Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow!

After a long and restful two weeks, we all happily returned to the Lily Pad.  Students were bursting at the seams to share all their news with friends and teachers. It sounds like the only thing that was missing from the winter break was winter!  However, the long anticipated snow did fall and was greeted with cheers and smiles by the students at Marquette.  This is a good time for me to remind families to please make sure your child is dressed to be outside in the snow.  We still have recess and we expect that all students partake in our 2 outdoor breaks.  Please make sure your child is wearing boots and bringing in a pair of shoes to wear inside.  Thanks for your help.

Our week started off with a bit of an unusual schedule.  On Monday, all students at Marquette spent an hour reviewing positive behaviors for places in our school, outside of the classroom.  Then on Tuesday, the third grade staff was given an opportunity to spend the day assessing students' reading progress and math fact competency.  Thank You to the parents who volunteered to spend the morning with our wonderful third graders, giving staff the opportunity to assess learning.

By Wednesday, much to all of relief, we were FINALLY back a normal academic schedule!  We were excited to begin our 3-week comic unit.  Students were given a homework assignment to create their own Super Hero or Super Villain character who will star in an upcoming original comic strip.  Lily Padders were very excited about this assignment and the characters that have been created are quite creative!  One student even tried to use his best persuasive skills on me to make every assignment a comic assignment.  He argued that students could do comic strip personal narratives, persuasive pieces about whether their character is good or bad, etc.  It was a very convincing argument and I am glad he remembered the power of persuasion!

We joined forces with Mrs. Henze's class as students learned some basics about writing a comic strip.

Students first read some examples of comics reading them through the lens of a reader and then reading with the lens of a writer.  They noticed many text features found in comics: the story is told through dialogue, many times there is humor, the characters show emotion, movement lines to show action, different fonts to show excitement, thinking vs speaking bubbles, some frames are close up drawings and some are further away, etc.  The next day partners were given pre-drawn comics and pairs came up with a dialogue to match the story.

Finally, students discussed that comic writers create ideas in writer's notebooks or sketch books, brainstorm story lines and plan their comic strip.  Partners practiced this technique as well.

Our whole class math sessions are focusing on measurement, both US customary and Metric.  In science students practiced measuring their mock rocks weight, circumference, diameter, and depth. In math we measured our foot length and plotted this information on a line plot and measure the distance a pattern block travelled when blown.

Student-geologists continued their mock rock investigation.  They were given the task to take part their mock rock and separate out the mock-minerals, trying to determine what made up these rocks.

Students found clear evidence of the following minerals: red, green and blue gravel, white shells and gray matter.  We determined that we could add water to our gray matter, shake it up to break it apart to find evidence of more mock-minerals.

After the vials settled, students noticed that sand and flour were two more mock materials.  We wondered if salt was an ingredient and after much discussion decided to place the water into evaporation trays to see if we found evidence of salt.  We should know next week!

Finally, Friday was Packers day at Marquette and those crazy packer fan teachers got into it, maybe a bit too much!

Miss Miller's packer swagger... 

wow

Enjoy your weekend all.  Remember, no school on Monday due to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Holiday.

“If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.” 
― Martin Luther King Jr.