Do you ever have an idea for a lesson but you don't know 100% where it is headed or how it will turn out?  That is what happened this year in the days leading up to Thanksgiving Break.   I knew I wanted to use the book Balloons Over Broadway and have some sort of writing and art response to it all, but I wasn't exactly sure what that would look like.  What my class actually ended up producing was FANTASTIC and is now currently my most favorite place to gaze at in my classroom.   We began by reading the book Balloons Over Broadway.  This is the story of how a puppet ..read more

The beginning of the year is filled with lots of get to know you activities.  But this year I wanted to make it a bit more academic, getting right into the nitty gritty of academic language from the get go.  So I turned one of those traditional "get to know you" activities into a lesson in Inferring! First, I had the students create a "Me Box" in class.  I used these instructions here, but the basic gist is that they filled the box with items that were special to the individual student.  The student chose what items to include, all with the idea that these items told th ..read more

This month we have taken some time to discuss influential and important women in history.  To aid in that discussion, we read the book Ambitious Girl by Meena Harris.   It is a wonderful story about a little girl who sees women being described in a not so positive light but decides to turn those traits around and make them positive.   So once we read the story, my students and I created a list of attributes that strong women would possess.  We thought of the women in the books we have read, women in our life, and the women we have studied. After making that list, an ..read more

We began the month of March diving into Women's History Month.  I wanted the students to learn about the lives of influential women who have had some sort of impact upon the world.  So we started by reading Mae Among the Stars, a story about Dr. Mae Jemison as a little girl.  We also read an informational article, taken from Little Leaders, about her accomplishments and contributions to society.  We looked at the structures of both, what information we can gather from both, and how both are intended for different purposes.  By doing this, the kids learned a lot abo ..read more

We have been focusing a lot on character traits in class these past few months.  As a reader, focusing on the traits that an author chooses to share with us about the characters in the book really helps us to understand the story as a whole.  So when we began reading our shared novel, James and the Giant Peach, we set out to really understand the character traits that Roald Dahl was giving us. I wanted the kids to have several opportunities to respond to the literature we were reading.  So we did three different responses, all building upon the skills from the previous one ..read more

One of the units we study in 3rd grade science deals with the climate zones around the globe.  We started learning about the by using the Mystery Science lesson on the very subject.  It is SUCH a great lesson because it takes the kids step by step through the process of completing a world map showing the different zones around the world.  It also taught them all about how location on the globe has a huge effect on the weather and climate.  After we were done with that lesson, which took a few days and was well worth it, I felt like the kids needed just a bit more work wi ..read more

There never seems to be enough time to get everything that I want to get done completed during the day.  Because of this, I have been forced to think creatively and combine different things I am doing.   Now this post here has been sitting in my drafts for 2 years.  I began writing it pre-pandemic and then....well, you know what happened next.  Things got away from me.  So here it is, 2 years after I first blogged about it.  Don't worry though, it aged well ;) Third grade has a heavy focus on community in social studies.  So we began by talking about thr ..read more

For many years I have seen Glow Day posts from teachers on Instagram showing off what they did during their day under the cover of black lights.  To be honest, I never thought this type of thing was for me.  But this year, in lieu of Halloween activities, I thought we could do a fun Glow Day to keep things festive, yet not focused on the holiday.   Logistics When I was researching how to do this all, I had LOTS of logistics questions, so I am going to start this post by answering them.   Here are all of the materials I bought (or borrowed) to pull this day off. Blac ..read more

At present in third grade, we are learning our basic multiplication facts.   Rote kill and drill type activities, though having their place at times, can be become a bit monotonous for the kids.  So I thought I would spice it up with a little get-up-and-move-around activity! Now, I first saw a completely different version of this from Kevin Butler.  He teaches 5th grade and was having his students round by finding balloon pigs around his classroom.  I was inspired to change this up, AND match the apple theme we had going with Johnny Appleseed Day, and created this Apple ..read more

Several years ago I began using Johnny Appleseed Day, September 26,  as a day to incorporate STEM and Literacy thematically in my classroom.  When I taught 5th, I used lots of tech and STEM activities that went along with our curriculum that the kids LOVED (you can read about those activities here.)   But now that I am in 3rd, those ideas don't quite fit with the beginning of the year level of my students.  So with a little tweaking, I was able to make this more "user-friendly" for the 8 year olds.  I did this lesson both in person AND over Zoom with distance learni ..read more