Third Grade Updates

1. Happy end of trimester two and beginning of trimester three. Report cards will be sent home this Friday.

2. It is hard to believe that we have started the final trimester of third grade! This trimester we will not be doing an Accelerated Reader goal. Instead, we will be doing a math goal. Details will be sent home next week.

3. Students are still encouraged to read for fun. The best way to improve in reading is to read. At home, you can help your child with comprehension by having them tell you about what they are reading. Have them retell the story, or share their favorite parts.

4.  The students have been and will be doing their final MAP test of this year. The dates have been moved up in order for us to see where the students are at and what they still need to learn. Mr. Melde’s class has completed their tests. Ms. Gustafson’s class will do the reading on Friday and math on Monday.

5. The state tests: MCA-III will be April 19 and 20 for reading and May 4 and 5 for math. Please mark your calendars. Thanks for your work with you child at home on their practice tests. We have not covered all the concepts on the math test yet. So, please work with your child and figure them out together.

6. On Wednesday, March 16^th we will be going to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. Each class will need 3 volunteers. We will leave here about 10:30 a.m. and be back around 1:00 p.m. We will have lunch when we get back to school.

7.  Next Friday, we will be participating in a video conference about fossils with the Calvert Marine Museum in Maryland.

Thank you for all your support and work with you child! We are having a great year!

Video Conference With the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum

We have really been lucky this year.  Last year Ms. G and I started a plan to bring a little somthing extra to our teaching.  We began a partnership with TIES that allowed us to learn a little more about technology and video conferencing in the classroom.  We decided that our focus of this project would be something outdoors since that is a pretty big interest for both of us. 

Later in the year we were approached by IGH Park and Rec.  They wanted to start a community garden and they felt like they needed some kids to be a part of it.  It was a pretty natural fit.  We let the kids last year plant a garden with little rhyme or reason to it.  There were about 4 corn plants, maybe 1,000 tomato plants and of course pumpkins.  If you do not remember what happened with the pumpkins in the fall I invite you to read back into October in this blog.  Let me know if the links to the TV news and newspaper are still active.  I might like to make a copy of those. 

This year we have been approaching the garden with a little more purpose.  We have been planning and doing lots in the classroom that will relate to the project that we will be starting very soon.  We recently found out that the park and Rec. Dept received a large grant from a seed company and we will be a part of that grant.  We will get lots of plants for free for our garden.

The part of this project that I have looked forward to the most in the winter time has been a video conference with the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.  They did about 2.5 hours of lessons with the kids about where food comes from and how to grow things in Minnesota.  It was a lot of fun and a big learning day!

Enjoy the pictures:
Here the kids are listening carefully to what Randy, our instructor, had to say about where food comes from and the importance of buying local.  Our garden will be about as local as you can get!

This is a picture of the same thing from the other direction.  It gives you a picture of what the kids were seeing. 

More talking about food.  Here is the new food group pyramid. Most of the things in that diagram we can grow in our garden 

The kids are getting ready to make sweet potato pie!

In this picture, Randy is telling us a story about the Three Sisters.  Those are plants that grow in a garden and take care of each other so we have to do much less work.  Perfect for a community garden where we might not get to water and weed every day.

MMMmmmmmm.  Sweet potato pie!

Snow Science

What happens when 60 third graders try to make a cirlce in the snow?

 What happens when those third graders try to make a HUGE pile of snow?

What do you think will happen with our pile of snow tomorrow?  Come back to find out!!!!

We Miss You Mckenzie!

Podcast about Bullying

Art Adventure

We've been learning about art at the art museum.  The theme of the lesson we are learning is "Friends, Family and Foes".  We saw a statue or sculpture of the Indian god Shiva.  We learned that he had a child that had an elephant head and another that was half peacock.  Another thing we learned is that he had an extra eye for wisdom.  There was also a painting that showed people wearing masks.  There was a skeleton in the air.  It was sort of freaky.

We have learned a lot about art.  Thank you to Anna's Mom for volunteering her time to teach us!

Rockets

This is the first of many video podcasts that we hope to do for our blog and maybe for the district website in the future.  This one is a piece written by Emma and she is describing a project we did before break.

Enjoy!