Hump Day

Hi, Everybody,
We are reading an adventure story about a little girl named Molly Moon. She is an orphan that learns to hypnotize. She has some pretty wonderful adventures. I will read close to 100 AR points in class this year. In other words if your child is a good listener they will get 100 points from books read in class. This is an award that is given on Awards Day in May.
I hope you have seen our picture on McBride's Web Page for winning the SPIRIT stick for showing our spirit last week. That is one thing I can say about this class. We do have a lot of SPIRIT ( in more ways than one).
I think I will start including a few questions from the day for you to ask your child while sitting around the dinner table (LOL). Seriously ask: What are the three kinds of rocks found on the Earth's Crust and how do they form? Of the three rocks, which one is found the most in the Earth's Crust. How does one kind of rock turn into another kind of rock? We have gone over this information several different times. Hopefully some of it is beginning to sink in.
Our crystals are coming along nicely. Come in to take a look. Your child will also be bringing these home shortly.
We are going to the Space and Rocket Center October 1st. We have to have the money in ASAP. This happened for 2 reasons. One, we waited until it cooled off some, and it is the end of the fiscal year for our System. We have to have everything closed out quick. The school's fiscal year begins again in October.
Tomorrow we will be performing a scratch and streak test on 4 minerals we observed today in class. That is always a lot of fun. I hope you don't get anything scratched up at home after this test!!! Students usually like to recreate some activities in their own way at home you know.
Have a great afternoon. I for one am ready to feel that crisp fall air.
Mrs. Powell

Yeah!! We won the Spirit contest. Look on the Schools web page and you will see our picture. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and there we are!! We have the Cheerleader's spirit stick for one week. We will take a picture of it and post it later. That old flu bug is hitting us again. We had 3 students out today and one more check out. Our school had another bad day with sickness. We had as many students out today as we did Swine Flu Tuesday!! We will all just do the best we can. My room is fogged every Tuesday and we spray about 3 times a day with a special flu bug KILLER.

We had a great day. I don't think anyone even got a check. Our first behavior reward will be October 16th. Movie and BYOS (Bring Your Own Snack) afternoon. We will be voting on a movie to watch. So far everyone in my class will get to participate.

Our first semester field trip will be to the Space and Rocket Center. Cost is $38.00. This includes the bus ride, 3-D movie, experiments, guided tour, and lunch. I know this sounds like a lot, but this is really a good deal if you consider all that the students get to do. Parents will pay at the door. I think around $25.00 if you want the movie too. We will be going Thursday, October 1.

We have crystals growing in our classroom. All parents are welcome to come in in the afternoons and see how they are progressing. We are having fun with our AMSTI
Earth Materials Unit.\
Until next time!!
Mrs. Powell

Friday Dance Day

Well we can do the Friday Dance.
Boy we sure took a lot of tests today.
We had 10 100's on the spelling test and lots of 95's

These pictures are of students observing a Water Test on the mock rock we have been looking at. We are trying to see if there are some minerals we can't see. We added water to the sand and shook it up to see if some mineral would dissolve in the water. If it does on Monday we will pour the water into a dish and let the water dissolve. Maybe we will have some crystals left over that will prove some minerals were in the rocks other than the (red, green, and shell looking minerals). It is always exciting to wait and see.
My students are in Art making penwheels for the wetlands.
That should be interesting to see when all are finished. Come up and take a look when that project is completed. Have a great weekend. I have to go and finish grading all these tests.
Mrs. Powell

Hi everybody,

Last year I played around with blogging in my classroom. I am going to do my best to get this going this year and you can follow along with your child's school day. I probably will not get this done each day, but, I will try my best. I know I will not always have pictures.

Today we went out in the fog and took our SPIRIT pictures to post on the MSCS email to try to win our place on the web. We collected $22.00 for hat day, but still did not get the popcorn!!

How much does it take?

I am excited to finally have reading groups every day and math groups are getting started. We will only have time for small group math on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Of course students receive individual attention during whole group time each day. Today in reading groups I asked the following question, "How did Murete know Saruni wanted a bike if he did not tell him?" Don't you just love those names?? Anyway, students said that his mom told him. The following were some statements that were made:

Mom's are never good at keeping secrets.

My mom is! She always keeps secrets.

......... Let's just say we ended the discussion there. Third graders are so innocent and fun!!!!

Well, the gang will be back from PE any minute. We are going to begin a pretest for Math

Chapter 1. If students can complete this, they will do very well on the real thing tomorrow. Same kinds of questions, just different numbers. I hope you enjoyed the pictures.

Until Next Time,

Mrs. Powell

We have been busy today. We are having fun with Miss Hernandez. UNA students also taught us about endangered animals today and where they are located in our world. See if you can find your self. What does it mean if an animal is endangered? What does it mean if an animal becomes extinct? Give me two important facts you learned about your animal yesterday. Come on let me hear from you boys and girls.......

The Bees visited our room last Wednesday

Teachers Learning How to Blog

Kess helping Mrs. Powell learn how to upload pictures to my blog.

Teachers have to still take classes too!!!