Classroom Calendar Now Working
Finally have the Classroom Calendar now working. On it I know have all of the birthdays, vacation days and days that we have school parties, along with the times of those parties. If you notice me missing some dates or times, please email me.
See you tomorrow!
read moreFlash Gallery Test
I am doing some upgrades and improvements to this site and am trying something new. Here is our SPARKLE gallery in a flash slideshow, or go here to see it in our media gallery:
read morePhotos of SPARKLE
Here area some photos of us studying for our practice spelling test on Friday. Click here to see larger images.
Great First Week, New Movie Posted!
Great first week, kids. I remain completely impressed with your ability to work hard in class. Today in math your did a great job reading model form and writing in standard form. Next week we will be working on expanded form and word form as representations of number values.
This week your compass projects turned out wonderfully, and you demonstrated your knowledge of cardinal and intermediate directions well on our other activities.
Next week we will be starting our reading series with the book Officer Buckle and Gloria. After doing a week’s worth of activities we will take a comprehension test on our story on Friday. Our tests will have two essay questions that you will need to answer using complete sentences. Don’t worry, I will prepare you to be able to answer these types of questions!
Lastly, I have published a video from our first day of school, along with our student portraits in our Media area of Marchionda.org. Enjoy!
Have a great weekend, and I will see you on Tuesday!
Spelling Test Tomorrow
I am still working on getting our Classroom Calendar up and working, should be up shortly. You will find not only the days we are in and out of school and birthdays of all of the students, but also times and dates of our classroom parties and other events. Look for an update on this later!
In other news, we will be having a practice spellng list with the words we have copied into your planners. Be sure to study your words tonight!
Class portraits have been published here.
Here is the work for the day:
What is a POD???
A POD stands for Probelm of the Day. Each morning as the students go about their morning routine they will also take a POD sheet. At this point they will look on the SMARTBoard and begin solving their POD which consists of one sentence grammar correction and one math extension activity. After they have had some time to work on this, we correct it together as the kids make corrections on their PODs as a whole class. If they follow along closely and make the corrections that are going on on the board, they get a score of a 100% for the POD; if not, they get a score of a 0% for the POD. Over the course of a trimester their grade will level out to show how well they do at this particular skill.
This is a POD as they come in the classroom:
This is a POD after we have corrected it as a class:
My expectations are the my students follow along and make any corrections as we go along. As you can see we end up sharing all the answers for a perfect POD!
read moreYellow Cards: For Parents
This blog post is for all the parents of the students in my class. Today a bunch of notes went home. There are TWO yellow cards. Please fill both of them out and send them back as soon as possible. One copy goes to the office and the other says with me in the classroom. Also, another internet permission form is coming home so that your child can use the internet here at school. Please send that one back as soon as possible, also. There are some other notes, too, but those are the important ones.
Here is the work for the day:
Wow, what a first day!
Kids, thanks for a wonderful first day. I have noticed that you are a hard working group of kids. Oh, the places we’ll go!
I want share some things about our schedule. Below is a list of important classes and on which day of the week they occur:
Art: Monday
Music: Tuesday and Friday
Phy Ed: Tuesday and Thursday
Media: Wednesday
Computer Lab: Wednesday
Book Checkout: Wednesday (all books need to be returned on Wednesdays)
Just a note on the planner below: The kids are to use a circle to indicate work that is not finished and brought home and a check mark to indicate work that was finished in class. Below is an example using those symbols.
Teacher’s Note: We did not finish our compass roses in class, we will work on them tomorrow! Compass roses are not homework.
Just a quick note on your last day of summer . . .
On our last evening of our last day of summer, I would like to take a brief moment to let you know just a little bit of what to expect tomorrow.
- I will pick up all students on the playground as the bell rings tomorrow morning. Our bus line is number 1. Feel free to put your backpack down there while you play on the playground.
- The very first thing we will do is get settled into our desks and go over the lunch count and attendance for the day. After that we will go over our classroom helpers, and what all the jobs mean.
- After that we will explore our name tags, planners, and take home folders as a tool to help us along our way in third grade.
- We will get a practice spelling list of easy, second grade words.
- Rules for classroom and hallway behavior will be gone over right before our lunch recess time.
- In the afternoon I will pick you up by the cafeteria with the other third grade classes.
- We will do our first Rocket Math of the year, having the rules for this explained.
- We will also be doing a short math activity, then a recess followed by sciece and silent reading.
- During silent reading I will try to take a few of you students to begin assessing reading levels.
I know it sounds pretty busy, but I’m sure the day will fly away before our eyes. I am excited to meet all of you and get our year started of with a fabulous day.
(Students and parents can comment to these posts by using the comment feature below each post.)
read moreHomework Tips
Here is a bit of information on homework. In my class almost 90 percent of kids take home no work every day. Out of the remaining 10 percent, about 5 percent have less than 15 minutes of work to do. The other 5 percent tend to have quite a bit more. It is my practice to give kids an appropriate amount of time at school to finish their classwork. Whatever does not get finished is the responsibility of the student to finish and turn in at the beginning of school the next day. I found this information in regard to homework and would like to share it with all of you.
“Schools should teach kids how to learn, and parents should teach them how to work by establishing work rules and work ethic at home.” – Dr. Mel Levine, Co-Founder and Co-Chair, All Kinds of Minds
Homework provides an opportunity for parents to reinforce and build upon what a child learns at school. Follow these tips to help your child achieve success during homework time.
1. Set a consistent time each day for doing homework. During this time, distractions should be limited (e.g., television should be off; other family members should be doing quiet work too).
2. Encourage your child to make a homework checklist. The checklist should include estimating how long each assignment will take, setting priorities, collecting materials for the first task, setting a timer, completing the task, collecting materials for the next task, resetting the timer, and placing the completed assignments in his backpack.
3. As needed, provide assistance to help your child get started on a task. Support might include providing the first sentence of a paragraph or clarifying directions.
4. Help your child make a list of all the materials he needs to gather before starting his homework.
5. Provide materials only as they are needed. For instance, instead of distributing an entire package of pencils, give your child two pencils at a time.
6. Break large tasks into smaller, shorter, or simpler “mini-tasks.” Allow your child to take a brief break after completing each mini-task.
7. Before beginning homework, encourage your child to decide which assignments can be done without assistance and which require the help of an adult. The simpler assignments should be completed before the more complex tasks.
8. Ask, “Why do we need to learn this?” and answer it seriously. Connect the concept with “real life” to establish relevancy and interest. If you need help making the connection, ask your child’s teacher.
9. Check work in progress. If an assignment that is given on Monday is due on Friday, ask your child to show you what she has finished each day or to show you a plan of what will be done each day between Monday and Friday.
10. Encourage your child to follow a writing process. For instance, use the C.O.P.S. proofreading strategy (capitalization, organization, punctuation, spelling) to create a checklist.
read moreAn Introduction to Your Classroom and Website
Over the past week I have been in our classroom for a grand total of about 3 full work days taking our room from completely empty to the working learning environment that you will be experiencing this school year. Click here to see a gallery of the transition from summer to school year. I have put some dates on the side bar to the left that my be important to you.
Marchionda.org is a site intended to be used by the students and parents in our classroom. Students will want to check their grades and play games, but parents will like using this site to stay connected to all events going on in the classroom. How will you know there has been an update to this site? It’s simple! Follow these four steps:
- Add your email address to the field in the sidebar to the right.
- Wait for a confirmation email.
- Follow the directions in the email to confirm yourself
- Wait for updates to be emailed to you daily!
Assignments will be posted daily as students write them in their planner. It is the student’s responsibility to copy the day’s work down correctly, indicating what has been completed and what has not. It is the parent’s responsibility to view this site and compare it to the child’s planner.
Please make sure that you have all of your materials and school supplies ready to go on the first day of school.
I am excited to meet all of your at our Family Meet and Greet night, but more excited to start our school year out well. Feel free to email me if you have any questions.
Educational Links:
Marchionda.org Forums Private online forums for educational collaboration.
Online Grade Book! Click the Icon Below!
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