Playground Promises

This past week all of 3rd grade was MAP testing. At first I was a little worried about taking 19 active 3rd graders into a computer lab to be silent and still in front of a screen for at least an hour. So we spent MUCH time talking about expectations, procedures...and I even made a little promise!

A few of my students had continually asked me to go down the slide on the playground. I promised the kids that if they did their very best on the MAP test and followed all directions during that time, that I would go down the slide with them at recess.

Needless to say, they did great...and at 10:45, they were adament that I go down the slide.

Well, I did. I must say, it was fun...and the kids were shocked. They kept saying they had NEVER seen a teacher go down the slide, haha! It pretty much rocked their brains for the rest of the afternoon.

When we got back in from recess, and they were supposed to be getting water in our room- they started writing sweet messages on my board. After one friend did it, everyyyyybody else had to, and while it did take some time to erase, it made the rest of my afternoon too!

I had to post this because it was a lesson I learned as a teacher that I want to be able to read and remember one day. After one simple promise and gesture recieved such a warm and an enthusiastic response, what else could I do as their teacher to make each day that much more special? Just a thought...

Mineral Madness

Today we started our study of Minerals. We watched a video segment on United Streaming for a quick introduction to what minerals are and how they are identified! I thought it would be fun for the students to be able to get their hands on some minerals and make some observations for an easy introduction.

Stations were set up at each table, and each station group was given a bucket.

In the bucket there were:

Magnifying glasses

Pairs of gloves for each group member

Recycled paper trays

A container of one type of minerals

 

**The minerals came from a rocks and minerals kit that was bought by the school

Before observing we talked about how to observe: using our 5 senses. The students' objective was to look at, listen to, feel, and smell (if necessary) the minerals. Of course we talked about the importance of not using the last sense, taste. Yucky!

 

Just to be Super Scientists, and practice safety, we wore plastic gloves. (Anything to make them excited and engaged) You'd be amazed at the attention one plastic glove gets...

 

So...for about 30 minutes, we observed!

 

 

 

 

 

They seemed to really like just taking the time to look and play with some minerals! Must try this with rocks...

 

 

 

 

Landform Flipbooks

This past week in Science, we began learning all about landforms on our planet. We learned that islands, caverns, canyons, valleys, mountains, and volcanoes are major landforms we see in our world.

 

To summarize what we learned this week we made landform flipbooks! I  must give a HUGE "THANK YOU" to the grade-level assistants for stapling these flipbooks together for us and having them ready for us to complete by Friday. You are awesome!

 

Each layer of the flipbook represented a different landform. The students cut each layer according to what the landform was!

 

Then they used crayons or colored pencils to add details to each layer so that they would know what the layer represented.

 

Light blue- Island

Dark Brown- Cavern

Light Brown- Canyon

Green- Valley

White/Gray- Mountain

Black- Volcano

 

 

Each student was also given a sheet of labels to add to each layer. The labels were the names of the landforms.

 

While we worked on each layer the Landform powerpoint played.

 

Nice work!

 

Proud girls

 

Our classroom artist!

 

Hard worker

 

This culminating activity was a fun way to reinforce what had already been learned. It will also serve as a study guide for next week's quiz!