Five for Friday

TGIF y'all!  I am sooo glad that it's the weekend!  Life has been super busy here between regular school and family responsibilities, plus I've been shuttling my oldest to soccer practices and church activities.  I don't think I've made it to bed before 11 this week and that is late for this gal!  In fact, my bed is calling my name so I'm gonna do a quick Five for Friday link up with Kacey.

A lot of my week consisted of administering Reading 3D assessments.  I've completed all of my DORFs, WRCs, and have started my TRCs but man, the TRCs are moving sloooooowly!  This is the first year I'm required to complete Reading 3D on all of my students (the end of last year was a practice run and we only had to complete it on a few).  So I would LOVE to hear any suggestions or ideas that you have to better manage administering the TRCs!

In ELA, we've been hitting RI.3.2 hard...working on identifying main idea and supporting details of informational text.  Since we finished up reading some African folktales, we moved on to reading informational text about countries in Africa.  I gave each group of students a section of text to read, discuss, and determine the topic, main idea, and details.  Then I handed them some bulletin board paper and markers (love how excited they get about "posters" and markers, lol) and let them go to town creating graphic organizers to show the main idea.  They really did amazing with this skill so we'll be looking at some more complex selections next where the main idea isn't directly stated.

In math, we started to tackle 3.NBT.2 and looked at properties of addition.  One of my fab team members shared this idea to help the kiddos grasp the concept of the identity property of addition.  We related the identity property to the kids' personal identities and explained that the zero is kind of like a mirror.  The kids created "mirrors" out of card stock and foil and outlined the edge of the mirror with examples of addition equations that show the identity property.  They turned out super cute and the kids seem to really get this property.  We also created some adorable flip flops for the commutative property but I forgot to take pics of those. =(  (I still have some up in the room though so maybe I can snap some next week.)

In science we are focused on force and motion and what better way to explore this concept than to make marshmallow launchers!!!  I found the idea from The Techy Teacher and knew right away that my kiddos would love it.  So I made a few at home and let my boys play around with them (who am I kidding??...my hubby and I played too)!  My students had a great time using them (wish I could show you those excited faces) and really learned a lot about push, pull, force, speed, and direction.  I would highly recommend this activity if you have to teach force and motion!

This one's really not from this week but I haven't blogged recently so I wanted to share now.  I was looking for a fun craft to do for my parents and in-laws for Grandparent's Day. I just had my hubby cut these 2 x 4 and then I painted them white.  I modgepodged cute scrapbook paper to the front of the 2 x 4 and to some clothespins.  Then I added some cute letters and threw two pics of my cuties inside the clothespins.  I think they turned out great and the grands loved them!

Well I'm off to bed!  Enjoy your weekend friends!!!

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Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters-{Must Read Mentor Text}

I am FINALLY finding the time to link up with Collaboration Cuties for their Must Read Mentor Text linky.  I have to admit that I am a huge stalker of this linky.  I read the posts and file the names of all these fabulous books in my head but I have never linked up myself.  Since I am diving right into the curriculum on Tuesday though, I thought I'd share a text that is perfect for third grade ELA!

The text that I am going to share is Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters by John Steptoe:

This wonderful African tale is about Mufaro's two beautiful daughters, Nyasha and Manyara.  Nyasha is the kind and considerate sister while in contrast Manyara is selfish and mean.  One day the king of the land decided that he needed a wife and Manyara set out early to ensure that she was the chosen one; however, in the end because of her good deeds, Nyasha is called "The Most Worth and Beautiful Daughter in the Land" and becomes the Queen.

This book is an excellent source to teach the characteristics of a folktale and for recounting folktales; and I will touch on those with my kiddos; however, we are going to use this book to really focus on Common Core Standards RL.3.3-Describe characters in a story and explain how their actions contribute to the sequence of events and RL 3.7-Explain how specific aspects of a text's illustrations contribute to what is conveyed by the words in the story.  The illustrations in this book are simply amazing!  And they can really help support the teaching of RL.3.7 and connect it to RL.3.3.  Just look at how the details in this illustration can help the students to understand how humble and mild Nyasha is and how angry and spoiled Manyara is.

And this illustration can further exemplify the gentle spirit of Nyasha:

I love this illustration too because it shows how proud Mufaro is of both of his daughters while further emphasizing the personality traits of both girls.

So if you haven't read this text before, you simply must!  

I hope that you all have a blessed night and enjoy your extra day off tomorrow! =O)

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