Merry Christmas

It was December of 1977 or '78. Mom was working at Sears at the Centre Mall in Hamilton. 

It was all about Dad, me and the apple of my eye, my little brother, Paul. Seriously, no little brother in the history of kids was more loved than this little guy. 

Dad takes us to the mall that night. I think we went to Eatons or maybe Sears to say hi to Mom. 

At that age I was, to put it mildly, obsessed with The Flintstones.  When Dad brought home the fancy new remote for the T.V., the most important information he needed to impart on his beloved first-born was which two channels aired my favourite show.  I knew every episode by heart. 12:00 pm and sometimes even 12:30 (if Agri-News wasn't airing that day), was all about my modern stone-age family. Look out world. I had my grilled cheese and my show. I may have needed a little more ketchup, but other than that...leave me alone, I was good. 

Back to my story. So that Friday night, Dad, me and the babe are at the Mall. 

Dad finds the Holy Grail of Christmas ornaments: The Flinstones ornament set. Fred, Barney, Wilma and Betty; they're all there in their Christmas costumes.  

My show...in ornament form. Whatever the cost, my six year old self needed them. 

Fear not.

Good ol' Sinatra-loving Dad understands my obsession. He gets it. I have nothing to worry about, we're going home with these ornaments tonight. 

I know what you're thinking. What a great man. And he is. He does not disappoint. Over the years I would learn that his discovery of the Flintstone ornaments only scratched the surface of this man's many talents. Cars fixed, dinners made, dogs entertained, you name it, this Dad does it all. Who else drives to Erie, PA and back to watch his son's hockey game in one night?  

He's that guy. 

Have you ever driven through Dunkirk, New York on your way to Erie? Even in July, you're bound to experience lake-effect snow.

My folks are just those kind of devoted parents. 

So we get home. Let's get these babies up on the tree right?  Well, slow down my friend. Dad appreciates that these ornaments are not just any ornaments. These are a big deal. These belong to Patti and she gets to put them up on the tree. 

All.

By.

Herself.

So what do we do with that adorable little kid. That face that even six year old me couldn't help but love. Those cheeks. Good heavens those cheeks.  When he was born I literally thought to myself, I will kiss those cheeks so much! I was four at the time. How does a four-year old know this?   

Well, that night I learned about a little trick parents have been pulling for years.  

Dad told me to pretend to go to bed so that my adorable little puppy of a brother would be convinced that he too should do the same. And it worked. Big sister Patti trudged off to bed and little brother did the same. 

Ten minutes later, Dad came to get me and I put the ornaments up on the tree while the Ray Conniff Singers provided the soundtrack.

It was glorious.

I bet it was 8:15 pm, but it felt like the middle of the night. 

Special thanks to dear ol' Dad for going the extra mile to
take this photo for me! xo 

I hung my ornaments up on the tree, all on my own.  

My ornaments from my show. 

I got to stay up 'til Mom came home from work. I was living the dream.

Those ornaments go up every year at Mom and Dad's house. They are very well loved. Over the years, they've been used to act out many a Flintstones episode (only at Christmas of course!).

A few years ago, at Christmas, my father, Silvio Colontino, super-hero extraordinaire, hands me a carefully wrapped gift.  

Some things need no explanation. 

My set of ornaments didn't come with Pebbles. I think it's one of the most precious and thoughtful gifts my father has given me. Those ornaments are a special story from my childhood.  

I hope the students in my class receive the kind of gifts this year, and throughout their lives, that bring them the same kind of joyful memories my Flintstone ornaments bring me.  

New photos!

Check out the photos from our day! 
Click here to view the album! 

The Christmas News Report!

And now for the best 20 minutes of your day! Can you believe that in just a few days, my class went from receiving this massive script to recording it?  

I am so proud of my group of expressive and talented readers!  

I had so much fun writing this news report, but even MORE fun recording it with my class. They really worked as a team and developed many skills in the process! 
I hope you enjoy it as much as we do! 

We're working on something super-fun!

If all goes as planned, we hope to have our very first "School News Report: Christmas Edition" recorded and ready to go for Thursday!

The boys and girls have their scripts, they know their parts and they know what they have to do to really make their character come alive! 

We're focusing on reading with lots of appropriate expression, making our reading sound like natural speech and we're even working on our comedic timing!

The news is all make-believe, but the lessons learned through this project are not! My hope is that after this exercise, the boys and girls will have further developed their overall reading fluency and perhaps helped them to develop some important oral presentation skills! 

I'm asking the kids to really work at practicing their lines as much as they can. Memorization is not required since this will be a good ol' fashioned radio show!

I can't wait to share the final product with you all!    

So sweet

The Grade Three Focus on Faith theme is community and the common good. Isn't this a wonderful example of a community working together for a common good?  

Parents, would you ask your students to watch this video so we can discuss it tomorrow in class?  

So many things "wrapped" up!

The boys and girls have finished their sorting folders AND their Mrs. Claus paragraphs and they're fantastic! 
The sorting folders are coming home for you to see tonight. Please return them tomorrow.  
I am so thrilled with the quality of work the boys and girls have produced this week. Those Mrs. Claus paragraphs are truly something special. The level of detail and though that went into them is just incredible. I know you'll enjoy reading them when they come home.  

I'm writing students only a brief feedback "note" as opposed to a letter, and this is how feedback will work for the rest of the year. We have achieved some significant milestones in our writing, so long letters will no longer be required (in most cases). I think this will all be a little more clear when the Mrs. Claus paragraphs come home for your review/signatures. 

Today in Math, we talked about "nets". Those paper cut-outs of shapes that can be folded into a three-dimensional shape like the one pictured below. 

We'll do this actual activity after the holidays!

This particular one helped students see how a cube is composed of six congruent squares. We tried to see if you could make a rectangular prism out of six congruent rectangles, but nope, it wouldn't work.  ;) 

Unit 3: Quiz 1

We had our first Math quiz for Unit Three today. 

We've been talking for about a week about congruent shapes along with parallel lines and intersecting lines.  

I was looking to see how well the students can explain the difference between the two types of lines and that they can identify congruent shapes.  

In the photo below is an example of two answers that scored 4/4.

  

How to add sparkle and more detail to your writing!

The boys and girls are currently working on a writing assignment called "What does Mrs. Claus do on Christmas Eve?" 

The expectation is that they will use their feedback from their "Happy" paragraphs to make this writing assignment their best yet!

We are talking about how to add more sparkle, voice and personality to our writing. We watched this little video I created so the boys and girls would know just what I'm talking about, and exactly what I mean when I ask them for more detail, personality, sparkle, etc. 

We're going to continue to look at samples like the one in the video for the next few days to make sure everyone feels confident with this. 

Writers at Work!

So this afternoon, the boys and girls received their "Happy" paragraphs back. 

Each child received a feedback letter from me as well. The expectation is that students will implement the feedback while working on their "What does Mrs. Claus do on Christmas Eve?" paragraph.  

I provided each child with a specific next step and I'm looking forward to reading these next paragraphs. In many cases, children were asked to really focus on details. Not just details for the sake of details, but adding information about the subject (e.g. if you talk about your dog, share the name and breed). 

Since this is a description of Mrs. Claus' night, we're going to use transitional words. After reviewing the anchor chart pictured below the kids were off! 

Sometimes simple is best!

We had the nicest Fun Friday today. No frills, nothing fancy, just good ol' fashioned fun! 
I need to do this more often. This afternoon, after we put some finishing touches on our to-do list for the day, I showed the boys and girls some Christmas stencils that I had and invited them to enjoy some "Preferred activity time". 
It was so nice to sit back and watch the kids interact with each other.  They traced Christmas stencils, played games and enjoyed some of the other toys I keep in my room for indoor recess.  
I know we'll have a long winter ahead of us, and I'm sure there will be plenty of indoor recesses to come, but it was so, so nice to spend this quiet time with the kids.  
Seeing them all working away on the carpet on their different projects and then watching them move their things to different parts of the room with their friends so they could really focus was just really heartwarming. 

It's neat to watch the kids treat the classroom like a little home. They looked like such a family with all that sharing and passing around of the stencils, My Little Ponies and game pieces.  Then off they went to find their cozy space to get serious about their "work".  

I loved that 30 or so minutes so much I completely forgot to take pictures to share with you.  You'll just have to picture it all in your mind I guess...boy was it sweet.

It's fun to let the kids be kids and worry less about being in the driver's seat and more about letting them run the show. 
Thank you to all the boys and girls for another great week! 

You always work so hard and make me so proud to be your teacher.  

What does Mrs. Claus do on Christmas Eve?

We're going to get a bit of a head start on procedural writing before Christmas! We'll take a more in-depth look at it in January/February, but I just couldn't resist this creative writing opportunity!

The boys and girls started this activity on Thursday by brainstorming some ideas about how Mrs. C spends the big night.  

The next step is to review transitional words such as first, then, next, finally and then students will begin writing their paragraphs.

If these paragraphs are anything like the work the boys and girls produced for their Practice Page 13, I'm in for a real treat! 

Math Makes Sense: Unit 3

We began our third Math Unit this week. It's all about Geometry. For your convenience, I have linked our learning goals and big ideas for this unit of study at the bottom of this post. 

Today the boys and girls learned about polygons. They learned that polygons must be closed shapes.  

Students also reviewed what they have learned about parallel lines. They have learned that parallel lines never touch and run side by side. 

On Thursday, we'll review the names of two dimensional shapes and talk about the word congruent and that it means "same size and same shape". These two attributes are essential in order for a shape to be named congruent. 

Students will also learn that a cube and a triangular based pyramid are happy solids because they are made up of only congruent shapes.  

Unit 3 Learning Goals

Snow Bear Art!

It's not quite winter yet, but we're reading a great story about a group of polar bear friends during Morning Message, so I couldn't resist this Fun Friday activity! 

It was also "Paint the Town Red" day to support the United Way and as you can see, my students take these theme days very, very seriously! 

Check out our Fun Friday pics! (click here) 

Let's have some fun!

Parents, we had so much fun practicing our ordinal numbers today, that I promised the kids I'd create a few extra for the blog.

Here are three bonus problems for the kids to solve. They should have their own little character cut-outs in their Zippy.

The videos are not the greatest of quality and I'm not sure why. Hopefully they will still be enjoyed by the kids.  

Partner problem-solving!

To help the boys and girls work on their "explain your thinking" area of their problem-solving, we did some partner work yesterday. 

It is a fairly simple problem from Unit 1, but the focus was on "how do you know you're right?" (that's often the tricky part of the problem!).

After giving the kids ten or so minutes to complete the problem, we looked at each other's work on the Smartboard, while each set of partners explained their work.  I

It was a great learning opportunity and now that everyone is more familiar with classroom expectations, routines and some problem solving strategies, we can explore more problem solving situations such as this one...only we're takin' the level of difficulty up a notch or two! ;) 

Happy Like Soccer

The boys and girls have now all received their feedback from their Reading Response Letter for Swindle. 

We're moving on to our next assignment, which is a paragraph about an event or gift that made us happy. 

Students are expected to use the feedback from their Swindle letter and implement it in this new assignment.  

We'll be reading a story called Happy Like Soccer by Maribeth Boelts shortly, and before we even start reading the text, we're going to fire up our own prior knowledge. The boys and girls will be connected to this story before we even begin reading!

On their checklist, the boys and girls are expected to write specifically about how they've used their Swindle feedback to improve this paragraph. 

I'm also asking students to focus on the 5Ws to be certain they have included sufficient detail in their writing. 

Unit 1 Practice Test

We're going to have next Math test on Thursday November 27.  I'm looking forward to seeing how the boys and girls do on this. Our first two units are very long that's for sure. The rest of the Math program moves along quite quickly, with each unit running about 10-12 school days. It will be nice to pick up the pace and move on to our next unit of study, which is Unit 3: Geometry. 

As with all Math units, I've created a Practice Test for students to complete at home.  

It's really important to note that we still have to cover two sections in preparing for this test: ordinal numbers and identifying numbers by their base-ten-names (e.g. 341 is three hundreds, four tens, one one). We've done a lot of work with ordinal numbers this year, but we haven't done any problem solving using them, so that's going to be our focus this week. 

We'll do lots of review this week and if necessary, we can move the test to Friday, but I'm aiming for Thursday.  

Unit 1: Practice Test  

Here's a link to the answer key for this test: 

Unit 1: Answer Key to Practice Test

Questions to ask while reading

I'm sending home a copy of this set of questions to ask your children while you are reading with them. These questions help you to monitor your child's comprehension and help students learn to defend their ideas and opinions by giving evidence from the text. Good readers talk about the books they are reading and this set of questions is a great starting point.  

During a typical 20-30 minute reading session, I would limit the number of questions to between three and five, otherwise the fun begins to evaporate, if you know what I mean. 

Here's a printable copy (click here). 

Thank you!

It was such a pleasure to meet with you all over the last two days. I got home on Thursday night and my husband called down, "How'd they go sweetie?" my response was "Just perfect."  

Then I poured myself a glass of something and just stood in the kitchen for a bit thinking of how much I enjoyed chatting with you all and how lucky my students are to have such wonderful families supporting them. 

And Friday morning was more of the same...great people raising great kids.  

Thank you for all your hard work and thank you for the kind things you said about me. I think we all make a great team. 

It is so inspiring and gratifying to know that my students enjoy coming to school. As we move forward through the year, don't hesitate to call or get in touch. Our "conversation" will continue here on the blog, but if you would like to meet again in person or by phone, I'd be happy to do so.   

A room full of super-heroes!

With so much on the go this week, it's nice to have something purposeful for the kids to work on when they finish their work. With a bigger writing assignment like a Reading Response Letter (RRL), I often have kids handing them in at varying rates.

As children finish their RRLS, they are to work on this Super-Hero activity I created. We've been having fun with labels, captions and interesting sentences.  

I thought this activity would be a fun way to combine our knowledge of labels and our skills as writers. I've made it clear to the kids that typically labels are just a word or two, but for this activity, we're going to bend the rules just a bit. 

My hope is that we'll have these posted on our bulletin board outside Room 208 in time for parent-teacher interviews on Thursday and Friday! 

Tuesday Funnies

At Evening Meeting, around 3:15...

Student:  Mrs. M, that was the first bell. We should go now. 

Me: Why are you so interested in the first bell? 

Student: I'm worried I'm going to miss my bus.

Me: Hunny, I'll never let you miss your bus. If that happened, I would drive you home.

Student: Oh, well now I actually want to miss my bus!

Me: Now, just to clarify, I don't actually put you in the car. It's more of a strap you to the roof kind of thing. 

Student: Oh. In that case, I think I'll just take my bus. 

Labels vs Captions

For the last week or so, as part of Morning Message, we've been looking at the various features of non-fiction texts. Right now our focus is on the difference between labels and captions.  

I found the adorable anchor chart/poster above on Pinterest and wanted to share it with the boys and girls. This is an example of an image that has been labelled. 

The photo below of that super-handsome man is an example of one that has a caption.  

Mrs. M and her Dad!

Parents, would you please review this blog post with your children tonight (Tuesday) as they may need this review/information to help them with Practice Page #10. 

The cat poster is not mine, but I believe it belongs to this gal who has a beautiful blog!  

About the Book Fair

I see a few questions in the agenda this morning about the Book Fair. 

My students go browsing this afternoon(Monday)and then our official shopping time is Tuesday.  

If you would like to send your child with a little money to shop with, please send it in a Ziploc, wallet or envelope.  In the past, most parents have sent between $5.00-$20.00.  

ABC? DEF! GHI.

Fun Friday was a riot!
We practiced our fluency skills by reading the alphabet according to the chart pictured. It wasn't quite as easy as it sounds!

After that, the boys and girls worked with their elbow partners on these simple little skits(pictured below). Easy enough right? 

Well old on there, fellas! 

Each set of partners received one situation. The kids could only use the letters of the alphabet to express themselves. If you walked by our room around 1:30, it sure sounded funny! 

It was all done in an effort to teach the boys and girls the importance of fluency and attending to punctuation when we read.  

Of course, it also helps students to see the connection between "it's not what you say, it's how you say it" because when you have a room full of kids using only abc, def, ghi, etc. to communicate, the emphasis really is on the "how you say it" factor in order to communicate the message.  

It was a lot of fun watching the kids present their skits to the class and then having the rest of the class try to guess what the situation might have been. In some cases, two groups had the same skit, so that made for even more interest! 

Thank you to all the boys and girls for another great week! 

We begin Week 11 on Monday and I'm looking forward to taking a little break from our POTWs and focusing more on non-fiction reading materials.  

Wanna have some fun with us?

It's Fun Friday and I know the kids will get a kick out of this! 

Can you look at the photo below and identify the sorting rule? 
It's a slide from our Morning Message and it's the most challenging one we've done so far. 

In the comment section below, tells us what you think might go in the middle loop of the Venn Diagram.  

In class, we say, "In the left loop, you have abc and in the right loop, you have xyz, so in the middle loop, you would have 123."  

I can't wait to see how the kids do with this! 

But hold on! If we get a parent respond with the correct answer in the comment section below, we will reward ourselves with a treat from our Jar of Happiness...and we'll send one home for you too, 'cause we're nice like that.

 

Let's Talk About Non-Fiction!

Tomorrow will be our last POTW test for a few weeks. We'll still have a weekly test, but we're going to take a little break from poems and focus our attention on non-fiction articles of the week...NFAOTW-doesn't quite roll of the tongue does it? 

The poems are lots of fun though, so we might end up doing a bit of alternating.  

The photo above shows some of the features of a non-fiction text.  For the tests on Friday, we'll still follow a similar format, only we'll have a few more higher level questions...questions that are in line with *ahem* EQAO(that talk with the class is coming very soon). 

The tests will take the class a little longer to write, but it will be excellent prep for future grades where non-fiction writing is the norm (e.g. short essay answers or reading comprehension questions) 

Just like with the POTW test, we'll review the article and features each day, so come Friday, the students will be very well prepared to write the test.  

It's a good idea to have your child read the article aloud each night, focusing on a few things: 

• reading with appropriate expression
• attending to punctuation 
• focusing on sounding like a news reporter 
• making sure their oral reading sounds like natural speech

Like last year, I'll likely stick with the non-fiction focus for at least four weeks and then I'll see where we're at, and we'll go from there.  

The Land of Many Colours

The boys and girls did a wonderful job reading The Land of Many Colours to our school as part of the Remembrance Day Liturgy. 

We decided to record our reading so that we could share it with parents and families who were not able to attend the Liturgy.  

It's a very special story to read on a very special day.  

Explain your thinking

Many of our Math problems in Grade Three are followed by the statement: Explain your thinking. We call it "EYT" for short.  

When we ask students to explain their thinking, we're asking them to tell us how they know they're right. We're not asking them to explain the steps to how they solved the problem.

Wait. 
What? 

I know, you're probably thinking how can a student describe how they know they're right without explaining steps?  It's a really, really fine line.  

We're asking students to tell us about the strategies they used WITHOUT telling us how to use those strategies. Have a look at this very basic example below: 

Patti has 12 stickers. 
Paul has 36 stickers. 
How many more stickers does Paul have than Patti?
Explain your thinking.

A student who "gets" how to EYT would explain that they subtracted 12 from 36 to find how many more stickers Paul has. Then,they might tell readers that they flipped the question and added 24+12 to make sure their calculations were correct.  

What they shouldn't do is write the instructions for HOW to subtract. For example: First, I subtracted the 2 from 6 in the ones column. Then I wrote down 4. Next, I subtracted the 1 from the 2 in the tens column...

This tends to be a common mistake early on and only lots and lots of practice helps students identify the difference between explaining their thinking and writing instructions. 

So proud

The boys and girls presented a beautiful Remembrance Day Liturgy this morning. We even recorded ourselves reading our story called The Land of Many Colors so we could share it with family and other blog visitors. 

Unfortunately, because we recorded it in the Gym, our sound quality was very poor so we'll try it again, in classroom tomorrow and share it with you all at that time. 

We wanted to post something here on the blog tonight to share with those loved ones who could not join us today. So, since I don't have any photos or other video to share, words will have to do. 

The students did a wonderful job. It was a simple, but touching Remembrance Day service. The message "We need to remember" was the ribbon that connected all of the parts to our Liturgy. Participants young and old, were asked to go forward and use their voice to create peace. 

Later on today, I had a very special talk with my own class. It was just before dismissal and I was talking about how we are all trying to build bridges to one another. I explained that even when I'm joking with my students, I'm trying to build connections. Not a "Hey, let's play football at recess" kind of connection, but a connection nonetheless. As the clock ticked on toward 3:20, I told the boys and girls that if they laugh, smile and remember to be polite, they really have all the tools they need to be wonderful citizens and peacemakers. My mother always said your manners will take you anywhere.  

Laugh, smile and be polite. I think it's a great recipe for success.  

Thank you again to all the boys and girls in Grade Three for a very special day.    

We have questions!

The boys and girls received their Reading Response Letters (RRL) back today. I've written them a letter back and provided them with some feedback. 

The expectation is that they'll apply the feedback in my letter to their next assignment. We're going to go ahead and write another RRL in response to the novel Swindle by Gordon Korman.  

We're reading this novel at Evening Meeting and it's a real gem!  There was a (dreadful) movie made of the novel last summer and many of the students are under the impression they already know what will happen.  The novel and movie are quite different, so I'm looking forward to seeing what students think when we finish reading.  

Since we're working on this new letter while we're reading the novel, it's a little different than a letter written after the novel is finished and that's a-okay.  

Today the boys and girls were asked to write three or four questions they have at this stage of the game (Chapter 4).  I'll read a little more tomorrow, say, up to Chapter 7, and then students will begin writing their letter. This will also be a great opportunity for students to reconsider any questions from today and add any additional ones they have after reading/listening to the story a little more. 

I'm changing something this time 'round though. Instead of simply giving their opinion of the book as part of their letter, I'm broadening this section and asking students to share their thoughts. This means they can write:

• their very detailed opinion
• their thoughts of why the writer wrote the book
• how they relate to the text 
• how they would feel if they were the main character, Griffin 
• what they predict might happen next and why

The goal here is for students to provide detail, detail, detail! 

By having the kids widen the scope here, I think I'm presenting my students with a more authentic writing experience. I was really pleased with the first RRL and I think this sets my group of sophisticated writers up with a great opportunity to express themselves. You can see the higher expectations reflected in the student checklist pictured below.