Monday, November 23, 2009

All About Animals!

Hi Parents,

As I'm sure your student has told you, today we learned all about Australia! Most importantly, we learned all about animals in Australia! Your student spent the language arts period becoming an expert on one (or two) of about twenty different Australian animals.

After researching the animal, students created a class Wiki (similar to Wikipedia) where they wrote two paragraphs about their specific animal.
The Wiki can be viewed at the following site:
https://australiananimals-grade3.wikispaces.com/
After writing and editing, the students drew a picture of their animal. The drawings were displayed as each student gave a very brief presentation about their animal. Photographs of these drawings will be posted to the blog soon!

For homework tonight the students are to read the Wiki posts of their fellow classmates. After reading the posts, they must determine which animal is their favorite and why. Students are expected to then post a blog entry (on their personal blog) explaining what their favorite Australian animal is and the reasons why it is their favorite. Those explanations must include at least three facts about the specified animal!

That is all for tonight!
Miss S.

My Autobiography


Hello All!


Today we had the chance to act like Pharaohs in Ancient Egyptian times! Pyramids were used in Ancient Egypt as tombs for Pharaohs as well as a place to keep their personal belongings. In class we created our own autobiography's, did some peer editing, and created our our pyramids to keep our autobiography's safe in. We thought of this activity as something similar to a time capsule and we plan to open our pyramids back up at the end of the year to see what we wrote!


We had such a great day exploring!

Miss M.



To learn more about Ancient Egyptian pyramids, visit http://www.nationalgeographic.com/pyramids/pyramids.html

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

A Dramatic Day in Third Grade!

Hi Parents!

Today in third grade, the students learned about Ancient Greek Mythology. They first learned that myths were used by the Ancient Greeks to explain natural events that otherwise couldn't be explained!

Then the students and I read one specific myth about Persephone and Demeter. Persephone is the reason that we have spring and fall.

After reading the myth the students created their own scripts in order to act the myth out as a dramatic play. The theater is a very important part of Greek history, so what better opportunity than to act out a myth?!

The students then split into small groups to rehearse the script. After all of the groups felt ready to perform, they performed the plays for one another. I even video recorded them so you could see!

I will post the productions soon! It was a dramatic day in third grade, but the end result was a lot of fun and all of the students seemed to learn a lot about Greek mythology and this particular myth!

Miss S.

Getting Creative with China!

The students and I had such a great time today! We put our imagination caps on and put our minds to work. We pretended that we all went to China and were writing a story about our visit there. We used our imagination, in addition to Flickr pictures and the internet, to create our short stories. Here are some pictures we looked at:

Our first step was to look for pictures of China and feed off of what we saw. Then, we headed over to the tourist websites of China and looked for some interesting tourist attractions that we may have gone to if we had actually visited China. Afterwards, we compiled all of our findings into our very own short stories which we then illustrated cover pages for. Finally, we read our favorite parts of our stories to each other in class. I have collected the stories and will be binding them to add to our class library.

We has such a wonderful day filled with a little imagination and a lot of fun!

Miss M
PS - Don't forget to bring in special pictures of you and your family or pictures of your favorite things for next class.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Running through Ancient Olympia!

Hi Parents,

Recently the third graders traveled to Olympia in Greece to learn about the Ancient Olympic Games. Before learning about the games we looked at pictures, like the one below, that have been posted online (to Flickr).



After looking at the pictures, the students learned about the chariot races, horse riding, pankration (a combination of boxing and wrestling), boxing, and the pentathlon (which includes discus, javelin, jump, running, and wrestling). They were all quizzed on the information after spending time discussing it with their peers.

Finally, the students and I had a discussion about the similarities and differences between the Ancient Olympic Games and the Modern Olympic Games. If you are interested in reading what your student found interesting, please visit their individual blogs. They have posted a short post about some of the similarities and differences between then and now.

Hope you enjoy reading about the Ancient Olympic Games! I know the students enjoyed learning about them! I will be in touch soon!

Miss S.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Exploring China

We had such a great time exploring the wonderful content of Asia, focusing closely on China, specifically the cities of Shanghai and Beijing.


Our class had the opportunity to use Google Earth to virtually take a tour of Shanghai and Beijing. We then split into groups of five and focused on the cities more intensely by researching them online. We used http://www.cia.gov/, http://www.stats-sh.gov.cn/english/shgl/index.htm, and http://www.chinahighlights.com/beijing/beijing-facts.htm for our research. After we completed the worksheets the students had a chance to share their findings with the class. Afterwards we looked at some real Chinese artifacts brought back from China.

We had an awesome time learning about the geography of China and can't wait to learn more about World Countries the rest of the week!!

Miss M