What's an afternoon presentation?

Everyday, the student of the day has a set of responsibilities to fulfill: they lead prayers, assist their teacher and as of Tuesday, they get to read in the big blue chair at DEAR time! We move alphabetically by first name through the class list so that students always know when they'll be the SOTD. 

For this next cycle of the list, the SOTD is asked to bring in a special item they would like to share with the class for something we call the "Afternoon Presentation" . Students may bring in anything they like provided they have their parents' permission and it will fit in an average school bag.  They are not permitted to bring in electronic devices such as iPads and cellphones.  Students are also not permitted to bring anything that's alive.  

This is a great opportunity for us all to get to know each other a little better. It's always been a very special part of our day and I'm thrilled to have this years students participate! 

Here are some FAQs that should provide additional information:

What should students do to prepare for their presentation?

Students are asked to prepare 4-5 sentences describing their item, why it is special to them, how it is used and how they came to own it.  Students are not required to memorize this information. This is all very informal.  

How long is the average presentation? 

On average, each presentation is usually 5-7 minutes long, including audience questions.  

What happens if the student of the day forgets to bring their item?

To help them remember to bring their item, the student will record a reminder in their agenda. This means it is even more important than ever for parents to sign the agenda each night. While we are only doing this task for one cycle of the class list, the SOTD can have a make up day the next time their are the student of the day.  Students who forget their item will not be permitted to present the following day as the focus is to be on one student at a time.  The same will apply to those students who are ill on their day to be the SOTD.  

What are the audience expectations? 

At the conclusion of the presentation, the audience is invited to ask "thick" questions.  The presenter will take three questions.  You can read more about thick questions here.  

What else do students need to do to prepare? 

Students should practice their friendly opening:  "Good afternoon everyone, this is the start of my presentation" . They should also prepare their closing: "That's the end of my afternoon presentation. Now I can take three questions." 

Will students be marked for this? 

No, students will not receive a mark. This is intended to be an informal opportunity to practice presentation skills in a low-stress, risk free environment.  Students will receive any support they need during their presentation, along with positive feedback after.  More formal presentations will come later in the year. This is a way to dip our toes back into the world of class presentations.  

Anything else I should know? 

If students choose to bring a photo album, they are asked to choose four of the photos to share in order to keep the presentation capped at 7 minutes. Please do not email digital photos for students to share.  

Unit 2 Practice Test

Please note: the following blog post has helpful information, but it is from 2019 and does not reflect the current test dates. 

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The boys and girls will write their Unit 2 Math test on Thursday October 24. Below, please find a link to an older, but useful Practice Test.  The Practice Test is a very good friend of the real one and should assist students in preparing for Thursday.   

Please also check your child's zippy on Monday for the study guide/checklist that will also assist in preparing for the test. 

We've been using a combination of our workbook and more "hands on" problem solving experiences to learn the skills from this unit.  Some questions or pages in the workbook have not yet been completed and are perfect for assisting students in preparing for the test. The workbook will come home on Tuesday. Please look for it in your child's Zippy.  

It is important for students to be able to identify the operation required to solve the word problems. They need to look for "clue words" that tell them to add or subtract. We've talked a great deal about "clue words" lately.  

We are also still learning about how to "flip" a question to check for accuracy (e.g. use subtraction to check an addition problem). 

Please note: Problem #10 on the test deals with rounding numbers. This won't be on the test. Students will learn about rounding in a separate mini-unit. 

Please do not return the test to school for marking as this is for practice purposes only. 

Unit 2 Practice Test

Say "hello" to the Head family!

It doesn't get anymore unscripted than this, but here's how I've taught the boys and girls to do subtraction with regrouping. My hope is that parents will be able to support their child at home with regular practice, using the same language and strategy.  

For the record, all the cool kids wear aprons when they do math, you know.  😉

Is this class all about initiative?

Thursday was our official first day together as a full class and the day couldn't have gone better! Late in the afternoon, after a discussion about how Wow Tags work (read more about them here) and the community I want to build in my classroom, one student raised her hand and asked, "So Mrs. Colontino, is this class basically the initiative class?".  Such an incredible observation after really, only a few hours together.  Yes, this is the initiative class!  Let's build leadership, community, perseverence and self-management and we're going to spend a lot of time at the start of the year focusing on this because in my experience, we'll get a ten-fold return on our investment as the year progresses.

This week and next, the focus will be on our basic classroom routines and community.  I've had this blog for many years now and there is lots of great information to be found here. To make effective use of my own time, I've linked to many earlier blog posts that I think readers will find helpful.  

With the return to in-person learning, I also want to help my students with this important transition.  Their entire learning experience has been disrupted a number of times and hopefully, we're back for good and our classroom will soon look more like the little home so many children have enjoyed over the years.  

Next week, we'll begin "Text of the Week" or TOTW, along with learning our math songs and focusing on what good readers do.  

Please also be sure to follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Over the years Instagram has become my preferred platform for sharing day-to-day events from our class, but the blog remains a very valuable resource.  

It's Friday in Room 208 and pandemic or not, that means it's Fun Friday. I look forward to sharing more from our week later today on Instagram.  The kids are "oh-fish-ally" in grade three and I think families and friends will enjoy seeing what we create later in the day to celebrate our new adventure together...in the initiative class.  

The 37th Week of School

Usually by point in the school year, there's Play Days, Talent Shows, Popsicles and a Fun Friday feel to every afternoon. June in an elementary school has an energy that is a lot like the Grand Canyon: one has to experience it to truly appreciate it. It can be hard to create that excitement and anticipation in a digital classroom, but we're trying. There's so much out there in the media about what students aren't getting right now.  In my class, I'd like to think my students are still making gains.  It's not time wasted. There is plenty of purposeful, life-long learning.  

Making the most of our instructional time together, trying to bridge gaps in learning from a disrupted school year, building relationships and finding ways to bring that June feel to a digital space: those are the goals right now.  We're doing the heavy stuff before lunch and keeping things a little lighter in the afternoon.  With more movement breaks and the occasional "Moustache Morning" thrown in for fun, my hope is that students will continue their hard work and dedication to their success. 

I admire and appreciate how the kids in my class have found their way through all this. We've established new routines and learned many important skills that aren't part of a typical grade three curriculum.  For example, did third graders know how to share their screens prior to all this? Did they understand the difference between an editable and non-editable document ("Mrs. M, you shared the link, but you haven't made me an editor.")?  Did they know that it's courteous to offer an explanation or apology upon return when one abruptly leaves an online meeting? 

Just like an in-person environment, there is very much a place for leadership, initiative and community in an online classroom. I think there's an even bigger place for effective communication and old-fashioned good manners.  I love how so many of the classroom policies that would be in place in person: use a person's name before speaking to them, wait until someone is speaking before raising your hand to share and show effective body language while listening and learning are still a priority in the Google Classroom. Overall, my students have become very mature and flexible in terms of coping with tech problems, lessons that don't go as smoothly as I'd hoped or moments where I can't get into my own Google Meet.  They've become outstanding digital citizens this year and there is something to be said for that. Grade three is not the last time they'll be learning and meeting online. My hope is they've learned skills to help them to be successful for life.  

As teachers, we wear many hats throughout the day; tv show host wasn't really one of them prior to this.  I'm getting better at my tv producer/writer/lighting/sound/hosting skills and that's a win for everyone.  There's definitely been some heavy-duty life-long learning happening for me too (a ring light...what a wonderful invention!).  

Long before June, a classroom feels like a family. We were well on our way to this when we left the school back in April. Although we're now meeting in a digital space, there is an undeniable "taking care of each other" happening in our Google Meet each day, and that's a reflection of the people I spend my day with, and their families. 

As that last day gets closer and closer, I will continue to look for creative ways to bring that "Popsicles in June" feeling to my classroom. I think we need that now more than any other school year. We are, after all, a little family getting ready to move on after a year where we journeyed together in such a unique way. Someone said that for teachers, the transition from teaching in person to online (with no training or funding whatsoever, I might add) is a bit like building the plane while flying it.  I couldn't agree more.  My heart is full of gratitude for my patient, courteous, supportive and engaged passengers. We've done this together and like the Grand Canyon, you just have to experience it first hand to appreciate it.      

They're all good eggs!

Who doesn't love a good play on words? Idioms, puns, we love them all in room 208! 

This week's Text of the Week is called "I Got a New Game for My Brother" by Kenn Nesbitt, and we think it's pretty funny! You see the speaker in the poem (we determined it was a first person point of view) TRADED his brother for a new game, rather that GIVE his brother a gift of a new game.  

"The Good Egg" by John Jory and Pete Oswald was the perfect read aloud for today. It's especially timely because given the pandemic, all us eggs need to lower our expectations, try not to worry so much about doing everything "just so" and take care better of ourselves, so we can be a better companion to others.  We enjoyed this read aloud very much and I bet any classroom and family would too!  

Our goal this week of becoming division masters is coming along very nicely! We've been working on finding a fraction of a set, and on Wednesday, students tackled this tricky Math Challenge.  One of my favorite parts of teaching kids how to solve these types of problem is using actual Goldfish crackers in class as manipulatives. As any teacher knows it makes a world of difference in terms of keeping everyone engaged and the learning concrete. I give my students credit for persevering with this challenging skills while learning online.  

As part of our Math Rewind, where we revisit concepts from earlier in the year, we watched an episode of The Odd Squad: Good Egg/Bad Egg (it begins at 13:00) and reviewed: 

• The whole "good egg" thing again 😉
• Probability and how we can use it to make decisions (e.g there's a 10% chance you'll win a raffle if you buy a $100.00 ticket. Do you buy the ticket?) 
• Attributes: what are they and how can we use them to sort objects, find or create patterns?  
• On a lighter note: earlier in the week, we'd talked about what our sofa would say if it could talk. At the very end of this episode Una's lab coat gives her a message "Your hair is soft" and it was just the kind of fun coincidence grade three kids love! 

On Thursday, we'll extend the attribute discussion by working on a task called "Lost and Found".  I'm looking forward to seeing how students might categorize a list of items according to their attributes.  I've done this activity in person a number of times and it always sparks lively discussions and I hope I can replicate this experience for my students at  home!  

Here's our original plan for today. Some items will be moved to next Wednesday, or we'll aim to fit them in on Thursday.  Like most teachers, I tend to over plan, should we fly through things, or an activity just not go our way. Sometimes we veer right off the plan and head in a whole different direction. So while we only have a few weeks left together,  there is still lots we can do and learn! 

It's our 36th week together!

We're shakin' things up a bit in room 208! I've decided to flip our Math and Language Arts block so that we can get the "hard stuff" out of the way earlier in the day and I can capitalize on the time of the day where the kids seem to be more energized.  We've done this a few times over the last few weeks and it seems to work well for everyone. 

As part of the Math program, we have been looking at probability for the last week or so, and from those lessons I found we needed extra practice with our division skills.  Students are very good at using the cookies and plates strategy to divide.  Here's an older poster from the classroom where I've outlined how to use plates and cookies for multiplication. With division, students learn they simply do the opposite and start with the number of cookies to be shared among X number of plates. 

 

To take this to a higher level, we've started working on finding a fraction of a set of numbers, for example 1/5 of 25. There's a little chant we use to help us remember how to go about doing this. 

We didn't get to our Math Challenge today, where students would practice their skills independently, so we'll put that at the top of the list for Tuesday.  

This week's text of the week is called "I Got a New Game for my Brother" by Kenn Nesbitt, and like so many of our poems, it features a very funny twist on words.  As part of our discussions around reading fluency and what good readers do, we talk about how readers should try to make our reading sound like natural speech.  Given how short this poem is, it might be fun for us to try presenting it in character! 

On Tuesday, we'll read a very short story called "A Couch Speaks Out".  My favourite part of the day was when students visited with their elbow partner in our Breakout Rooms this afternoon to talk about what their couch would say if it could talk. Based on what they shared when we all returned to the main meeting, I think we may have a bunch of future comedy writers in our class! 

Thursday May 27

I have an extraordinary class.  

I was pulled away late yesterday afternoon to take care of a family matter. I didn't realize that I had not closed down our Google Meet.  When students went to recess, I left asynchronous work and a video explaining my situation and hoped they would be able carry on without me.  

I learned this morning that they returned to the meeting and carried on in a way that makes me so proud and hopeful for their future as responsible leaders and digital citizens.  They explained to me that they helped each other with the work I'd left, followed the expectations we have for both online and in person learning and then to top it off, the Student of the Day led the class in closing prayers.  

It was hard to keep it together this morning when they proudly shared this with me.  

What more could teachers and parents ask for than this?  We talk a lot about doing the right thing even if no one is watching, and how our conduct should be an example, not a warning to others and that was certainly demonstrated on Wednesday.  

Now on to today's (late) plan. Thursday was a fantastic day in our little digital space. We enjoyed Kahoots for the first time together as a class and they were very well received.  

In math, we're working on probability, but we're also revisiting concepts that need a little boost. Counting money is our focus right now, and any opportunity to strengthen this skill would be time well spent.  

Today we started using the blank pages in our agenda to learn cursive writing. The lines are perfect for practicing our letters and also help minimize frustration.  Here's an older blog post that talks about why I teach cursive.  

We didn't quite check off every item on our plan today, so some items will be carried over to Friday or Monday. 

Unused pages in our Agenda or "Homework Book" are perfect for
learning how to write in cursive. 

Wednesday May 26

It's Wednesday and this is our favorite way to start our hump day with a smile! We used this commercial earlier in the school year to talk about how as writers, we need to add lots of interesting detail to our writing to, just like this commercial, keep our audience engaged. 

This is our plan for today. I'm more excited about our Math Rewind than our probability work. I think there's only so much we can do with probability at the grade three level, but there is plenty for us to review as it relates to counting coins, finding a fraction of a set and understanding the hour.  

In their agendas, students are asked to review the Doubles Chant, which can be found here on the blog under "Math Chants."  I'd love to know how all those kids in that video feel knowing they're still teaching kids how to memorize their doubles facts all these years later.  Viewing the video is a fun reminder that the light is at the end of the tunnel. Soon we'll be back to school with carpets, furniture, songs and most importantly, each other.  

Tuesday May 25

Pre-Covid, this space was where I shared the day to day happenings, various resources and other tools used in my classroom with my students and their families. It was nice for folks to have a little reference desk of their own to use when needed. Throughout the pandemic, I've struggled to figure out just how I could continue to use the blog when so much of what happens everyday is *right there* in our Google Classroom.   

Each day, I'm required to share my plan with my students and their families and up until now, I've done so via twitter and within our digital learning space. Moving forward,  I'll post the plan here, and when I can, I'll add in a few notes and photos to support what we hope to achieve that day.  We don't always get everything on our plan done and that's typical of both a digital and in-person learning space.  Sometimes things take longer than expected, or we might need to abandon the plan altogether because a break is what the moment calls for. 

Now, I'm not getting off to a great start by posting today's plan at 4:00pm, but I'm sure it won't take long for me to find my blogger groove again.  

Here's what we did today! 

As part of our afternoon "Math Rewind", we've been using the 13-minute Odd Squad episodes to revisit concepts we covered earlier in the year.  Today we talked parallel lines, patterns and reviewed geometric shapes. We also had some related fun learning about Canusa Street: a town that runs along the US/Canadian border in Vermont and Quebec. You can read more about Canusa Street here. 

Recently, we've been making good use of the digital math manipulatives at toytheatre.com . As part of Math Rewind, we did some work with digital pattern blocks.  

We have two novels on the go right now.  The Wild Robot by Peter Brown is our novel study as part of our literacy block, while Gordon Korman's Zoobreak is our end-of-day read aloud.  Both are full of suspense and interesting characters!  Zoobreak is a little wordy at times, so in the interest of time and holding my audience's attention, I edit as we go (sorry Mr. K). 

And that was our day! 

Fingers crossed Wednesday's plan will be posted here BEFORE school starts for the day.   

Because of Mr. Terupt

We have started reading a wonderful new book called Because of Mr. Terupt during our Evening Meeting.I love the interest and enthusiasm this novel generates year after year with my class.  

This is not a book that I would recommend my Grade Three students read on their own once we finish. I'm reading it to the class from a copy I have edited myself and there will not be a copy available to students in the classroom. 

It's an incredible book, but it contains a few words that I'm going to leave out (mostly bathroom humour and the "R" word used once or twice).  

Having said that, it's a novel with an important message; one that reminds us that everyone has a different perspective, comes from a different sent of circumstances and that actions have consequences.  I am very excited to share it with my students as it always generates plenty of meaningful discussions. 

I think once the children reach Grade 5 or 6, they can read it on their own, but until then, they can relax and enjoy being an active listener.