The Chocolate Touch with Download

      Spring break is almost upon us. I just can't believe that it's almost the end of the school year! Where has the time gone? The 4th quarter has just started, so it won't be long before we are testing, take up text books, and have field day. In the mist of all this excitement, I am in the middle of planning a trip of a life time! I am sure that you all are wondering what we have been doing these past few weeks. Let me tell you.

We have been slaving away at our book Chocolate Touch by Patrick Skene Catling.

It's a story about a boy, John Midas, who is greedy and selfish. He desires chocolate more than any thing else. John finds a mysterious coin and buys a box of chocolate. This is where the trouble  begins. Everything that he touches turns into chocolate. This could spell trouble or it could be the "touch" of a lifetime.

Week 1: 

We looked at the copy write date and compared 1952 to 2013.

They LOVE seeing how things were different, especially when they get to see how much things cost back then compared to now. My lovelies scramble to find the food that they like and see how much they could have bought it for in 1952. I always hate having to stop them to move on, but if I don't then we'll get nothing else done.

"What is greed?"--This was the question that I had them ask themselves. 

They wrote their answer on a sticky note and placed it one the chart paper. They had some pretty good ideas about it too.

In order to get ready for our book, I read them the story of King Midas and his "golden touch". They LOVED this story! This did give me hope that they would love Chocolate Touch, but I was wrong. Some of my kiddos didn't like it surprisingly. All well, you can't win them all I guess.

We read half of our book doing character analysis along the way and trying to find out what was going to happen. In order to help my students with comprehension I allowed them to name each chapter keeping the main idea of each chapter in mind, and I had them create 4 visualizations about their favorite parts. We have talked a lot about visualizations and how they help us understand what we are reading. When we can see it in our minds, we have better idea what is going on in the story and it makes the story more real. 

Week 2:

      We finished the other half of our book in our second week. Many of my students talked about things that they would love to be able to eat all the time until we got to the end of the story. Ha ha ha. By the time we got to the end, my students created many text-to-text connections on their own. Here are a few:

• The Dr. Cranium was just like the doctor from Charlotte's Web. Whenever the parents are worried about their kids then takes them to the doctor, nothing happens. The doctors never seemed to help the kids ever!
• The shopkeeper was just like Mr. Wonka from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Both of them worked in a place with chocolate and were trying to teach children a lesson about greed and selfishness. 
• John Midas was just like King Midas. The kids made this connection before I was able to start our comparison with these two stories. They saw that both characters had a greed problem even though they looked a little different.

Dr. Cranium give John Midas an Elixir to help try to help him eat better, so I had my students create their own Elixirs. 

Once we were done reading our book, I had the kiddos compare King Midas to Chocolate Touch (a little more deeply than their previous connections) with their tables. After a few minutes, we came back together and made a Venn Diagram to display our thinking.

Since we discussed the theme of "wants and needs", "greed", and "selfishness", I thought that it was a good idea for us to make a chart paper that made us think about things that we need and want. There were different types of people wishing for different things and we had to determine if it was a "want" or a "need". Everything was going okay until it got to a 3rd grader wishing for a vacation, LOL. of course they felt that it was a NEED even though we discussed that one a length. All well, ha ha ha. 

It was a fun book, and I can't wait to do it again next year. If you have the book and are looking for some tests to go with it, you can look on my TPT, just click on the picture below to get your copy!

 

 

Charlotte's Web

 

Wow, it's been difficult getting my "goods" together after this Christmas/New Year break!! The kiddos and I have been reading Charlotte's Web for our reading unit. It's so wonderful to FINALLY see my students engaged in reading since my 3rd grade team decided to dump Scott Foresman's Reading Street. No longer do I see my students with their heads on the desks or trying to find ANY excuse to stop reading. They actually are excited about what we are going to do in reading and what is going to happen next in our books! I know there might be some of you that actually like Reading Street, but it was a dream come true for me when my team put the junk on the shelf!!

We are working on Charlotte's Web for 3 weeks. During this time, cause/effect and characterization have been the main focus..

 

 

 Before diving into the book, I spent one whole day building their background knowledge. This included looking at how people lived during the time the book was written, thinking about our knowledge of farms, and making connections to other E.B. White novels

Once Charlotte was introduced in the book, we took a look at "fact and opinion" which included finding the facts about spiders. We created a KWL chart about spiders, filling in K and W before reading for the day and filling in L after we read our chapters. They picked up so much information!! It was easy for the them to see the facts and opinions. It's a teacher's dream come true!!

 

There was another day that we looked at the different ways E. B. White described the farm with senosry words or phrases. We also looked at the characteristics of the main characters.

Fridays are when we have FUNcational text Friday and to allow the kids to have fun. This Friday will be making pigs in a blanket day with a recipe. Fun, Fun, Fun ;) Also, this has been a great way to demonstrate how to write a research paper using animals. All of the kiddos have picked out a book from the library and will be on a writing adventure this week and next. Can't wait!!

when making this unit, I used many things from the Teacher Created Resources unit book and a WONDERFUL site that has TONS of units perfect for 3rd grade!! Click here to visit it ;)
We're not done with the book yet, but I can't wait to see what will come out of it when we're finished!!

First Week of School is Over!

Before I get started on the events of the week, here is what my classroom looks like finished!

This week has been an interesting week meeting and getting to know my students. They're just doing things that just CRACK ME UP! This class is wonderful too. There are things that they do which shows that they have lots of room to grow throughout the year, but I know that they are a group that will do it in a spectacular fashion!

Since I know that kiddos are nervous their first day of school and have lots of questions, I gave them an opportunity to ask me anything they wanted to know. Well, the results were pretty funny. My favorite was "how do you do hair to do dat?" My hair is curly so I guess they don't know that it can be that way naturally.

Also, I read The First Day Jitters and had various activities that were related to the book which included a "4 square". The first square was about being nervous before school then progressed into how they felt after finishing their first day. There is the website that my team used to find activities for this book.

http://www.mrsvandyke.com/backtoschool.htm 

The school's counselor has the whole school going through 7 Habits of Happy Kids this year as a part of our school-wide discipline plan. The first week is "Be Proactive". I am hoping that this helps my students think about their behavior. Have any of you guys ever gone through this book with your kids??

I do have to say--I have never been so tired in all my life! After work I have to come home and get crackin' with grad school stuff until my eyeballs are going to fall out! This teacher can not wait until she gets used to going to work AND doing grad school again.

End of the Year Mementos

This year has flown by! It's hard to believe that in just a few days I will be saying my good-byes to my students. We turned in our textbooks today, I will be posting my grades tomorrow morning, and field day and class parties are on Friday--it's officially over. I have been trying to think of some things that I could do with my students that they could take home with them that would hold some memories down the road. From the help of my co-workers, I was able to come up with 2 ideas that we big hits!!

Idea #1--Write letters for the next school year. I had my students write letters to themselves about things that might want to know or be reminded of on the first day of school when going into the 4th grade. These students really blew my away with some of the things they came up with. We put the letters into envelopes and decorated them. They will be able to open them the first of the following school year.

Idea #2--An alphabet memory book. My students are in the middle of creating an alphabet book that contains information that we have learned correlating with the letter it begins with (A=addition, c=clouds).

Gearing Up Next Year

Since it's almost the end of the year, I have been trying to get myself thinking about how I should prepare for next year. So many things have been floating through my mind that a list is going to made soon before I forget half of my ideas or ambitions. 

One of things that I really want to do is do a better job reaching my students. There has been a huge culture shift at my school that seems to have happened overnight. One thing my school did as a whole is read Ruby Payne's Understanding Poverty to help us understand our children's culture a little better; however, I was not in that particular book study (I lead a different one). So I decided that I would get some books for me to read over the summer to help me make some plans while I have a break from graduate classes. Here are the books that I ordered (maybe you all can tell how well you liked them and how they helped you):

 

                   Teaching with Poverty in Mind: What Being Poor Does to Kids' Brains and What   Schools Can Do about It

                                                            Eric Jensen

A Mind Shaped by Poverty: Ten Things Educators Should Know

     Regenia Rawlinson

Why Culture Counts: Teaching Children of Poverty

Donna Walker Tileston, Sandra K Darling