Words Are Forever #RESreads

Today, we welcomed Betsy Emerson & Anne O'Brien from Beacon Light Grange #557 to our classrooms. Each year, Grange members participate in a number of volunteer activities in our community including giving each 3rd grader a dictionary of their very own!


Scholars were delighted to find the longest English word (with over 1,000 letters!) among the treasures in their new books!

Thank you Beacon Light Grange members for "treating" us with dictionaries!!

Spotlight on: Grade 3 Library Classes #resvt #tcrwp

This is a guest post from our teacher librarian, Beth Redford.



 

Third graders have been visiting the library to find library books about animals as part of their current writing unit: Information Writing. These scholars will be writing informational books about hedgehogs, bearded dragons, mountain goats...and that's just the beginning of the list! They are using these library books to learn about the habitats, physical features, and life cycles of their animals so they have plenty of information to include in their own books. In upcoming weeks Mrs. Redford will be going to third grade classrooms to work with scholars during their writing times. Here are just a few of the books our scholars will be using:

 



 

 



 

Celebrating Small Moments! #tcrwp

On Monday, we celebrated the conclusion of our first writing unit of the year in a BIG way...we invited Mr. Alberghini back to share another story with us and he was more than happy to oblige.  Thankfully, Mr. Berry was also available to help us celebrate and was able to video Mr. Alberghini's story...so...

Without further ado, here is The Muskrat Story!



And, Mr. Berry also checked in with a few scholars and asked about their work in this unit. Here is a podcast of that conversation, including their very own "small moment" stories!



At the conclusion of this unit, we also wrote an "on-demand" story to demonstrate all that we've learned about personal narrative writing. We were amazed at how much our writing fluency and stamina have improved.

Coming up next for writers workshop:  The Art of Information Writing!   Stay tuned...

Cheese from rocks?

RES third graders went to Shelburne Farms to participate in their "Stories in Stone" educational program connected with our current geology study. Students learned about the three main types of rocks, igneous, metamorphic, and sedimentary, and looked for examples of these types along the shores of Lake Champlain.  They discovered that shale, a type of sedimentary rock, is quite common and easily distinguishable do to its dark gray/black color and veins of white, which is made of calcite. Calcite is a calcium carbonate mineral. The educators at the Farms helped students come up with a story of how one might connect a stone containing calcite all the way to Shelburne Farms cheddar cheese, which contains calcium. Pretty cool! And the examples of weathering and erosion we found around the Lake Champlain shoreline were pretty amazing too.

Stories in Stone Slideshow

Our Place in the World

This post originally appeared on Mrs. Rankin's Enrichment at RES blog.

Third graders have spent the last few weeks of enrichment class thinking about their place in the world.  World geography is one of the social studies units which students will focus on in grade 3, and by starting with this project students had an opportunity to think about their geographical place on an introductory level.  This was also a great opportunity for us to get to know each other as a class of learners, and practice collaborative group work skills which we will use all year long! Students selected a place in this world they wished to share. Next they worked with a small group to design a three dimensional way to show that place.  Students used clay, popsicle sticks, maps, flags, cardboard, technology, and much more to create their place.  Once all of the creations were complete, we worked as a class to create an iMovie that shared our place in this world-- beginning with ourselves as a group of learners and then growing all the way up to our Planet Earth! Throughout this project students were engaged and enthusiastic, and they really worked as cohesive teams!

This work is a great foundation as we will spend time later in the year digging deeper into our understanding of world geography.
Third graders hope you will enjoy our iMovie Presentations!

Mrs. Ayer's Class:



Mrs. Ankerson's Class:


Miss Darby's Class: