Hello, and WELCOME back to the blog! I hope to be able to give a glimpse into Rm. 204 since you do not get to go there with us every day! 🙂

This past week we worked hard to get to know each other, our classroom and our new groups (called crews) that we will work with all year. We did many things all together, somethings in small groups, and a few things independently. I was so impressed with how well they can do that last part already! It’s hard to have stamina in the beginning of the year. 🙂

Here are some highlights from our first days of 3rd grade together. Check it out!

Dot Game

Every kiddo had a colored dot on their forehead and had to find all of the others with that same dot–SILENTLY! This was a challenge for us to use other ways of communication and kiddos really and fun with it! We played it a couple of times and they got better at it every time!

What Kind of Kids are We?

This one was a fun one. It was the game where you have to “find someone who” fits a certain description. I made this based off of a book I read a couple of years ago that has all kinds of kids in it, so each box said a kind of kid.

The best part of this video for me is that kiddos are doing EXACTLY what I had just taught them about! Before this we had learned the movement technique of Stand up, Hand up, Pair up and the used it beautifully to find a partner. Do you see them comparing pinkies? That’s because that’s the thing we were using to see who took the first turn. We had practiced using soft voices, but most importantly, that the person who does the writing does the learning–so kiddos wrote on their own papers instead of on each others (which is the way this game is commonly done). When we finished, they had had the opportunity to talk to at least half of their classmates, learned somethings about others that they didn’t know (even good friends!), and had also practiced writing other classmate’s names–and spelling them correctly! PLUS , it was fun!!

Marshmallow Challenge (Take 1 and 2!)

This is a challenge I LOVE to do–often many times in the year! We were grouped into “crews” (which are small groups that we use at various times throughout the year), and kiddos were given these directions:

Once we were all sure we knew what to do and had had a few minutes to plan, teams got to work.

And here’s what happened at the end of the 18 minutes.

What?? I wanted all of their towers to fall over and for the challenge to be a complete bust? Yep. Because when you fail and make mistakes you have to figure out what worked, what to change and what to do the same. We had a great conversation about that idea that I captured in a chart. We recorded the PLUSSes and the DELTAs as we reflected on how it went:

I have to admit that before we wrote it all down, I had predicted we’d have a lot more in the red column than in the green one. Looking back on what we had done, we all agreed that this was definitely not a FAILURE situation, because look at all the positive things we DID DO!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE how excited kids were to do it again, ready to change what didn’t work and do something better. We did some other things in between, but the TAKE 2 is too good not to share next. It was sooo good!

And this is the end result this time. :). 4 towers stood this time, and the other two were SOOOO CLOSE!!

Thanks for reading this far–I’m realizing now that there is TOO MUCH AWESOMENESS to share in one post. Stay tuned for more, and subscribe to the blog so you don’t miss anything!