Our Frist Spilling Liisst
I am very excited! This week we are starting our very first spelling list! (Yes, I know you’re excited too!!)
If you have not been in my room before, we use a website (Spellingcity.com) where students can practice their spelling words. It is a really cool site for students to practice and have fun with their spelling words. I also have another great thing with the website! If students complete the practice test, receive 100% and print out the certificate, I will give them a bonus mark for their test on Friday! For the spelling test at the end of the week, I do not require markings or syllable spaces. I have embedded the spelling list below and the link to the Spelling City. There are two lists this year. Students know which one to use to practice.
Here are the links to the Spelling City Pages. Just click on the picture that matches your list.
Spelling Words for This Week!
Weren’t the Grade 2/3’s wonderful at the concert tonight? They did a really amazing job with a tough couple of pieces. Well done, guys!!!! I am very proud of you!
Here is our spelling for this week:
Don’t forget to follow the link to practice your words on Spelling City! If you print out your completed test and bring it in to me, you can get an extra mark on your spelling test on Friday! As this will be our last spelling list for the year, let’s go out with a bang and rack up those extra points!!
Spelling List For The Week And A Surprise
Well, it is one week closer to our due date (our baby is due on the 23rd!) and nothing yet. The excitement is mounting!!
We are going to do one more Review List before taking a break to work on some of the rules for spelling in our Learning Logs. Here is the spelling list for this week:
Don’t forget to do our Spelling City with lots of fun games and a test you can take to help you practice. You can also bring in your completed test for an extra mark on the spelling test on Friday!
It has been a little while since I uploaded something fun on the blog. So as a fun surprise, here is a new video for you. It is really neat how they built the contraption to use in the video.
New This Week!
Hello and welcome back!! I’ve missed all of you! I hope you enjoyed the crazy fun activities on the blog while you were away! Don’t forget that they will always be there so if you need something to do, check back and try one of the activities!
Spelling this week is a little different. We are quite a ways ahead in our spelling so we are going to do some review. I have gone back and chosen words from a variety of lessons that I think may still be tricky for students or may have disappeared from memory. I have put them together into review spelling lists which we will go over for the next few weeks. The words are not from any one list and are some of the trickier words from each list. We are also going to be working more on using them in sentences as well to give them more context.
I have also given the list to the students today and will be giving them to the students every Monday from now on. The lists will be glued into the planners with markings added on Wednesdays.
Here is the spelling list for this week.
Spelling RV1
I will add the words to the Spelling City page tomorrow.
Spelling For This Week and Other News!
Hope everyone had a great weekend! It was very nice and relaxing for us. The calm before the storm! With our baby being expected around the 23rd of March, I know that there will not be many relaxing days left! As a friend just told me the other day, when it comes to children, 1+1 does not equal two! Anyway, we are very excited for the new arrival.
Here are the words for this week followed by the Spelling City link.
Here is the link to the Spelling City page. Don’t forget! If you complete the spelling test on the Spelling City website and you bring it in to me, I will give you an extra mark on your spelling test on Friday!
Next week, students will be going on a Field trip to the Planetarium. The field trip is being planned for Feb. 9th and permission forms went home today. Permission forms need to be brought back by Friday!!! If you need another copy of the permission form, you can download one from the box.net widget on the right hand side of the website.
Another reminder about the Speech Meet! We will be holding the try-outs next Weds so please help your child have their pieces ready and memorized. Students have already been telling me that they have been practicing which is fantastic.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank You! for all the help you give your child at home!
Mea Culpa
It’s been a busy week and thus the blog posts have been few and far between. My apologies and I will try to be more regular with my posts.
First of all, there is no spelling list or memory verse for this week due to the shortened week. We will continue with the spelling and memory verse next week as per usual. After this next spelling list, we will be going back to review past spelling words and start doing more work with them in sentence form.
You may have noticed that your child brought home a poem in their planner (or pocket as the case may be). It is that time of year again and we are preparing for the Speech Meet which is held annually in Abbotsford. This is a big event for us and we always do very well. However, this year is a little different for us as we have a winter break between now and the day of the Speech Meet, which will be held on March 5. As we want to get our entries in before we leave, we will be choosing the students who will be going on February 10th. Participation is optional and if your child did not bring home a poem or memory verse that may mean they did not want to do it. Please ask your child if they selected a verse or poem to practice. Poems or memory verses must be memorized. We are also working on adding expression and proper standing postures to the recitations with students standing nice and straight with no hands in their pockets and their eyes on the audience. Adding expression is always hard for students but we are looking for students who can recite with confidence using a proper volume and with excitement in their voices. On February 10th, we will hear all the students from our class who chose to do a recitation and I will pick students from there. We are allowed to send 1 poem reader and 1 memory verse reader from the Grade 2 and 1 poem reader and 1 memory verse reader from the Grade 3’s in my class. If you have any questions or you need another copy of the poem please let me know!
Science has been a frantic, “let’s finish it up” time with students trying to get all their projects and papers done and in order before the deadline. Looking at the budgets from each class, all students were able to complete their projects on time and within budget. Luckily the storekeeper was very kind and gave some great deals towards the end of the projects. Projects will be going home tomorrow, but you can see them right now by watching the video below!
Our next science unit will be on States of Matter where students will be taking a close look at the properties of air, water, and gas.
In Language Arts, we have been continuing with our Daily 3 reading program. It has really been great to be able to work with small groups of students at the same time. As I work with the students in these small groups listening to them reading and working on certain aspects of their reading and comprehension skills, the other students are focused on sharing reading with a partner, reading on their own or reading along with a Cd. It has been a great program. For our writing, we have moved into organization of stories with a focus at this point on story beginnings. We have talked about how a story beginning needs to draw in readers and make them want to keep reading. One of the students today said that it is like writing the first part of a story and putting a “to be continued” at the end of it. It makes the reader interested in how the story is going to resolve itself. We took some common events from throughout the year, and drew a picture of ourselves doing that ordinary, everyday activity. However, the students added something interesting into the pictures to make it more exciting. Now, they are working on taking the picture and crafting it into a story beginning. At the same time, we have also talked about how we need to make our first sentence interesting as well, which is always a hard thing for students to do. We talked about how they can use beginnings like “One day . . . “, “It was a warm and bright . . . “, use conversations to start a story or use a book to find a beginning that you can adapt and use in your own story. We have already been getting some very interesting story beginnings. From there, we will work on the middles of stories and endings. I also told the students that I had a crazy idea for putting all those story beginning, middles and endings together into one story but I would tell them later. I will give you a clue though:
Speaking of Oliver Jeffers, if you haven’t read any of his children’s books, I highly recommend them. They are lots of fun and the illustrations are beautiful! They have also made one of his books into an animated video, which you can see a preview of right here:
I have placed some new links on the side. You should see a link to the Reading A-Z site where students can read books online and have them read to them as well! I have also put a link to a neat site where students can make regular maps and treasure maps to play with and print out. The last link is to a neat free program where students can make cool mindmaps of anything they want. It is free but annoying pop ups to buy to program come up every once and awhile.
Spelling and Memory Verse
Sorry for not getting this on earlier. Here is your spelling list for this week:
Spelling N7
Also, don’t forget to log-in to Spelling City where you can practice your words and print out your certificate. Bring the certificate in to me to receive an extra mark on your spelling!
Your memory verse this week comes from Psalm 25:2 and is the continuation from last week’s verse:
Do not let me be put to shame, nor let my enemies triumph over me.
Welcome Back!
I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas break. At our house, there was a lot of laughter and eating happening. In fact, my father brought us a “terduckin” for Christmas dinner, which is a turkey and a duck together in one. Don’t ask me how they do that. It is probably better if we don’t know!
Anyway, we are getting right back into the swing of things. Here is the spelling for this week.
Here is also the link for the Spelling City lists. Don’t forget that you can print out your certificate or completed lists to get an extra mark on the spelling test!
Our memory verse this week comes from Galatians 5:22-23:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.
Finally, to start off the year on a fun note, here is another great video from the “They Might Be Giants” Science CD.
Are You Ready For December? The Mrhclassblog Is!!!
Ahh! Flakes falling gently. Snow crunching underfoot! Snowmen being made by little Grade 3 children. Snowballs flying through the air! I love the winter season!
Wait a minute . . .
Oh. Right. I forgot.
I live in B.C now. Rain, rain, more rain and . . . . wait for it . . . that’s right! More rain! I miss the snow. Lucky for you and me. I brought some now from Alberta to the blog. I hope you enjoy it. We had a good start to the week. In science, students are quickly finishing up the first part of the science unit on building. Last week, we learned that stable objects are objects that do not tip over easily and stand up on their own. We did an experiment with a variety of containers and had a little tournament to see which one would stand the longest as the table they were standing on was tilted slowly up. From that experiment, we learned that the taller and object is, the wider the base had to be and the more weight there had to be on the bottom.
Here is a video of some kids trying to build a tall structure. Do you notice anything about their structure that matches what we learned last week and today?
Do you notice anything about these buildings? (I didn’t write it so the spelling mistakes are not mine!!)
Using that knowledge, students have now been assigned the task of designing a sippy cup for Siena that will be stable and not tip over easily. The results should be very interesting!
Our Daily 3 is now on the way to running smoothly. The Listening Centre area had a few more kinks in it than I expected. But it is working better now. Thank you to all the parents who donated machines to the class. They are working beautifully. My goal and objective now is to start working in small groups with students focusing on books and reading strategies specifically geared to their age and reading level. We will be doing novel studies and comprehension activities as a small group of no more than 4 students. It should be very good. I will also be working with individual students to hear how their reading is doing and provide individual attention on an on-going basis.
Here is our spelling for this week:
Spelling N 3
As always, here is the spelling city link. Remember that if you bring me your completed test, you can receive an extra mark on your spelling test on Friday!!! The more you practice your words using games and other activities, the stronger your neurons and axons get!!!
Our Memory Verse continues on the Christmas-y theme here at Mrhclassblog! It is from Luke 2:10:
But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
Finally, I thought this would be good to add to our collection of videos. This is from a cd of Science music we were listening to last week. It is by a group called “They Might Be Giants”. Anyone from my generation might remember them. Anyway, they have been getting into children’s music lately and this CD has a great collection of songs. The added DVD has the songs as videos and I found some of them on youtube. Enjoy!