Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Rainy Day = Work Day


What's a teacher to do when it's almost the end of the summer and Mother Nature decides it's going to rain all week? Well, you know the answer! Work, work, work!

Good news! There was a new roll of lamination loaded and no waiting in line! So here's a bit of what my teammates and I have been up to lately.

Boggle, anyone?
 To feed my addiction to Ruzzle, I'm hoping my students will enjoy learning to Boggle! Sorry for the blurry photo. I can't seem to operate my iPhone's camera correctly.

Expanding Vocabulary
 I'm using the Cafe method and plan to really step up vocabulary instruction. I thought this would make I good weekly focus and check off a few more of those common core standards. I plan to do a synonym, antonym, prefix/suffix, homophone, and an idiom of the week.
 
A Door Close Up
We're Wild about Reading!
Bottom left beside door
Here's my door decor. The lion's thought bubble says: Reading takes us places when we have to stay where we are. Our grade level is doing a Wild About Third Grade Theme this year. This is about as wild as I get. :)

STEAM Focus Board
My teammates and I created this bulletin board to kick off our school's new theme: Full STEAM Ahead! We're so excited about it. We're starting the year with a newly installed Aquaponics lab. We've partnered with some grad students (one of which is my son) to create a sustainability education program incorporating H.O.T.S. (higher order thinking skills).

Tree of Knowledge :)
Inspired by those whimsical tree paintings from a Drink/Paint event that everyone was posting on FaceBook, I had to have a tree! After a few trial and error sessions, Mrs. H. and I were happy with the way it turned out! The posters are my CCGPS for Reading.

AR Display
We were looking for a way to incorporate our "wild" theme and motivate students to read. Hopefully this will work. 

End of Our Hall - We love 3rd Grade

Born to be WILD Birthday Display

One more tree! Couldn't help it!