Martin Luther King, Jr. Research & Mini-Book

As soon as we came back from Winter Break, we started our Martin Luther King, Jr. research. In the past, our students have written a mini research paper. This year, we jazzed up our activity by using Blair Turner's MLK Mini Book (freebie on TpT). The students filled out all kinds of information about MLK and decorated the books. I am holding on to these books to show off at parent-teacher conferences!

More resources:

• Clip of MLK's speech - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DDsUYTgkDSU&feature=related&noredirect=1
• Animated story of MLK's life - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6Au81aHuSg&noredirect=1

New Product: Teambuilding Questions

This product includes 60 teambuilding questions for your students. They can be used in a think-pair-share activity or as a writing prompt. Students answer a question about themselves and hear how others answer the same or different questions.Questions can be printed to Avery labels or printed on cardstock and cut apart.

Example questions:
-What is one thing you want to learn more about? Why?
-If you could get rid of one food, what food would it be? Why?
-What is one thing you are good at doing?
-What is your favorite sound? What is your least favorite sound?
-If you could be great friends with any celebrity, who would you pick?

New Product: Homework Bingo

This product is a classroom management tool for students and teachers. Each student receives one Homework Bingo sheet (printed 2 per page) to keep. Each day the students turns in completed homework, a square can be initialed by the teacher. Once the students achieves a Homework Bingo, they can receive a prize from the teacher's choosing.

Homework Bingo encourages responsibility for the student. They are able to earn rewards for turning in their homework. Also, they must be responsible for the Homework Bingo card. If it is lost, the student will begin again with a blank card.

Cursive Freebie on TpT

At the beginning of each school year, I give my students a one-minute math assessment. It is double sided sheet with the same equations on both sides. They take the assessment in August and then again on the last day of school. They LOVE to see how much faster they are at math in just one school year.

So this got me thinking, why don't I do this for cursive handwriting? So many of my third graders are PUMPED about {finally} learning how to write in cursive. I searched for a cursive "pretest" on TpT and didn't find anything simple and easy, so I created one myself. And it's a freebie for you!

Use this Cursive Pretest at the beginning of your school year to see how much cursive your students know. It's great to get a snapshot of your students' undersanding of cursive handwriting.

Something fun to do with this pretest is to keep it to look at in May. The students will LOVE seeing how much their handwriting improves over the school year!

New Product: Reading Talking Sticks

This is a great guided reading or whole group reading product! Print these thought bubbles out onto cardstock and attach them to sticks. Use these Reading Talking Sticks create discussion in your whole group or guided reading group about a passage/book.

Ex.
I want to remember ____ from this because…
The setting is ______, I know this because…
The character changed when…

Data - Statistics

As we begin 3rd Quarter, we are working on Data/Statistics. This won't be a part of the third grade curriculum in the Common Core, but our grade is still being tested under NCLB so we are teaching the "old" standards.

Before any math takes place, but students have been given a set of numbers, we have the kids "STOP! THINK! Put the numbers in order!" (said/yelled as a chant). This helps them get started correctly, with the numbers in order from minimum to maximum.

The minimum is circled (I call it a little squishy circle) and the maximum is squared (a square is a "strong" shape). These two (min & max) anchor our data information.

Then students partner slide the numbers: minimum to maximum, next smallest to next biggest, etc. The last number left in the middle with no partner (the median) gets a triangle because a triangle is in the middle of a teeter-totter (good visual for the kids).

The MOde (MO=most often) gets a rectangle because a rectangle can grow to fit more numbers inside, just like a mode is more of the same number.

The range starts with a DIFFERENT LETTER, so we use DIFFERENCE to find it! By the time the students get to finding the range of their numbers, they already have their partner slide in place. We teach the students to put an R- (range subtract) on the largest slide, the one connecting the minimum and maximum. THey are also taught a little song, "You take the biggest number, and the smallest number, and subtract to find the range, cha cha cha, cha cha cha". It has helped so much!

I created a mini-poster that is another visual for my students as they are working on data, you can find it on TpT here.