What have we been up to? Here is a peek into our classroom....

We are continuing to help Anna with her middle school science project by reviewing and taking tests over high frequency spelling words.  Anna's question is will classical music help with concentration.  We have enjoyed listening to Beethoven during the first part of her project.

Inferencing involves putting the pieces together in our reading.  We use the clues from the text plus our prior knowledge to understand what the author does not directly tell us.  We enjoyed using some fun photographs to help us practice making inferences.  Third graders are becoming inferencing experts!

We have been working addition and subtraction strategies and problem-solving in math.  Several of our classmates became teachers to help us solve some word problems.

We met Eric James, a British author, who wrote A Halloween Scare in Iowa via Skype.  He shared several other versions of his story with us and answered questions.

On Halloween we switched between all three 3rd grade classrooms to enjoy some activities.  We worked on spooky Halloween blog posts, used the CoLar Mix app to produce some augmented reality from a picture we colored, and played some fun Halloween themed games.

We are revising and proofreading stories we have wrote that will be published using the app Book Creator on our iPads.  It is great to see the excitement at writing time.

We participated in a Mystery Number Skype and were able to guess the other class's number which was 45.

We have started Cadet Time (MTSS) where we break into small groups daily based on our individual literacy needs.  All third grade classes are combined at this time, so students have enjoyed getting to know other third graders and teachers.

We have discussed our Global Read Aloud 2014 book with a class in Illinois and a class in Virginia.  It is fun to share our thoughts, reactions, and predictions.  It is a great story!

We have been sharing our animal and plant research (using Keynote on the iPads) with our class from our first quarter science unit.  We are now studying social studies by focusing on geography and communities.