Mrs. Lilly loves to teach third grade. Mrs. Lilly is a very nice teacher. She also likes tractor pulls. She rides a Cub 582 named the Teacher's Pet. She wears a necklace and earrings. She has short blonde hair. She has two sons. Her father in law grew cherry tomatoes in his garden that she brought in for emergency snacks.
Our classroom has horseshoe shaped tables in it instead of
desks. We have baskets that we call our tool boxes and we
keep all our needed supplies in them. We keep our extra
books and papers in cubbies on the wall. We have a
bathroom in the classroom. We also have a sink in our
room.
In third grade, we take the NECAP tests. The tests are in reading and math. Every third grader in the state of Vermont takes these tests this year. We have to be very quiet when we take the tests. We took a practice test to get ready. We use special pencils to take the test. We have to be really quiet and can't get out of our seats. When we are done with the test, we can read silently. We have to work on the test for at least an hour before we can read. We can't have anything else on our desks during the test, not our water bottles or our math tool boxes. We can only have our silent reading books. We use carrels when we take the test so no one else can see our work.
Our cursive writing program is called Handwriting Without Tears. We study one letter a day. But we have a game called Freeze It. When you pick up your pencil, you make big circles in the air until the teacher says FREEZE! Then whatever word your pencil is on you have to write it. We also have a time that we have to take a word written in print and put it in cursive. We also have a cursive writing spelling test. At the end of the book there is a cursive writing dictionary. So far, we have learned enough letters to write sixteen of our classmate's names in cursive, so now when they write their names, they have to write them in cursive. If you are finished with your page, you can write the names on a page in cursive writing. Mrs. Lilly checks it and gives us a star if we do not mess up. If your name starts with Z, your name was the last one that we learned.In math class, we often play math games. We have a math book that has workplace pages in it. Sometimes, Mrs. Racine comes into the math class and helps some of us with our games. Mrs. Palmer also comes into math class to help. We work on addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, problem solving, and measurement. We have math games and homework pages for homework at least once a week.
We studied Ferrisburgh. We learned about all the towns and the one city that borders Ferrisburgh. Charlotte is to the north of Ferrisburgh, Monkton is to the east and New Haven is to the southeast border, and Panton and Waltham are both to the south. Vergennes is also on the south border of Ferrisburgh. Lake Champlain is to the west. Now we are learning all about Addison County. We have a blank outline
of
Addison
County and we have to write down every place
on the map.We learned about some of the important historical buildings in Ferrisburgh, for example, the Rokeby Museum and Lake Champlain Maritime Museum. Rokeby Museum has secret doors in it that runaway slaves used before and during the Civil War to escape. It was part of the Underground Railroad. During that time, the people that worked at the Rokeby would not tell the people who wanted to capture the slaves where they were. The Maritime Museum has artifacts that have been found at the bottom of Lake Champlain by scuba divers. They have examples of old diving equipment and boats that were used long ago. They have two bikes that were in the bottom of the lake that are now covered with zebra mussels.
Ferrisburgh has two state parks and one resort. The state parks are Button Bay State Park and Kingsland Bay State Park. The resort is the the Basin Harbor Resort.
At the end of the year, we will
do a very big project called the Producer's Fair.
Mrs. Lilly assigns us to a person that lives locally and
we have to go and find out all the facts about what they
produce. We make a display with a poster for the fair. We
get pictures and we might get samples to hand out to
people that come to our fair. We have been every year to
the fair, this year will be our turn to do the work! Some
people bring animals for people to see and others bring
tasty treats to snack on. Some people do demonstrations
about how to make yarn from wool.
We also do a simple machine
convention in third grade. Each third grader has to make
an invention that uses simple
machines. We do a lot of work learning about simple
machines before we do the fair. Then all the
students in the school and the parents come to see the
inventions.
On Mondays, we have library with
Mrs. Chamberlin. She reads a book to us
and then sometimes we do an activity. Then we find a book
to check out to bring home to read. We can only check out
two books at a time. On Tuesdays, we have Physical
Education and Guidance. On Wednesdays, we have
technology and art. In
art, we are entering a contest to get our picture in a
calendar for fire safety. We also will do a lot of
drawing, painting and make sculptures. In technology, we
are learning how to type on a computer. We use the program
Read, Write and Type. We also draw pictures using Kid Pix
3X. We enter our book reports into a book database in the
lab and also keep track of how fast we are typing on the
writers in a spreadsheet. Sometimes we visit other sites
like Kerpoof and Sumdog. On
Thursdays, we have P.E. or Physical Education again. We
play lots of soccer because Ms. Wilson loves soccer. We
have to do stretches after we run. On Fridays, we
have music.
This year we will learn how to play the recorders
in music.
We are learning how
to keyboard using The Writer. The Writers are a small
keyboard with a small screen. We do it a couple days, a
week. We all start on Level 1 for our
keyboarding.
There are 115 lessons in each level. There are home
row keys you have to press every 20 sec. You have to get
two or three points. The writers have a black case and the
writers go inside of it. The writers go in our mailbox.
You do an assessment and you bring it in the
computer lab. We then put the
information of how many words we are typing and how
accurate we are in a spreadsheet. When you are
finished typing, you have to put your writer back into its
case. You have to put the flap of the case in first,
otherwise your mail will not fit in your cubby. On
Monday, we do our Basic English book and writers.
And on Friday, it's work on our book reports and writers.
Thursdays you do the writers and meeting with our
spelling group.
We
have Four Winds on Wednesdays. We might go outside with a
parent volunteer and look for what we are studying.
We have looked for insects, seeds, and birds. We have a
puppet show and sometimes a craft that we do with the
volunteers. We are going to learn about fish
this year.
At recess,
everybody plays on the structures and plays games. Before
school, we can go outside while we are waiting for school
to start. We have a recess after lunch with the third and
fourth graders. Some of us like to play football. We play
two hand and touch football. We have a walking
trail. Mrs. Cohn is starting a miler's club. We have a
paper foot that we can have punched once we have gone
around the walking trail. When the foot card is filled up,
you 
will get
another. Mrs. Cohn has prizes for us when we finish a
card. We will get a charm or a bead for our bracelet or
anklet.
As you can see, Mrs. Lilly's
third grade class is busy! We work hard every day. We are
learning new things and staying in shape by eating
healthy and exercising. Mrs. Lilly tries to make
what we have to learn fun.
by Tucker, Zehra, Will, and Pearl