Fall Break is here!

Happy Fall Break to all who are enjoying a few (or more) days off right now. Our corporation takes a Friday and Monday off for a very nice 4 day weekend. The first two days were very busy for me, as I was a bridesmaid in my best friend's wedding. The weather turned out to be great, and it was a beautiful celebration! Yesterday and today are my relaxing days... thankfully I worked ahead and don't need to make a trip to school; however, I am going to try to catch up on some blog posts that the kids have been writing.

The way our school does specials (P.E., Art, Music, and Technology) may be a little different than other schools. We go to the same class everyday for 4 1/2 weeks, and then switch. We will have each special during the first semester, and then again in the second semester. I like it this way rather than having each special once a week. The teachers can go deeper into their topics and standards, and reach higher levels of comprehension. I had two girls want to write about switching specials for their blog post. (Kids love specials!)

Specials by Alivia
We are doing gym this week, and it is fun. The first day of gym we used these square skateboard things. That was fun. Last week we did Art. The first craft we did in Art was cave paintings. We are done with Art for now. Now we are doing gym. The gym teacher had a good idea. If we don't have the right shoes on you have to walk by the bleachers. You can not play the game. That is not fun!

Gym by Brooklyn
We just started gym and this is what we do... We play Matball. We also run one mile. Our gym teacher's name is Mrs. Hatcher. We also do yoga. We play lots of games. Mrs. Hatcher puts us in lines when we do yoga. When we do yoga, we go up one at a time and stretch. This is how you play Matball... you can drop it or throw it. You run to the left. If the ball is coming at you, you can duck or you can move to the side.

Great job Alivia and Brooklyn! I am glad you are enjoying P.E.!

5 Weeks In

As always, the school year is moving quickly already. I can't believe we are five weeks in to the year. The kids are feeling comfortable with the procedures and routines that we have been practicing, they have already completed their first round of standardized testing (yay!), and we are starting to dig into some more complex topics with all of our subjects. At this point I feel like I know each of the students pretty well...so well that I spent some time at school rearranging the seating chart this weekend. :) I really like this time of year. All of the newness has faded, and the kids know what they are doing. They no longer get lost in the hallways. They know the schedule. Not to mention the weather has started to cool down, and fall is in the air!

I have two student blog posts to share today. Madison and Cody tackled the job as Blog Writer recently. Madison wrote about a punctuation review we did a few weeks ago. Cody wrote about a few of his favorite parts about school. Check it out...

Punctuation Marks by Madison
In class we have been working with period, exclamation point, and question mark. We have been finding out where they go in the right ending of the sentence. Like for period- "I like to play on my swing set." To explain the period goes at the end of a telling sentence. Exclamation points go at the end of a yelling, excited, or loud sentence. Question marks go at the end of an asking sentence. Period. Question mark? Exclamation point!

Here are some pictures of posters and an activity we did with punctuation that week:

 

 

My School by Cody

School is a fun place to learn. School is where you learn math, language, science, art, and reading. In the morning we do morning work. At reader's workshop we read for 20 minutes. In art we were learning about cave paintings. Recess is a time of the day when you get to play. The school I go to is Blair Pointe Elementary. In math we are learning about fractions. If we didn't have school we would not know anything at all. The End.

 

 

Great work Madison and Cody!!



First Student Blog Post, Centers by Brianna

Last year was hard for me to keep up with a blog during the school year. Not only was it my first year in a new grade at a new building, but I was pregnant with my adorable son, Henry, and going to bed around 8:30 almost every night. This year I hope to do much better. One of my ideas was to have my students help me! To do this, I created a weekly classroom job called Blog Writer. Every week one student writes about something new/interesting/fun that we did, takes a few pictures of it, and writes a blog post about it. For the first student post I picked Brianna. She already enjoys writing, and showed me stories she wrote at home "just for fun". I new she would set a great example for a well written post. Here is Brianna's post...

"In Mrs. Mathews' class, we are starting centers. If you are wondering what centers are, I will explain it to you. Centers are different areas where us kids learn while having fun. There are five centers- word search, spelling, listening, computers, and puzzles. Mrs. Mathews is teaching us great strategies to use in the classroom. When we do have a great class during centers, she gives us a treat. By the way, I will explain what we do at each center. At the word search we do a school project like a word search about school. In spelling we practice spelling words. When we do listening we listen to a book to read. When we do computers we play a learning game. When we do puzzles we see new cool pictures of stuff."

Wasn't that great? Way to go Brianna! Thank you for working hard on this post and teaching everyone about how we do centers. Here are some pictures from the centers Brianna wrote about.

Welcome Parents and Students of 2013-2014!

Our year is off to a great start! We have spent 2 weeks getting to know one another, learning procedures of the school and classroom, and digging into reading, writing, math, and a little science! Meet the Teacher night was last Thursday, and I got to meet many of the families of this year's class. My favorite part of the day has always been Reader's Workshop, but this year I'm really loving our math time. I have been finding fun math games (of course on TeachersPayTeachers!) for the kiddos to play. They get so excited and into the games that they probably don't realize they are practicing for our first assessment next week! Another important part of our day is guided reading centers. We began this week with procedures. I have been slowly walking them through each center because I am a firm believer in teaching procedures thoroughly to keep them running smoothly all year. So far they have mastered the computer and listening center. On Wednesdays we have an extra 30 minutes for math in our schedule. This is a perfect time to get some extra technology in, so I sign up for the laptop cart every Wednesday. Today was our first time trying it out, and the class did great! It helped that (almost) all of the laptops were working without much trouble. Until Acuity lessons are ready, we are getting on Education City. The kids love the interactive games and music. Today they played a game called Crazy Golf to practice even and odd numbers.

One fun addition I have this year on my class job chart is "blog writer". Each week a student will be writing about something interesting/fun/special we did in class. I will post their writing in a blog post for parents and followers to read. The kids were excited when I told them it could be read by people anywhere in the world who go to this blog! Come back soon to read what Brianna says about this week at school.

Have a great week!
Mrs. Mathews

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Classroom Jobs

First of all… I am sorry I have neglected my blog for the last 3 weeks. I have been exhausted everyday after school, and just not motivated at all! I guess moving to a new school and being in a new grade really took it out of me! I will say that I LOVE everything about my new school and grade. It has been such a smooth transition and beginning few weeks of school. And most of all I LOVE my class. I have a great mix of personalities, and they have been great to work with. One thing I am really loving about moving from first grade to third grade is the level of independence you get at the beginning of the year. I can already count on my kids to help around the room, complete assignments, help others…. (and not to mention tie their own shoes). I started the second week of school with classroom jobs, and it is going great! Here’s a picture of the job chart.

This picture was taken the first day of school, so everyone is “on vacation”. I hot glued the paw print notecards to ribbon, and used Command hooks to hang them from a closet door. I also used some Velcro at the bottom of the ribbon to keep it from swaying back and forth when I open the closet.

The jobs we have are:

Clip Chart Manager- At the end of the day this person passes out “brag tickets” (positive notes that are sent home if you clip up) and this person also returns everyone’s clothespin to “Ready to Learn” for the next day.

Lunch Count Manager- This person helps me take lunch count by counting how many packed lunches we have each morning. And at the end of the day this person returns all of the magnets to number order for the next day.

Computer Manager- This person turns on our 6 student computers each morning, and turns them off at the end of the day.

Line Leaders- I have a boy and a girl line leader each week (I use a double line whenever we are in the hallway so that our 28 person train doesn’t take up the whole hallway). Their “job” is to be a good model of hallway behavior so that everyone behind them is reminded of how to act.

Bathroom Monitors- Again, one boy and one girl each week. They are only to report unsafe behavior (no tattling!) in the bathroom. We had to have a big discussion on tattling vs. reporting before starting this job. They are doing great so far.

Librarian- This person is in charge of checking the library for messy book boxes, books left in the wrong spot, books bent or folded, etc.

Messenger- This is my “runner”. He or she has the job of taking lunch money or notes to the office in the morning, and picking up our lunch cards before we go to lunch. Anytime I have something to deliver or pick up, I send the Messenger!

Custodian- Everyday the custodian is in charge of putting down/putting up chairs at the extra table, cleaning up big scraps of paper on the floor, and every Friday cleaning the desks with Clorox wipes (my favorite job!)

Materials Manager- The Materials Manager is in charge of many things. If we are out of pencils in the spare bucket, out of paper at a center, out of Kleenex, etc. this person lets me know or takes care of it himself. Also whenever we turn in classwork, this person collects it from the basket and puts in in a neat pile for me.

Teacher’s Assistant- Basically- if there is anything else I need that is not listed above, the Teacher's Assistant takes care of it. If I need help carrying things, if I need a model to explain something, if I need a back rub after a long day (just kidding!) I also let the Teacher’s Assistant pass out papers.

Each week 12 kids have jobs, and all the others are “on vacation”. I keep an Excel Spreadsheet to keep track of who has had each job so that I can rotate fairly and make sure everyone gets a turn at everything. Also on Friday I pay the kids using our “school money” called Cardinal Cash. And throughout the week if someone is slacking on their job I can remind them of pay day coming up. This is my first year using classroom jobs, and I cannot believe how much time it saves me. In my first grade years I was the one straightening the library, wiping down desks, returning the behavior and lunch clips, turning on computers… now I have more time for the important stuff!

Anyone have any cool jobs that I didn’t think of? I thought about adding another since there is an odd number of cards on the ribbons. Hope you are all enjoying your Labor Day Weekend! I will try to stop in more often now that I am settled down in third grade!!