A Field Trip, the Spring Concert, and a Published Poetry Picnic

We sure closed out the year on a high note!

In math, we used real world data to convert measurements in feet to inches. Specifically, we used the heights of teachers at Memorial Park and a few Hollywood celebrities.

Late in May, we were fortunate enough to travel back in time to Plimoth Plantation to visit the Wampanoag homesite and Pilgrim village. Here is a mere snippet of our very busy day. To see the full album click here. 

 

As we prepared for our Publishing Poetry Picnic and Color Party, we chose our favorite published poem to record using an app called 30Hands. Our audio clips and photographs combined to create our Passion for Poetry video that opened our Publishing Poetry Picnic. 

To watch the Passion for Poetry video in its entirety, visit this link to our Youtube video. 

Our school's annual Memorial Day program was a touching tribute coordinated by the talented Mrs. Bissonnette.

Our fascination with all things Cinderella continued with the reading of  several versions of the traditional story.

The spring concert was beautiful! We sure have a group of talented singers among us!

Writers shared many of the exciting highlights and topics covered in third grade in a writing piece that will be displayed in the fall welcoming Mrs. Mack's newest batch of third graders.
 

We closed out May with the kickoff to our Countdown to Summer balloon surprise. Our first balloon surprise was a classroom picture-in-a-picture photo shoot! #saycheese!

 

To practice the placement of commas and the use of capitalization in names and addresses, we mailed notes home to parents and siblings. 

We closed out May with a class store. Our hard-earned BBQ Bucks were spent on funky sunglasses, bubbles, Rubik cubes, fun summery cups, and insect catchers. 

Our second balloon surprise was sidewalk chalk. It was a gorgeous morning to get creative with sidewalk chalk on the playground. 

And what a gorgeous afternoon we got for our Published Poetry Picnic and Color Party! Poets were eager to share their published poetry anthology with moms, dads, aunts, uncles, siblings, and first grade buddy readers! Not to mention the colorful and healthy spread!

And with that, May was a wrap!

Once Upon a Time.... We Traveled Back in Time

Last month we were fortunate enough to receive a generous donation of 30 pizza boxes from Rockland's Themis Pizza. These boxes were integral to our pizza box fraction project. Students "cooked up" unique pizzas and determined the fractions that could be attributed to the toppings they chose. 

                   

Students and teachers also had the chance to visit the Arts Festival at the high school last month. Rockland sure has talent!

 

 

Cinderella and Pilgrims--what a combination!

Our most recent literacy units have explored comparing and contrasting as well as synthesizing new information.

Our mentor texts for comparing and contrasting have been numerous versions of the traditional fairy tale of Cinderella. These read alouds have even inspired some writers to create their own unique versions--Sophia and the Rich Boy and The Beautiful Girl are merely a few examples.

 

 

Next we will compare and contrast the Pilgrims with the Puritans.

May has been jam packed with oodles of math as we counted down the days to the math MCAS test. The balloon countdown brought us many exciting activities that included lunch in the outdoor classroom, extra recess, and mouthwatering math activities like the pizza box project mentioned above.

 

Kids loved arriving to school on testing day to love notes from parents and relatives.

 

We worked with perimeter, area, and data. Several parents came to join us for Math Academy a few afternoons.

 

 

We've eagerly graphed guesses for our Throwback Thursday and Flashback Friday baby pictures. This math activity has garnered rich math discussion from appropriate titles, labels, scales, and observations.

 

Students have also continued their work on their poetry anthologies. Writers tried matzah during the Jewish holiday of Passover and composed cinquain poems describing this festive treat.

After reading excerpts from Vulture Poems and Animals Nobody Loves, poets drafted love poems to animals perceived as pests to many.

We're looking forward to sharing our published pieces with parents, aunts, uncles, and siblings at this Friday's Poetry Picnic and Color Party.

Students were recently introduced to their Google Docs accounts, and they are HOOKED! Our digital natives have typed published poems, creative writing stories, friendly letters, and even used the program to type spelling assignments such as Type It! and friendly letters. Log in information has been sent home on the back side of the last two issues of Mack's Marinade.

 

 

Just this week we were introduced to Maximo from GoNoodle. The kids have been enjoying body breaks periodically throughout the day. It's calming and helps us refocus in between activities.