Entry Sixteen: Third Day of Third Grade

This fabulous idea came to us from one of our amazing teammates, Jen Carillo.  On the third day of third grade, we asked every child to bring in three items that best represented them for our class “Me Museums.”  Students not only brought in the items, they also brought home three note cards and wrote three sentences about each item.  Instead of having each child sit in a chair and share their items, we had ever child set up their desk like a museum with their items, note cards, and a sign.  Then after a lesson on giving appropriate, complete feedback they rotated to each table group to give written feedback on the items in the museums.  We played fun music for students as they rotated to each group.  Even our most struggling writers were excited to write and it was such a great way to build classroom community.  Each child left with a piece of paper with comments from all of their classmates.  What a wonderful souvenir from their first week!

Here is the letter we sent home to families to explain the project.

Here is an image of one table's "Me Museums."

Here is a copy of my feedback collage.

Look at these excited students writing!

Entry Fifteen: Classroom Favorite Places and Spaces

Back to school is such an exciting time of year. We love setting up our classroom and wanted to take a moment and share some of our favorite spaces and places with you!

Our schedule and objective board is such a simple way for us to keep focused on our daily goals and communicate them with students. Discussing the daily schedule is part our morning meeting routine and helps students understand our plans for the day.

 

Our morning meeting board is pretty simple…for now. When students arrive we will expect several comments in dry erase marker for students to share and discuss. You can purchase this set here.

Our jobs wall is an easy way to manage our classroom. Each student has a job in our classroom and gets paid for their work on Fridays. We will attach a clothespin with student names and then our job monitor will rotate the clothespins on Fridays.

Our digital portfolio center is a simple way to help us manage digital portfolios with the help of a parent volunteer.

Our effort and achievement center has all the materials necessary for students to set and track their academic goals. It doesn't look like much, but it's one of the most powerful things we do to individualize academic goals for our students.

Our writing center offers a ton of resources for students as they work on writing workshop. One of our favorites is the revision cans to help students revise-- and not just edit-- their work.  Get these revision cans for your classroom by clicking here.

Our math management board is a great way rotate groups and keep students focused on their tasks. Each group is selected using a unit pretest. You can read more about this method of instruction by checking out our math management pack.

Our reading and writing workshop management charts are a simple way to ensure we are working with each child on their own unique needs. Once we have our student data, the student names will be in groups horizontally ready for their workshop tasks. Read more about reading and writing workshop by clicking on the links.

We love our science board! It's such a great tool to use to help students understand the scientific method.  Get this set for your classroom here.

Back to School Sale

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