and that is a wrap...

This will most likely be the last post for this blog.  My travels in third grade are over!  There have been some interesting events this year--- the plant up on Gessner exploding one morning (it didn't affect us, but my husband's office used to be a street over from there, so it seemed close to home).  There was the unexpected day off because of a water pipe that broke elsewhere in the city, but making the water unsafe to use and drink. 

And then the Thursday before Spring Break....2020.  We had been told for several days to make sure we took our laptop home with us each evening.  There was a virus spreading rapidly across the world and it had arrived in the United States.  Washington and New York were getting hit hardest, but it was rapidly moving into other cities and states.  On Thursday we sent some things home with children as a "just in case" we weren't able to come right back after Spring Break, and then Thursday night we got the notification that school was closed for Friday.  Then it was through the month of March, then through the month of April, until finally it was announced that we were not going to return to "normal" school this school year.  Last week I had the task of packing up the belongings of students so they could come do a "drive by" pickup.  They couldn't get out of the car, we were to put their belongings into the trunk.  One car that came through for my class did a clever thing.  When the trunk opened, there was a paper saying thank you to Mrs. Wolf and I, then arrows pointing down.  They had put envelopes for us to retrieve as we put their things into the trunk.  It was bittersweet.  Not at all like the goodbyes on the last day of school for the last 24 years of my teaching career.  No.  This one will forever be known as the "Covid Class of 2020".

As my students move along to fourth grade, I will be skipping over them and heading to the fifth grade.  So, while I say good-bye to them this week, I will get to see them again in a short while, and maybe that time we'll have a proper end of the school year together.

   Au revoir!

As we approach the end of the school year...

I am playing and need a space to put it...

Nothing to report here-- just doing some tech learning and playing around.  I can't remember what the password is for the blog I used when doing the district's tech professional development back in 2009/2012!  LOL!!

I found some educators using bitmojis and google slides for things and I am playing around with what I find.  We use the ItsLearning platform, and most of these educators use Google classroom for their regular classrooms and with the distance learning.  This was the slide I showed the students this morning during our digital backpack meeting.

A Different Way to Do School

I hope everyone had a safe Spring Break and found something enjoyable to do!  My Twitter feed and Facebook blew up with posts from teachers around the country that are now learning a new way to teach from their homes instead of face-to-face with their pupils.  There is a LOT of stuff out there!  One thing I am grateful for-- PTA let me attend a technology conference last February in San Antonio.  While there, I learned about an online platform called Seesaw.  I have the free version set up for my two classes and we have completed a couple of activities on there, so the children should have some working knowledge of how to use the tools available to them.  I might utilize this online platform to have students show me about their learning from home.

Speaking of learning from home, all of us will be in this together!  The district rolled out the digital backpack to parents on Sunday, March 22nd.  These are activities that should be fairly easy to implement, to help you get a sense of what kind of a schedule you need to set at home.  Please do not feel that you should be "doing school" from 8-3.  This week teachers are checking in with families and doing some online learning ourselves.  Once we get a feel for what the district expectations are, we'll get together as teaching teams to put together some distance learning plans for the students.  For now, use the resources from the district.  There are a lot of questions that I don't have answers to at this time, but feel free to email any that you have to me.  I will answer what I can!

Please download the app for Zoom.  We will possibly be using this app for a lot of our eLearning.  Here is a link for more information about Zoom (Click here).  You might want to go ahead and practice getting onto zoom by using this link:  zoom.us/test
Once we get more information about how we are using Zoom with students, I'll be able to send you an email with the date and time to log in using a link that I will include in the email.  Students will click on the link, and hopefully be able to join in fairly easily! 

Fall Parent Conference and Carnival Week

It's already Mid-October!!  The Astros are still in post season play (thank goodness it isn't with a team on the east coast this year!!), report cards are being sent home on Friday, and our fun-filled school carnival is on Saturday!

Important things to know:
*Thursday and Friday are noon dismissal days.  Mrs. Wolf's homeroom will spend most of Thursday with Mrs. Mallette and Mrs. Mallette's homeroom will spend most of Thursday with Mrs. Wolf.  Since Mrs. Wolf's homeroom will NOT be with Mrs. Mallette on Friday, they will have their spelling test on THURSDAY, October 17th.
Then on Friday, Mrs. Mallette will keep her homeroom for the day and Mrs. Wolf will keep her homeroom for the day.  Mrs. Mallette's homeroom will take their spelling test on Friday.

*Fall Individual Picture day is on Friday!!  Brush your hair, brush your teeth, and wear something nice!  These are the pictures that are used for the yearbook.

Since we have dismissal at noon on Thursday and Friday, our schedule is a bit modified.
+ Block time will be from 9:10-9:40
+Recess will be from 9:45-10:15
+Lunch is 11:00-11:30

If you would rather have lunch with your child after school, that is fine.  We have to offer lunch to all students.  I would recommend sending along a snack that will help them get through the four hours they are at school.

Our fantastic Frostwood Carnival is on Saturday from 11-3.  There is a sign up if you would like to volunteer some time:  https://www.signupgenius.com/go/8050d4eaba92ca20-tigerfest1
There are lots of activities, food, and fun for the whole family!  Mrs. Wolf and I will be out and about in between a couple of conferences that we have set up on that day.  Wave to us if you see us!

Rain, Rain...

I hope all of our families have had a good weekend of rest after the crazy amount of rain last week.  Thank you for supporting our book fair!  We should be back on our regular Friday library rotation this week.

Spelling Bee:  Third, fourth, and fifth graders are invited to participate in our school spelling bee tryouts.  Information will be coming soon with words to study.  The first round will be within the homeroom classes.  There will be two grade level champion spellers and two spellers from each homeroom chosen to participate in the school spelling bee that will take place in November.
Want to start studying?  Click HERE to go to our webpage of study lists!  Third grade will start with the Level One words. 

Speaking of spelling-- our first spelling test for the school year was put on rain delay, so we'll be taking that test on Monday, September 23rd.  Students will need to be able to spell the words correctly AND be able to write them in the write pattern column.  There will also be two sentences that students will need to write.  Spelling words will need to be spelled correctly and they will also need to use appropriate capitalization and punctuation.

Parent conferences will be held in October.  An email will be sent the first week of October with a link to SignUp Genius.  Mrs. Wolf and Mrs. Mallette will be meeting with parents together, so you only need to sign up for one meeting time.

Introducing....Third Grade 2019-2020!

Welcome to my classroom blog, where I hope you find helpful information!  Above this post you'll see tabs for different "pages" that will have helpful information.  I update the agenda page weekly, and the spelling information as needed.  Usually our spelling lists are for two weeks, and there will be a place where you can click to see what activities children can do with their spelling words for the month.  Since I will be teaching your children language arts, as well as math and science this year, more tabs may show up along the top for other information. 

At the bottom is a symbaloo, which is simply a way for me to put websites together for the students to access easily.  For example, one box is for Spelling City.  When we have spelling words, I will update my Spelling City account and students can click there to go directly to the list we are using rather than going to Spellingcity.com and having to look for my list or typing in the words themselves.  I will be adding math and science links to the symbaloo as I find appropriate sites for students to use to enhance their learning. 

Coming soon!  Curriculum night!  (Or it might be called Open House?)  This is where parents and guardians are invited to the school to hear about expectations for third grade.  The third grade teachers will tell you a bit about what units we cover in the different subjects, we'll fill you in on the behavior chart, and other things that we do in third grade.  After we meet together as a grade level, we'll invite you back up to the classrooms where you can see what your child has been doing for the first few weeks of school.   This will be held the week of September 9th.  More details when I get them!

If you would like to fill out my online form for student information, the link to complete it is: 
https://tinyurl.com/FWE3rdgrade2020

It works best on a Google browser!  If you use a different web browser, the formatting is a bit wonky.

Some parents have asked me about donations for the classroom.  I am putting together a wishlist on Amazon, and I will share that soon.  

I am looking forward to a great year with your children-- we had a great first two days! 

Welcome to the 2018-2019 School Year!

Welcome to the third grade! 

Thank you so much for the wonderful Meet the Teacher time.  It's a little overwhelming to meet so many new people in such a short time, but I enjoyed visiting with everyone that came!  It was good to see some familiar faces, and I look forward to getting to know the new friends better.  The student information form on the iPad seemed to be a great way to gather some of that important information that I need as your child's teacher.  Please let me know if you had any difficulties with completing it.  The teachers are all excited about not having to read some of the handwriting for email addresses! 

This blog is for parents as well as the students.  Every week you will find the agenda (see the tab above that says "agenda"?  This will have all of the homework for the week listed out.  Students will also be copying this into their agenda notebooks, which SHOULD be in their binders!  There is another tab for spelling, where I will update that each time we have a new list. 

If you scroll down to the bottom of this screen (wait, don't do it yet, keep reading!), you will find a bunch of boxes.  This is a symbaloo, which is a website I use to organize internet links.  For example, on the top left side, you'll see links that have to do with reading.  If you find that a link is not working, please send me an email or a note letting me know so that I can fix it.  These are all pretty nice places for my students to use, either for school or for fun.  The box that has an eagle on it will take you to another symbaloo that has links all dedicated to Social Studies items.  You will also find a link to Spelling City (I update that with our spelling words too!), and a link to our Social Studies curriculum.  (I will fill the students in on that info soon.  They will each have their own login for that site). 

Bookmark this blog on your favorite device, and check back for more information!

Welcome to the 2017-2018 School Year!

Wow!  What an unforgettable start to the school year!  A new principal, an eclipse, and quite a visit from Hurricane Harvey.  I think we're finally on a roll in the new school year.  Here are some important things to know: 

1.  Homework is written in the agenda ( a spiral book that should be in binders!) on Mondays.  If you noticed that your child did not get the assignments copied, you will find a tab above that says "Agenda".  Click on the tab, and click on the word "agenda" to see the document of the week.

2.  Behavior Charts:  Every student has a behavior chart that should be in the binder in a plastic sleeve.  Please sign this chart weekly!  I didn't make a big deal out of this the last month due to so many families being out-of-sorts, but I will be checking for signatures on a weekly basis. 

3.  Social Studies newspapers:  This is our TEXTBOOK for Social Studies.  Please feel free to read them with your child in the evenings as part of the 20 minutes of reading.  DO NOT THROW THEM AWAY.  :)  We will go through articles and have reading lessons about determining importance, we'll use them when writing in our Social Studies journal, and sometimes the children can use them with completing assignments and tests. 

4.  Symbaloo:  Down at the bottom of the home page you will find a symbaloo!  That is just a fancy way of providing links to websites that we use in our classroom.  They are kind of organized in sections, language arts/ebooks being in the top left side, coding sites on the top right, down at the bottom left you'll find some kid-friendly search engines.  There are also square that will lead to other squares--for example, the links we use in Social Studies is found with the eagle that says "social studies soup".  Click on that, and it takes you to a different symbaloo mix that is dedicated to the different things we look at during Social Studies. 

Stay tuned!

Post-Election

We did a mock election with the third graders!  We talked about the four candidates for president, we looked at a brochure that talked about the candidates that were up for election (from judges, to sheriffs, presidents, congress people--we discovered there were a lot of people running for some type of office this time around!).  For the official unofficial voting, Hillary Clinton won with the student population.  Hopefully none of the students stayed up until 2:00 AM to find out the actual winner of the presidential election--unlike one of our grade-level teachers!  Here is a great video from Kid President to open some lines of communication with your child to talk about some manners to have if you disagree with people.  I am sure we know a handful of adults that could benefit from a viewing of this as well!

Boosterthon Golden Bungee Rocket!!

Thank you parents for your support of our Boosterthon!  My homeroom class got to bring "home" the golden bungee rocket today from our Boosterthon Pep Rally!  :) 

The weekend challenge is to get pledge(s) for $3 a lap!  Keep up the great work!

Going, going, going...time is speeding up!

Howdy!

     It's already the last week of October!  Thank you for a great week of parent conferences.  It was great catching up with you all and getting some more insights to your kiddos!  This week we will have a grade in Social Studies that revolves around the Week 7 of the Studies Weekly newspaper.  There are homework assignments for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to read different articles in the paper.  The questions on Friday will be coming from these articles. 
     In reading we have been working on character traits--hopefully seeing how a character had changed from the beginning of the story to the end.  We are also working on identifying a good  summary.  So far we have discovered that good summaries include important events from the beginning, middle, and end of a story.  We'll also look at characteristics of a good summary from a non-fiction selection. 
      We will continue working on building better story arcs by starting with the climax of the story.  WHY are you wanting to tell the story you are writing?  In class we looked at two stories and compared them to see which one was a story worth telling.  (It was unanimous--no one wanted to read a story about someone making their bed.  There weren't any monsters, no dust bunnies attacking, and no bedbugs eating a person alive!).  We will also take a closer look at stories that were written without structure verses a story that follows a story arc and has a clear beginning, middle, end, climax, and rising action that has tension.


       BOOSTERTHON TIGER TROT takes place on November 4th!!  We had our pep rally today, so students will be coming home this evening with their pledge cards.  Every student that goes to Funrun.com and registers will get a prize!  Remember, you are pledging money for laps, and most kiddos will run between 30-35 laps (if you've never seen our Fun Run, the laps are pretty, um, short!).  Come on over next Friday and join us!

Spelling City

    I have made some changes!  If you look at the symbaloo, you will now see a tile that has a pink S and has the label of Spelling City.  That tile SHOULD take you straight to my teacher page.  I have made a list for the current spelling words, so this should make it easier to do some of the activities to practice the spelling words.  Please send me an email if you find that it's not taking you straight to the page that has a link to our current spelling list.
   Students need to do two activities from the spelling menu each week--and these activities should be recorded into the purple spelling journal.  If your child works on Spelling City, please write a title of Spelling City, the date, and then sign it to show that you witnessed your child practicing their spelling words using the site.  I check homework each Friday, and part of what I check is to make sure they have done at least 2 spelling activities. 

QR codes and Updates

   Thank you for such a great turnout for Curriculum Night this year!  I did have some parents tell me that "the QR code for the blog scares me!".  QR codes aren't meant to be scary.  QR codes are a teacher's best friend, especially for getting to places on the web when the students are not very good typists!  To use the code on a mobile device, you first need to go to your "Store" and download a QR reader app (get a free one, don't spend $$ to get one).  Once you have done that, you open the reader app, then point the camera over the qr code.  Depending on the app, it will take you directly to the website, or it will first ask permission to go to the website.  Very quick for use in the classroom!

Try it out!  Where does this QR code take you?  

       Spelling:  Notice that there is a tab next to "home" that reads "Spelling".  You'll find the current list on this page.  When we change lists, I'll update the page.  Our first spelling test is on September 23rd.  We'll give 5 words on the test from the pattern from their study list, but then we'll give 5 words that ARE NOT on the list, but follow the pattern.  This week the big difference is long vowel sound before or a short vowel sound before the ending.  The rest of the words will come from the high frequency list. 

     In reading we are continuing to work on marking our thinking.  We are spending time talking about what makes a good prediction (prior knowledge and using text evidence--what clues have we gotten in the writing thus far?), and next week we'll be using determining importance.  We'll practice picking out the important information in a paragraph using our Social Studies textbook while reading about the different jobs that happen around the mayor, city council, and the services that are provided by a city.  

     Social Studies is a little challenging right now.  We are learning about three important documents that helped start our country: The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and The Bill of Rights.  I mostly want the students to know what the gist of each document is, how the Constitution helped to establish our three branches of government, and the Bill of Rights are freedoms that we enjoy here in America.  Here is a fun little video for the Bill of Rights done by some students using the Taylor Swift song, "Shake it Off".  

Click here for the video

Next week we have picture day on September 21st, and progress reports go home on Friday the 23rd! 

Welcome to the Third Grade!

Who's feeling nervous?  Excited?  Pumped?  Shy?  Interested?  Overwhelmed?  Hopeful?  Curious?  Confident? I hope it isn't just me!  Welcome to third grade, where we switch classes, go to Moody Gardens for a field trip, and dress up as a famous person to make our own Frostwood Wax Museum!  You will want to bookmark this blog so that you can check on what is going on in our classroom.  Down at the bottom of the page you will find a symbaloo with links to some of Mrs. Mallette's favorite educational sites as well as links that go with our curriculum.  When we start up with spelling, you'll find a tab under the blog title that will lead you to the words for the week (they SHOULD be written in your agenda as well!), and you can use Spelling City to practice your words.

Stay tuned...