Ms. Downing is a great teacher.
Her favorite subject is writing. She often says to us during
writing, "End of the line, end of the paragraph, skip down a
line, indent. WHOOO!" She sometimes quotes another great
teacher in the building, Mrs. Weldon. That quote would be "
The first words, the last words, the important words in
between."Both of these quotes are accompanied by arm
movements!
We have two reading groups. Ms. Downing and Mrs. Shields help us read. We read chapter books and different kinds of work sheets. We also have silent reading where we can read any book that Ms. Downing has in her room. She has a lot of good books.
We are learning how to keyboard this year. Ms. Downing has us use our writers to learn how to keyboard. The writers are small word processors that also have a typing program in it. We have to work on the typing program at least ten minutes a day. We are getting good at remembering to use the home row and typing without looking at the keys.
We go to Mrs. Lilly's room for math class. Mrs. Lilly is a good math teacher. She is teaching Bridges Math. We like all the games that come with the program. We have lots of games and game sheets that we have to do.
We like the
game Blast Off Into Space. You have a game sheet and a
double spinner. That means that the spinner is a plastic
card with two spinners on it. You also need plastic pieces
for game pieces. You predict from the numbers 10 to 20. You
put a marker, a plastic chip, on the number you
predict you will spin. If you are correct, you get to move
into space or onto a planet. Once you have four spaceships
in space, you can change them the remaining spaceships where
the most common ones were. Sometimes we use
calculators, sometimes we only use our pencils and paper.
Right now, we are learning addition and subtraction. Soon we
will be working on multiplication.
In our classroom, we have desks and rectangle tables. Some of us use desks and others use the table. We have assigned seats. Sometimes, if you are not doing well in your seat, Ms. Downing might move them to see how it goes. If it goes well, they would stay in that seat. We have cubbies and mailboxes in our room. Cubbies are used to keep our folders organized and the mailboxes are used for papers to bring home. Every month, someone is the mailman in our classroom. The mailman has the job of putting the papers in the mailboxes. We have other jobs in our classroom: library person, trash person, calendar schedule, floor picker-upper ( pick up papers and trash that is bigger than a quarter), recycling person (picking up anything that is left on the floor like clothes, hats, boots), board (wiping the board off every afternoon), schedule (using laminated papers with scheduled pieces and put them on a large board for everyone to see what is happening that day), and tables (washing the tables and desks). There are lots of jobs, everyone has a job. When it is the end of the month, we change jobs. We volunteer for the jobs. There are some jobs that are more fun than others.
We have recess every morning
and after lunch. If you have
inside recess, we can play board games in our room.
Outdoors, we have lots of stuff to play on. The third and
fourth graders go out together. It is good to only have two
grade levels out at the same time. We have a better time
playing because everyone is about the same age. The older
classes don't all like to play the games that we do and the
younger grades don't always understand our games.
We have a great lunch program. We have a new person this year for the lunch person. Her name is Ms. Marianna Charalabopoulos. We hope that she makes good macaroni and cheese. So far, it has been delicious as always. We picked tomatoes, squash and lettuce from our garden for the lunch program to use. Every Wednesday, they have family breakfast in the cafeteria. It is a very good breakfast. The other days, students that eat breakfast at school get it "to go" and they eat it at snack time.
We have a snack cart that comes in the morning to sell snacks. Parent volunteers run the cart. We are often trying something new at the cart. They have just started to sell trail mix that they make in the cafeteria.
As you can see, this year should be a really good school year. We hope that we learn a lot of new things. This is our best year yet!
Xander, Jessie, and Adam
Other great links to try
ABCya - Third grade computer games in numbers, spelling, keyboarding, and fun games
Great Author Pages - A list of authors with their home pages
Online math addition games
We have two reading groups. Ms. Downing and Mrs. Shields help us read. We read chapter books and different kinds of work sheets. We also have silent reading where we can read any book that Ms. Downing has in her room. She has a lot of good books.
We are learning how to keyboard this year. Ms. Downing has us use our writers to learn how to keyboard. The writers are small word processors that also have a typing program in it. We have to work on the typing program at least ten minutes a day. We are getting good at remembering to use the home row and typing without looking at the keys.
We go to Mrs. Lilly's room for math class. Mrs. Lilly is a good math teacher. She is teaching Bridges Math. We like all the games that come with the program. We have lots of games and game sheets that we have to do.
We like the
game Blast Off Into Space. You have a game sheet and a
double spinner. That means that the spinner is a plastic
card with two spinners on it. You also need plastic pieces
for game pieces. You predict from the numbers 10 to 20. You
put a marker, a plastic chip, on the number you
predict you will spin. If you are correct, you get to move
into space or onto a planet. Once you have four spaceships
in space, you can change them the remaining spaceships where
the most common ones were. Sometimes we use
calculators, sometimes we only use our pencils and paper.
Right now, we are learning addition and subtraction. Soon we
will be working on multiplication. In our classroom, we have desks and rectangle tables. Some of us use desks and others use the table. We have assigned seats. Sometimes, if you are not doing well in your seat, Ms. Downing might move them to see how it goes. If it goes well, they would stay in that seat. We have cubbies and mailboxes in our room. Cubbies are used to keep our folders organized and the mailboxes are used for papers to bring home. Every month, someone is the mailman in our classroom. The mailman has the job of putting the papers in the mailboxes. We have other jobs in our classroom: library person, trash person, calendar schedule, floor picker-upper ( pick up papers and trash that is bigger than a quarter), recycling person (picking up anything that is left on the floor like clothes, hats, boots), board (wiping the board off every afternoon), schedule (using laminated papers with scheduled pieces and put them on a large board for everyone to see what is happening that day), and tables (washing the tables and desks). There are lots of jobs, everyone has a job. When it is the end of the month, we change jobs. We volunteer for the jobs. There are some jobs that are more fun than others.
We have recess every morning
and after lunch. If you have
inside recess, we can play board games in our room.
Outdoors, we have lots of stuff to play on. The third and
fourth graders go out together. It is good to only have two
grade levels out at the same time. We have a better time
playing because everyone is about the same age. The older
classes don't all like to play the games that we do and the
younger grades don't always understand our games. We have a great lunch program. We have a new person this year for the lunch person. Her name is Ms. Marianna Charalabopoulos. We hope that she makes good macaroni and cheese. So far, it has been delicious as always. We picked tomatoes, squash and lettuce from our garden for the lunch program to use. Every Wednesday, they have family breakfast in the cafeteria. It is a very good breakfast. The other days, students that eat breakfast at school get it "to go" and they eat it at snack time.
We have a snack cart that comes in the morning to sell snacks. Parent volunteers run the cart. We are often trying something new at the cart. They have just started to sell trail mix that they make in the cafeteria.
As you can see, this year should be a really good school year. We hope that we learn a lot of new things. This is our best year yet!
Xander, Jessie, and Adam
Other great links to try
ABCya - Third grade computer games in numbers, spelling, keyboarding, and fun games
Great Author Pages - A list of authors with their home pages
Online math addition games