Get Moving, Have Fun, and Go Noodle!

Go Noodle is a fun and educational thing to do at school.  We have used it over the last 2 weeks for movement breaks.  There are a ton of videos that you can play and follow along with.  From stretching, to dancing, and even counting, classrooms can have fun Go Noodling. A neat thing is that after completing 10 videos, your classroom character changes.  Here is what our character looks like now, as today we completed our 10th video!

Here is a short video clip from one of today's dances!  As you will be able to see, Go Noodle is pure fun!

Alliteration, Simile, and Summary Poems

We were busy with poetry last week, and we will continue to study other elements of poetry this week!  Here are some of the model poems from our alliteration poems on Science Alive, simile poems, and summary poems from our Earth Day Time for Kids.

 Freckles by Eric

The snake slithers,

Across the circular floor,

With his scaly skin,

He circled softly around our necks. 

Baby Puff by Kristina

Mrs. Neal brought in animals,

That she has been taking care of for years.

My favorite animal was Baby Puff.

When I felt his fur,

It felt like a puffy cloud.

The fur was brushing through my fingers.

Baby Puff has 8- hairs per root, 

Which humans have only 1 hair per root. 

Baby Puff is the softest animal in the world.

His whiskers were as long as strands of grass.

Baby Puff is so soft, 

He could be as soft to be a coat. 

Baby Puff is an adorable rodent.

Trust me...you will want Baby Puff as a pet now. 

Rolo by Chris

Rolo the Armadillo

Is cool because he would,

Rock, 

Run, 

Rollover,

And when Rolo was in his ball,

I wonder what he was doing.

Crawling, 

Curling up, 

Or something else!

Rolo is also the only kind of armadillo,

That can roll in a complete,

Ball! 

Simile Poems 

John

John is panting like a dog,

After running as fast as a cheetah, 

On a day that's as hot as a wildfire.

He was training for a race.

He was so hot, 

He could jump into a pool,

And swim like a fish.

He had been sweating so much,

That he looked like he had just taken,

A long shower.

By Kalyn

All About Me...Gabby

I love to sing like a chirping bird.

Or to swim like a humpback whale.

I love to dance like moving seaweed.

Growing is not my specialty...like the opposite of a flower. 

I can write as fast as a cheetah catching her prey.

Or paint like a creative mind.

I love to read so much, 

I'm basically a book!

I'm as bright as shiny jewelry glistening on my wrist.

I love to act so much like somebody else in plays,

Like a wasp acts like a bee.

I'm usually excited,

Like when a dog meets a new person.

I am who I am.

I'm like a shooting star over the dark sky!

By Gabby

Summary Poem

Yosemite Park

Everyone loves Yosemite Park

Because of it's amazing views.

It is breathtaking.

Bears, sequoias, cliffs,

Meadows filled with flowers,

A river, Mariposa Grove, and 

So much more!

Everybody is trying to make and remove things,

To keep Yosemite beautiful and

Clean!

If it weren't for Abraham Lincoln, 

Yosemite Park wouldn't exist!

By Julia F.

Our Poetry Unit Has Begun!

My favorite unit of the year is here!  I love, love, love teaching poetry, and we were able to kick it off today by writing Phone Number Poems! After we completed our independent reading for the day, students wrote poems about their books. Here are some of the poems that I thought were nicely done.

With each poetry assignment, I will select a few to publish and add to our Poetry Place.  I look forward to reading many wonderful poems throughout this unit and see wonderful growth in the students as writers! 

Interesting Facts About Team Bond

We are participating in the Holiday Card Exchange, one of the wonderful Projects by Jen! (www.projectsbyJen.com) As part of the project, we have to add an interesting fact about our classroom to the card.  Here are some of the things Team Bond 2013 thought of:

• We have Maxi the Moose, a stuffed animal, and we have a raffle each week to see who gets to take him home for the weekend. 
• We use a lot of technology to learn with. (JF)
• We have Goal Time, where we get to pick a goal to work on. (BG)
• We do a thing called Sunshine Club, where we send notes and letters to people that may need a little sunshine in their lives. 
• We have Roses and Thorns each Friday where we can share one good thing about the week and one not-so-good thing about the week. 
• We can use Thinking Putty in class, we have a raffle each week for people that have 5 sharpened pencils on Monday morning, and we do Brain Breaks sometimes when we need to take a movement break. (MT)
• Our teacher is a technology teacher. 
• We get 30 minutes to do whatever we want to do on Mondays. (Goal Time)
• We use Thinking Putty and we use iPads. 
• We all LOVE Thinking Putty!
• We use Thinking Putty, we have Goal Time, and we have Maxi the Moose. 
• We have our own book binding machine in the class.  We use Google Hang Outs sometimes.  We have Goal Time, use technology a lot, and have a class mascot named Maxi the Moose. (FS)
• We have a great classroom library with lots of books. 
• We do Goal Time! 

As you can see, we enjoy learning, creating, and growing our social and academic intelligence in Team Bond! 

Digital Learning Day and BYOD Day in Team Bond

Today we are celebrating Digital Learning Day, and we have brought our devices!  In addition, we are wearing our App Shirts! (see photo) Here are the devices that were brought in by Team Bond members:

• iPads: 2
• Nintendo 3D: 3
• Tablets: 2
• Kindle Fire: 1
• iPods: 9
• Tablet/Laptop Combo: 1

We have used our devices in the following ways:

• We practiced our words for our spelling test. Some people drew the words and some typed their words.
• We listened to Mrs. Bond read The Secret Zoo Book 2, and we kept track of good word choice on edmodo or on our note taking apps.
• Mrs. Case came in to help, and we went out in small groups to try out QR codes. We were able to look up 3 sites that were attached to the QR codes.  The last one was this blog!  We hope a lot of people read it!
• We had free choice during recess, and Minecraft was a popular choice.  18 of our 20 students chose to stay in! 
• Our PTA just bought an iPad cart!  (Thanks Glengary PTA!!!!) We got to use the iPad cart for 20 minutes, and we explored www.infuselearning.com. We drew what we had for breakfast, we took a quiz on nonfiction text feature, and we drew the silliest face we could think of!  We can't wait to use it again!
• In computer lab, we went on edmodo, and we were excited that one of the founders of edmodo, Mr. O'Hara, was on helping people in the Support Community!  We added a post telling him how much we love edmodo!
• In computer lab we found out cool information about our states, and we took our spelling test in VocabularySpellingCity.
• During free choice, we taught Mrs. Bond more about Minecraft.  She didn't know that there are different biomes in Minecraft, as well as ways to learn about the minerals and rocks below the Earth's surface.  She was SUPER excited, as we just started our unit on Earth Materials! 

Students listened and typed the words that stood out to them. 

We practiced our math facts for multiplication.  Here are the ways we used our devices and apps.

• Use the calculator app to solve problems.
• We can use Rocket Math...now called Mathmateer.
• We can draw out our math facts.
• We can quiz our friends.
• We can use one of our other apps that help us learn.

Finally, we were discovering the rocks and minerals inside our Mock Rocks, so we used technology to create a Mock Rock Mining Doodlecast.  In addition, we will be creating a Zapd site to record our learning.

For homework, the children have to reflect on the ways we used our devices throughout the day for our learning.  I can't wait to hear what they thought of their first BYOD Day!  We will be having these every 2 weeks from this point on! 

Cheers to Technology!

Celebrating The One and Only Ivan

We received an email about a week ago from Mrs. Ripp, the founder and leader of the Global Read Aloud, and she shared exciting news...Mrs. Applegate, the author of The One and Only Ivan, would pick three classes to have a video conference with!  We thought about ways we could convince Mrs. Applegate that we would be a perfect class for the video conferencing.  Of course, we love the book, but we knew that we would have to showcase some of our creativity, as well.  Here are some of the projects we would like Mrs. Applegate to view in our quest to be one of the classes she picks!

Dear Mrs. Applegate,
    Here are some of the things we have worked on to celebrate Ivan and your wonderful book!  We hope that you will pick us to have a Google Hang Out with, as we would love to share this honor with other classes too!  We hope you enjoy the projects we have created!

Sincerely,
Team Bond Third Graders

We hope you enjoy these videos!  We can't wait to add more, as we continue to read The One and Only Ivan!