visit their class blog at http://yollisclassblog.blogspot.com/2013/04/video-benefits-of-blogging.html.

When we were finished we practiced our commenting skills on our friends' blog posts at www.ruewriters.blogspot.com. Here are some of the comments we left:

• "I liked how you gave me examples of different horses. Keep it up. Is there a kind of horse that is mean?" Colton
• "Hi Colton you give us great reasons about why dogs need exercise so I will get a dog and give him some exercise just like you say so thanks for giving us great reasons dogs need exercise." David 3rd Grade Iowa

Great start students!

Here is a response we got back from Mrs. Yollis:

Dear Mrs. Crain and class,

I am so pleased that you were able to use our video to help you learn about commenting! That always makes me smile when I learn that we helped some other bloggers.

What is the most difficult part about commenting for you?

I hope you always follow Panda's advice and proofread before you publish!

Happy Blogging!

Mrs. Y♥llis
California 

TodaysMeet

Today, students used TodaysMeet to make connections to our reading of Clementine. In the book, Clementine is beginning a very bad week. Students wrote about their worst week ever and responded to others' bad weeks. Students also made other connections and responded to questions others had about Clementine.

 

  

Clementine Read Aloud

We are so excited for our Clementine read aloud. We will share this experience with other students throughout North America. We were so excited that we had to read just a few pages on Friday!

Clementine by Sarah Pennypacker (photo from Amazon)