Spring is here?

Well it appears that we've gone from very cold days to allergy filled pollen days. What happened to slowly changing temperatures and welcoming Spring. In the  Florida panhandle as well as some other Southern states, we have an abundance of pine trees, which means there is yellow pine pollen everywhere.  The unfortunate part of Spring for me is that I must be allergic to every other tree that is blooming. With all that being said, we are finishing up our Spring Break and my third graders will be starting a new unit on Insects, Butterflies to be exact.

Before Spring Break I ordered larva from Nature-gifts. com. They have a great assortment of Painted Lady larva as well as Monarch larva. So I hope when I return to school next week my caterpillar larva will arrive as well. I order one caterpillar for each student so they can monitor it's growth and development. Along with this I do a novel study in my small group reading. The one that best goes with insects / non-fiction/fiction text is the Magic School Bus Butterfly Battle. I have used this for a couple of years and have found that the non-fiction portion of the book is great for reinforcing all those non-fiction text features, and the fiction part of the book is an easy enough read even for my struggling readers. I have created a unit that reinforces the comprehension portion of the story as well as going over Science related aspects of insects. Take a look as see what you think.

Butterfly Battle

Snow Days in Florida?

I know most of the country has been facing severe weather situations, but when the Florida Panhandle gets to 28 degrees, everything shuts down. Our district closed for three days last week due to the frigid temperatures. Now I know frigid is all relative, but you have to understand, this is Florida. We do hurricanes, we don't do ice and snow! We don't have the necessary equipment in place to de-ice bridges, so with all that being said, we had three "snow days" and I was able to get a unit completed that I had been working on for some time.

We all know that repetition is the key in getting some of the skills our students learn firmly planted in their brains. I created a pre -FCAT ( Florida's state test)  review for my third graders that is a repetitive worksheet based on the major math concepts. I had already taught multiplication, division, place value, fractions, and touched bases thus far with geometry, measurement and time. What I came up with is just that, a review sheet that I give out weekly to keep all those skills we had already learned and ones that I would be covering more extensively in the next month or so on the forefront of their brains. Check it out!

Weekly Math Review

Let The Olympic Games Begin!

I love the Olympics! To be completely honest it is the only time I watch sports. I have quite a few students this year that are very eager to start reading chapter books, especially the Magic Tree House series. For a first grade student the biggest challenge after word recognition is reading comprehension and stamina. I decided to create a unit to use as an enrichment piece for small group instruction, that would include the current events that are going on in the world. The unit was designed to accompany the Magic Tree House Book #16, Hour of the Olympics. It includes comprehension questions for each of the ten chapters, character maps, a character map writing activity, a map skills activity, four non-fiction close reads that tie in social studies elements, a compare and contrast activity, two comprehension tests with keys, an olympic sports log, a narrative writing prompt and an opinion writing prompt, an olympic craft and a gold medal graphing activity. This unit was also created with both the Summer and Winter games in mind, so that it could be a resource for either one. This is a great way to include current events and non-fiction into a whole group read aloud or small group instruction. This could also be used for literature circles. Check out some of the unit pictures below and let the games begin!

Let's Start the Year with a Freebie!

Happy New Year! As part of my first grade morning work I do what I like to call a word of the day. This is a really great way to introduce and reinforce vocabulary. I like to pick words that correlate with what I am teaching for my Common Core ELA block. These usually have a Science or Social Studies theme since everything is now integrated. At the beginning of the year the students are required to trace the word, write it three times, fill in a sentence using the word, unscramble the letters and paste them in the correct order, and then use the word in their own sentence. After I have taught nouns, verbs and adjectives I have my students start to circle these parts of speech in their sentence using certain colors (red for nouns, blue for verbs and green for adjectives). This has really helped my students with their writing while at the same time reinforcing these grammar components. When we return this January, I have updated the activities to make them more challenging. They will only need to write the word twice, fill in the sentence using the word, and then instead of unscrambling the letters they will need to write two sentences (one asking and one telling) using the word and identify the noun, verb and adjective in each sentence. If you would like to try out a few of these worksheets with your students be sure to check out my New Years Word of the Day Freebie as well as my other Word of the Day Units in our TPT store!

Cyber Sale

Well, Thanksgiving is over....three more weeks until winter break, but who's counting!

We have decided to join TPT in their Cyber Sale this Monday, December 2 and Tuesday, December 3.
We are offering 10% off all our products along with TPT's discount, Happy Shopping!

Check out our Gingerbread poems, both printed and cursive versions along with our December quilt square!

Gingerbread Poem

What is a Pilgrim?

This is the question I am asking my students. What constitutes a Pilgrim? I created this unit incorporating the book Molly's Pilgrim along with four other texts, which deal with the same theme of immigration. Each book takes coming to America from a different part of the world and delves into the fact that people emigrated to America for a better way of life. Whether it was for religious reasons as the Pilgrims or for security and safety

I broke Molly's Pilgrim into three sections and created comprehension questions for it as well as the other four books. I also created graphic organizers to compare and contrast the similarities as well as differences in the texts. I am also having my students create a Heritage doll using a clothespin, which will be a take home project. Enjoy and Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Literature Unit

Third Grade Goals

My goodness, it is already October, where does the time go? Today we have officially started our second nine weeks and with that I have my third grade students once again write out academic goals for the nine week period. I have them revisit their previous goals to see whether they were attained or whether that is still something that they are working towards. In doing this it puts some of the responsibility onto the student's shoulders as it is something they are working towards.

These goal statements are in our TPT store for FREE. I have included one for each of the nine week periods in both girl and boy versions.Third Grade Goals