"Most Inspiring Students" Award Goes To...

...Liliana, David, and Hawke!  These three are in my morning class.  Today, I had us go out and run one lap before they could start recess.  During recess, these three kids kept running!  They ran 6 laps, or a mile and a half each.  Then we came in and they announced that they wanted to start a running club during recess.  Monday through Thursday during both morning and lunch recess, they plan on running as long as they can.  Well, I think this in and of itself is pretty awesome.  However...

...we stepped it up a little bit.  I told them that I had heard of a group that was attempting to finish running the miles that were left unfinished in the Boston Marathon.  All those runners who were unable to finish because of the bombing left a total of over 8,000 miles uncompleted.  (Visit this facebook page for more details).  As soon as they heard about this, they wanted to know how many miles they had run and if they could add it to her project.  So we added them up.  They ran a total of 9.25 miles this morning.  But...

...It doesn't stop there.  My kids are seriously amazing. Liliana, David, and Hawke decided that they wanted to keep track of how many miles they ran during the week with their running club so we could contribute to the Run for Boston project.  We spent the next 45 minutes forgetting about the lesson I had planned and worked together as a class to figure out how we could make this work.  We set up a system of tallying our laps as we ran and are even having an art contest to see what picture would best work on our poster.  We want to get the whole school involved if we can.  It's going to be a lot of work, but they are so excited about this new project.  I've never seen them so excited and work together so well.  We found a way to start today during our lunch recess and my kids got the word out to the other third grade students.  We had SO MANY join us in our run.  They took care of everything by themselves today and it went off so well!!!!  After just today's running we have a combined total of 66.5 miles run!  These third graders are truly amazing!!

This has also helped wrap up the Leader in Me program that we've been introducing this year.  We are trying to encourage the students to step up and become leaders in the class, school, and community.  During our discussion, we were amazed to find that we were using all 7 Habits at once and we felt so good about it!  

Here are some pictures I took as I came out at the end of lunch to see how things were going. They were all so happy to help show their support.  Today was such a great and inspiring day!  I am so proud to know and teach these incredible children.

(David is in the orange shirt)

(Hawke is in the light orange shirt with the awesome hair!)

(Hawke again in the orange, Liliana is bringing up the next group in the blue shirt)

(Liliana in the lead)

Nearly made it

Hey all,

Well, sorry for the incredible lack of posting this year.  It's been hectic to say the least.  Jessica found out she was pregnant early on and she just had her baby on Monday morning!  We have a great sub for the rest of the year that speaks Chinese and she's super fun.  We had interviewed her for Jess's job next year but she took a job a little closer to home but at least she's here to finish out the year with us.

Today we did a fun project for the bulletin board outside.  I did this last year but upgraded a little.  The title is "Our Future's So Bright, We Have To Wear Shades" and we took pictures.  Take a look:

Only 25 days left of school!!  :)

Almost there

I'm almost ready and thought I'd let you see a few new pics. 

"OWL" have a blast using these!

Great find Mom! She found this cute little, wooden owl puppet and so I went and got two more and painted them. I may have to go get a few more later this week. I think I might end up using them for groups. When they have an answer ready to share, they have one person hold up their group owl. I was also thinking they would be good on field trips. Give one to each chaperone and they will be a lot easier to find. They just have to hold up their owl and the kids find the right color group. There are an endless amount of opportunities!

Getting Down to the Wire

We're almost down to a week of summer break left and I love setting up my classroom.  Here's a few pictures of my favorite things for you to see!

This is my new management system!  One of my teammates from last year also decided to use owls this year and found this beauty.  She copied it for both of us and I can't wait to use it!

 A new reading comprehension poster I found on Pinterest.  I finally got around to making it and can't wait to use this as well.  It breaks down the story line into the most important aspects that the kids can remember to summarize quickly.

 New birthday calendar: (red and blue class names are written in their respective colors)

 Cute listening poster I found on Pinterest...again!

 And finally...my bulletin board!!!!  :)  I LOVE how it turned out.  Each little owl has the students' names and the color of the class they are in.  As I went to put it up I found out that I'm missing the 'r' in "hooray" and I lost the exclamation points.  I'll recut those this weekend and put them up next week.

A Few Hours Later

Yesterday I spent about 5 hours in my new room and got quite a bit done. Here are some pictures and a 360 degree video. Enjoy!

The board with the leaves will be for the student of the week.

A Blank Slate

Here are some pictures of my NEW classroom before any decorations are up (I tried to do a 360 arial):

 When you first walk in there is this little counter with cupboards.

 The back right corner

I can't wait to get started!!!