Wonka World!

We just finished our novel study on Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We all agreed that it is a delicious novel!

As we read the story, the students created a "Secret Book" to record observations on the characters in the story and how they changed throughout the book.
This is an example of a front cover.
Here is the Secret Book (still a work in progress!) The far left column is the name of each of the children in the story. Next to their name is an illustration of how the students visualized the character. The students wrote a paragraph describing how the character changed and then drew a picture of what happened to cause the change. The *secret* was a golden ticket hidden inside one of the folds of the book. (Sorry I didn't take a picture!)

The students recorded their reflections on the novel in a narrative journal. After reading each chapter chorally or in pairs, the students responded to questions and wrote down insights from the book.

We love to display our hard work in the hallway for other students to enjoy. We wrote poems about chocolate after learning about acrostics, diamantes, and haikus. Each student wrote all three kinds of poems about chocolate and chose their favorite to publish.
Looks delicious!
What if Willy Wonka had given away 6 golden tickets instead of 5? Who would have been the sixth ticket winner? Students created characters that could have been included in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. They each had an annoying habit and a detailed description of how they found the sixth ticket. Then the students wrote articles and published their stories in our version of The Evening Bulletin.
As a creative writing activity, the students invented a new kind of candy for Wonka's factory. They designed the candy and its packaging, made up a slogan for marketing the candy, and invented a machine to create the candy.
We had a WONDERFULLY WONKALICIOUS time studying Charlie and the Chocolate Factory!

The Great Mail Race!

We've embarked on an exciting journey called The Great Mail Race! This activity is designed to help our students learn about all 50 states while practicing our letter writing skills. This idea was actually "borrowed" from another 3rd grade class in Arkansas. Another Hargrave 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Eldredge, received a letter from a 3rd grader in Mrs. Jones' class at West Elementary School in Arkansas. The student wrote us a friendly letter giving us information about his home state and asking us to write him back with information about Texas. What a great idea! we thought. Our class decided to join Mrs. Jones' class in their quest to gather information about each of America's 50 states by writing letters to 3rd grade classes around the country. Here's how we did it:

First, we learned about writing a friendly letter. We practiced our return address and learned about different kinds of closings for our letter. We also spent time on our laptops computers researching facts about Texas that would be interesting to share in our letters to other schools around the country. In order to become experts, the kids used a questionnaire to help guide them in their research about our great state. Once our questionnnaires were complete, the students used their research to compose a friendly letter sharing the information and asking questions about their new friend's state.

Where am I sending my letter? The kids drew the name of 2 states from a hat and then used an atlas to select a city within their states. We discussed how rural, urban, and suburban schools may be different and often the kids selected their city based on what type of school they hoped to correspond with.

Once the city had been decided upon, the students conferenced with me individually to find a school in their chosed city and state. We used the internet as a research tool to find the address of the school.

It was a lot of hard work, but the kids really enjoyed looking at different parts of the country in the atlas and online. We are eager to send off our letters, but we have to make sure they are perfect before we put them in the mail!

We worked hard to edit our work before we sent it to another 3rd grade class. The kids worked with their peers as well as our student teacher, Miss Ross, to make sure that spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and usage was all correct. When our final drafts were complete, we were ready to address the envelopes and send off the letters! Addressing an envelope properly is an important skill that is often overlooked when teaching children to write letters. We learned about the postal codes and abbreviations for each of our states as we addressed the envelopes. Each student wrote our return address then copied the address of their chosen school on each of their envelopes (each student had at least 2 states so we could make sure to write to all 50!)
We've mailed the letters and now we are awaiting a response from our 3rd graders around the country. We hope to hear back from them soon and begin learning about each state in our nation!

Super Spellers Club

Congratulations to this week's members of the Super Spellers Club!

Week 30

These students studied hard and each of them made 100% on their spelling test! Wow! We are aiming for 100% of the class to be a part of our Super Spellers Club. Let's keep practicing!

Open House

We look forward to Open House as a way to involve our families in what's going on in 3rd grade. Each student works hard to prepare their best work to show off to their families. We put together a scavenger hunt to help families navigate around the classroom and make sure to see everything! The kids LOVED being "tour guides"!

Our desks became our "art galleries" for Open House night. I was so impressed at the pride the kids took in displaying their work.

My favorite stop on the scavenger hunt was the opportunity to check out our new classroom website! Hooray! We are proud to share our class with families through the power of technology. Students taught their parents how to navigate the site and find links to all of our cool projects from earlier this year. Keep checking the web from home!

The "mini people" that go with our bio poems were displayed on the white board. Can you guess which one is your child? Estimate the number of chocolates in the jar and win all of the tasty treats! Kids taught their parents how to make hypotheses and use estimation in this fun family activity. It was neat to watch families work together to make a smart guess. Congratulations to the Delgadillo Family and the Wilson Family who were our winners!

Thank you to all of the families who participated in our Open House. We loved having visitors in our classroom. You are always welcome!

Bio Poems

As a part of our study of poetry, the students wrote "Bio Poems" about themselves. We typed the poems in the computer lab and displayed them in our room for Open House. The students then made a "Mini Me" to display next to their poem.

I was impressed by the attention to detail and the hard work that went into each little person. Some of the mini people even wore the same outfit as their "big person"!



We enjoyed using poetry to describe ourselves to others. The art project was a fun way to express ourselves as well. (My favorite part of the project was watching the kids add "hair" using yarn.... we have some pretty awesome hairstyles!)