Medley of Activities Marks May and Closes Out Yet Another Successful Year

With the coming of May, so too came a whole host of third-grade activities as well!

First was our MCA Reward Outing on May 1st, which included a two-hour morning swim period at Vogel Arena in New Ulm. Everyone had a great time sliding down the waterslide, playing Popsicle in the hot tub, fighting over and/or floating on the pool tubes, or just splashing about with one another! For lunch we headed over to Herman Heights Park with a school-provided bag meal, with a lot of the students joining in a spirited game of football afterwards. Then it was off to see the “Martin Luther King Junior” play at Martin Luther College before finally heading home.

Wednesday, May 6^th, marked Grandparents’ Day for the whole school, with no shortage of third-grade grandmas and grandpas in attendance. Students and their family members were divided into groups beforehand and then assigned to three different group activities, ranging from “Name That Tune”, Karaoke, a 70s TV Theme Show Sing Along, Picture Frame Making, Card Games, Playing Parachute, Hula Hooping and Jump Roping in the gym, an Ice Cream Sunday Social in the cafeteria, and/or partaking in Me Moves. The latter a classroom exercise/stretching program used to help students focus and de-stress.  The whole event lasted approximately ninety minutes, with over 370 grandparents attending for all grades.

Following that was the first of three performances of the school’s production of Disney’s “The Jungle Book Kids” on May 8^th, which all third-graders attended. There is absolutely no question that the afternoon production was a SMASH hit with everyone! The play’s cast and crew did a phenomenal job and was well represented by our very own students, including the following third-grade cast members:

Mowgli—Zach R.

Kaa 1—Envy M.

Kaa 2—Lydia H.

Kaa 4—Kylyn W.

Kaa 5—Julia B.

Monkey 1 and Prickly Pears—Isaac L.

Elephant Troupe—Winsten N., Ellen W., and Austin U.

Flowers—Madison S.

Hopefully friends and family all had a chance to catch one of the two shows that were open to the public that weekend!

After rain threatened to mar our original class picnic date, third-grade students opted to head to Flandrau State Park on May 14^th instead where they then dined on roasted hot dogs and freshly assembled smores! In addition to playing in the park, students and chaperones also went on a hike, logging sightings of at least twenty-five turtles sitting on a log, two deer, a whole slew of butterflies, and two different kinds of flowers that apparently got an early start blooming this spring. There was also a rousing game of kick ball, which was enjoyed by all as well!

Our annual class trip to Como Park Zoo and Conservatory this year was also cut a little short due to the closing of Como Town as a result of the cold, damp weather on Monday, May 18^th; however, there was still plenty of time for everyone to enjoy all of the open exhibits. In addition to checking out some of the animals studied as part of our Alaskan Adaptations Unit, including a pair of arctic foxes, several caribou/reindeer, a group of penguins, two polar bears, lots of puffins, a seal, a small colony of sea lions, and a pair of roaming wolves. Students also enjoyed a very special viewing treat that included other baby animals--most notable was Baby Arlene, a Western Lowland Gorilla born on February 22, 2015. Though cradled in her mother’s arms, she was still quite visible while nestling there. Students were thrilled with the sight and also enjoyed seeing the other babies that were also located in the Primate Building, including the baby orangutan Kemala who was born January 7, 20015, and an equally adorable baby tamarin that sat atop its parent’s back and sported an already well-established white “mustache” and curious peering eyes that studied us with just as much intent as ours did studying it!

Following a bag lunch that was, again, provided by the school, students then made their way over to Nickelodeon Universe at the Mall of America in order to fill out the rest of the day and compensate for the closure of the Como amusement ride portion of our trip. Once wristbands were distributed, students spent another three hours whirling away on everything that was offered before we headed home!

Thank you for a memorable and fantastic year Sleepy Eye third-grade students and their families.

Good luck to all of you next year as fourth graders!

MCA Testing Update

After many, many weeks of careful preparation and extremely hard work on the part of the students themselves and then several more weeks of individual administration of the test itself, third graders have finally finished up with the required third-grade MCA testing. And from the looks of the results, it appears that all of those strategies we learned about test taking and being a good and careful reader were put to good use!

Some of those classroom strategies that were discussed and practiced over that past couple of months included the following tips and/or recommendations:

*This is neither a race nor a competition. Take your time and read the passage closely and carefully as a good reader would.

*After reading the entire passage once, go back and reread it again, just as carefully and closely as you did the first time. If necessary, reread it again, until you are sure you understand what the text is about.

*When it comes to answering posed questions on the test, first eliminate all possible answers that do not apply to the given question.

*Go back and find the specific portion of the text that refers to the posed question and find the actual answer to that question as it appears in the text itself.

In recognition for a job well done, students will celebrate with a tasty Dairy Queen treat!

Congratulations to all! Way to show your Sleepy Eye Pride Third Graders!

Third Graders Get a Jump Start on Annual Earth Day Clean Up

Despite the fact that April 22 has been decreed as the official date of observance for Earth Day since it first began in 1970, this year’s students got ahead of the game when it came to their own celebration and clean-up efforts. Instead of waiting for the rest of the world’s environmental initiatives, including those of more than 192 countries, third graders led the way with their own contribution on Friday, April 17^th.  As per our annual tradition, students spent some time outside at Eagles Park, cleaning up garbage and debris, picking up sticks, and just generally sprucing up the area. 

North To Alaska Via Skype!

With a little help from a handy technological tool, third graders were able to garner some real-life insight what it’s like to be a resident in our 49^th state via Skype.

As part of our science and writing units, students are studying about Alaskan animals and the necessary adaptations they must develop in order to not only survive, but to actually flourish, in some of the state’s more extreme environmental conditions. In addition to our online investigation and/or other media research source endeavors, students were able to garner a unique inside view of what it’s like to actually live in the state during several Skyping sessions with longtime residents.

Our first two sessions were with Andrew, a local Alaskan newspaper journalist, who lives in the city of Wasilla. He is the stepson of Mrs. Moore, our own Title I coordinator. He and his friend Gil, a recreational specialist, sent us a YouTube video about how snowshoes work and why they’re so important when it comes to getting around in the winter. This was an especially nifty nugget of information, because it tied directly into the adaptations found in so many Alaskan animals that have evolved in order to help them stay mobile in the frigid cold and snowy conditions found in the far north!

In fact, did you know that the coldest temperature on record for the state of Alaska is -80 degrees Fahrenheit at Fort Yukon on January 23, in 1971? The state’s warmest temperature recording was 100 degrees Fahrenheit set back on June 27 in 1915 at Prospect Creek. Talk about a wide-range of extremes!

Next we skyped with Miss Schmit’s grandparents, Steve and Mary Schmit, who have spent the last sixteen years living out in “the Alaskan bush” in a small community called Skwentna. The term “bush” is used to refer to any wilderness area where there are either few or simply no roads linking it to any main centers of population. In fact, for a lot of the smaller villages and/or communities scattered across the state, air travel is the only way to get in or out of the area. Sometimes, residents may have the added option of going to town via boat as well, using one of the larger rivers, but for many, the small-engine plane is the only way to move about. Which explains why there are more than eight hundred airfields in the state of Alaska.

Such was the case for the Schmits, who either flew in or floated out in order to get groceries, go to the doctor, or for any other reason they might need access to what the city had to offer. Otherwise, they spent their time surrounded by water, trees, the native animal residents, and an ever-changing population of about ten other people for the majority of the year. Due to the sheer expense of air travel, students learned that trips to town were done as a necessity and only came about once or twice a year for a lot of “bush” residents, including these longtime inhabitants. The third graders also learned about how much work it was living so far away from other modern conveniences that we so often take for granted such as municipal water supplies and citywide-supplied electricity and/or gas hookups. Students also got a glimpse of how much planning actually has to go into simply surviving out there all alone, with few to rely on but yourself. For example, everything has to be well stocked, including food, and fuel, tools and parts, and especially medicines. Because if you run short, it can be days, even weeks sometimes before you can restock, which could potentially lead to some dire consequences, depending upon the situation.

Click on the link below to check out read students’ individual books about the Alaskan animal of their choice and its many adaptations!

Alaskan Animal Books

A Picture Really Is Worth A Thousand Words!

As part of our writing unit this year, students have been studying various types of writing styles, including persuasive writing—which was covered with our Santa In Disguise project—and narrative writing—which we recently addressed and just finished in conjunction with our Photocard assignment.

The latter involved further third-grade exploration into the different parts of speech in addition to how those varying components actually translated into word choices, especially when it comes to descriptive writing.  Students also learned how those parts of speech and word choices then tied into reading and all of its own elements.

Through the course of our on-going class discussions, students discovered just how important it is to develop a good, strong plot when writing and to make sure that plot shows a rise in action en route to solving whatever problem they may have chosen to address as part of their own fictional writing.  In addition, we also examined the difference between “showing” versus “telling” when writing, with students learning that it is almost always far better to “show” than it is to simply “tell”. The importance of dialogue as a means of “showing” was examined as well, with demonstrations on the proper use and placement of quotes within their own work.

However, it was our study of figurative language that really grabbed the third-graders attention. Their fascination with similes, metaphors, personification, alliterations, hyperboles, idioms, and examples of onomatopoeia—still ring loud and clear as spontaneous bursts of group shout outs pour forth from our classroom door on a regular basis, each and every time an example of any one of these seven types of figurative language are read and/or spoken aloud during, not just reading, but also any and all of our other subject areas, too!

After sorting through a stash of old Christmas cards that are kept from year to year, students were then asked to choose a card that inspired them in some way, shape, or form and to compose a narrative story that related to the picture found on their card of choice. A lot of in-class time was devoted to this particular writing project, resulting in the third graders becoming not only well acquainted with the writing process itself but also very well informed with respect to the importance of editing, revising, and ultimately rewriting portions of one’s own work.

Students and teacher alike used classroom ipads in order to complete this assignment, with the composition and rewriting portions done by the students via implementation of the Showbie app and the necessary editing component completed by the teacher through the use of the Explain Everything app. Working back and forth between these two applications, student and teacher were able to individually confer, honing and reworking their initial draft into a finely-crafted and finished piece of narrative work! Once all of the necessary editing, revising, and rewriting were finally finished, each student’s story and accompanying card were then published with the help of a third app called Photocard.

Please click on the following link to check out your student’s own work along with that of his or her classmates!

Christmas Card Writing Project 

Got Heart?

There is simply no way around it. When it comes to matters of the heart, the month of February is one of the first things that jumps to mind, also making it the perfect time of year to turn the attention of students, staff, and the community’s collected attention to other heart-related issues as well with our annual heart-health campaign.This year, elementary students (K-6) did just that on March 23, with their own “Jump Rope for Heart” event.  A national educational and fund-raising event which is sponsored by the American Heart Association and the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance (AAHPERD) whose purpose is to engage elementary and middle-school students in heart-healthy activities that not only improve the students’ own heart-healthy habits but also aid in raising money to help other children who have heart-health related issues.This year students raised over $2000 for heart research while learning about their own heart and how to keep it healthy through physical activity.

Way to show your Sleepy Eye Pride students!

More On Apps: Third-Grade Faves

With all that “love” already on everyone’s mind, it seemed like the perfect time for those of us in 3^rd grade to share a few of our favorite classroom apps with parents and friends!

“Explain Everything”, one of our more frequent go-to tools, is a whiteboard app into which typed text, pictures, self-made drawings, videos, and self recordings can be imported into and then used to explain a specific topic.

This particular app was one of several we employed as part of our app smashing when constructing our plot comic strips. First we used an app called “Comic Life” which contains all of the major elements found within a plot, and then we called upon “Explain Everything” to help us explain our comic strip to Miss Schmit.

The advantage to using an app like “Explain Everything” is that it reinforces the concept being taught while also allowing the students to demonstrate exactly what it is that they know about the chosen subject matter. It is especially useful in Science, because students can videotape an experiment that is being conducted in class and then later, after importing the video itself, they can further explain, on an individual basis, what they actually observed.

“Nearpod” is another favorite app of ours. It is highly interactive and can be used by students during class presentations, allowing each student to watch the presentation independently and at their own individual pace. It can also be rewound, if necessary, and watched again. This app is also great to embed quizzes in and has the built-in added bonus of being able to provide immediate feedback to each student as well.

The third-grade class, as a whole, absolutely loves the app called “Kahoot”, which we also use in quiz situations. In this case, a given question is projected onto the whiteboard located at the front of the room. Students then use their own ipad at their desk to answer the selected question. While doing this, the amount of time it takes for all of the students in the class to submit their answers as well as the total number of students who answered the question both correctly and incorrectly--without openly disclosing individual student answers--is projected in real time on to the whiteboard, so everyone can track the class’ progress. Once all answers have been logged in, we follow up with a short class discussion and review before moving on to the next quiz question.

“Kahoot” is a great motivational tool, which always generates a lot of classroom excitement and energy, with each student trying as hard as they can to answer the posed questions correctly. Honestly, they cannot wait to use this one and request it almost on a daily basis! Of course we don’t use it every day, but when appropriate, it is a fantastic resource that meets our needs in a fun and exciting way.

We have also used the “I Movie” and “Yak It” apps in conjunction with a couple other classroom projects as well. We have engaged the former to put together book trailers and the latter to make our Santas come to life and talk. Both were a resounding success that left all the students clamoring for more!