Tip Tuesday Grade Card Comments

Hi friends. I can't believe it's Tuesday already! I'm posting late for this week's tip, the day got away from me.

  I also can't believe that it's the end of the first quarter already. I've been working on grade card comments which can be challenging.  I sometimes feel like I'm repeating the same comments over and over. I have websites bookmarked that I go to for word variety. The links to the websites are listed below.

                          101 Report Card Comments


                         Education World: 100 Report Card Comments

 
                         Super Teacher Report Card Comments


I'm keeping this post short and sweet.  Have a great week!

Autumn Leaves Theme Day

Hello friends and happy Friday. I'm linking up once again with Doodle Bugs 5 for Friday and TBA's Freebie Friday.  My class concluded this week with an Autumn Leaf Day. It fit perfectly with our study of plants. Here's what it looked like.......

We started the day with a close read of a story called "Leaf Collection". The picture shows the third read of children reading for skill.  The focus skill was details. Click here for the format of my close reading and here for my post on supporting details.



The children brought in leaves for math. They worked in their learning teams to sort the leaves into like color and recorded the results in a tally chart. They used the data to create a bar graph. We worked on writing to compare in math this week and have an anchor chart displayed in the room with comparison words. The children compared their graphs with someone from a different team and used words from the chart to write comparison statements. Click the picture for this lesson freebie.

I made a guess the covered word activity to go with Photosynthesis. Through the activity the children learned why leaves turn colors in the fall. The words in context that they had to guess were photosynthesis, chlorophyll, glucose, yellow, brown, orange, green, and energy.



I also used the words to create a word search and added some other autumn words also. Click here for the puzzle maker.

 



I wanted to do leaf rubbings, but we ran out of time! We had a great day though.  Have a great weekend everyone!



iPad for RTI

I'm lovin' my class iPad! (My wonderful husband bought an iPad for my class). Needless to say, I've been downloading apps like crazy.The first 30 minutes of the day I work on RTI. The iPad is a great tool for this.

 I found a couple apps  for fluency called One Minute Reader and K12 Timed Reading. The children practice all week to beat their time and do the last reading for me on Friday.

 Another way I'm using the iPad is for individual math practice or enrichment. Some students are working on multiplication zombies and some are on subtraction.

Students that need phonics can practice with the Phonics Tic-Tac-Toe.

I'm just getting started. I can't wait to try more. Do you have any tips for me about this? I'd love to hear more ideas.



Head over to Fourth Grade Flipper for Tried it Tuesday. I even downloaded the Spelling City App that she's talking about. :)

Five for Five and Freebies.

Happy Friday! It's Freebie Friday and I'm linking up with Doodle Bugs' Five for Friday. Here we go.......

We wrapped our Johnny Appleseed/Tall Tales unit this week with apple treats. The treats were made by a few of  the parents. We had apple bars, apple muffins, apple cookies, and cider. Yum! We enjoyed the treats while watching animated versions of the tall tales we read.

Thanks to a parent(I have a great group of volunteers), we tasted apples and graphed our results in a pictograph. Our mode was the yellow apples.  You can download a copy of my tally chart and pictograph checklist by clicking the picture below.

                                                                                 

The children paired up to read tall tales. They wrote down examples of exaggerations from the stories. The children reported their findings to the class. They enjoyed hearing about each other's stories and exaggerations.

We learned the life cycle of the apple tree and dug deeper into the parts of the apple and their functions. To demonstrate the job of the stem, I put celery into colored water. They loved it. You could see where the xylem carried the water through the stem. They also thought the word xylem was pretty cool. I got this idea from Pinterest.





 I will end with a quote.



   

Prove It!

Supporting answers with details from the text is a hard concept for third graders. It takes lots of practice and modeling. I created a mini anchor for my students to glue into their interactive reading notebooks to help. The children refer back to the anchor now while answering questions that require supporting details.  It has really helped. You can download the mini anchor by clicking the picture below.
  

That's Tuesday's tip! Have a great week! Head over to Fourth Grade Flippers for more ideas from Tried it Tuesday.

 

 

Teach it to Learn It

 Welcome to Tip Tuesday!              

What's the best way to learn? Teach it! Research has proven that you remember 90% of what you teach or explain to someone else. You remember around 5% of what you hear during a lecture. So it makes sense that our students need opportunities to "be the teacher".

   I have my students take turns being the teacher everyday in math. After I model a new skill and allow time for practice, the kids partner up and take turns being the teacher. This past week we spent a lot of time on subtraction across zeros. The kiddos that were the teachers taught each step of the process to another student. It doesn't mean that mistakes weren't made, but that's okay. We learn from our mistakes also.

 I made teacher cards that I'm going to laminate and pass out to students that are to be the teachers. You may download a copy by clicking the link below.

 Enjoy your little teachers!

Link up your blog while your here and find some other great blogs :)

Blog Hop by Grade

Bloggers wanted! I invite you to link your blog up and find other fabulous blogs geared to your grade level. I did not forget about kindergarten or fifth grade. I'm working on a page for you also. You may click on your button below to link up. Happy Hopping!