Five for Friday - May 1st

Happy May Day everyone!

Yep, it is time for Five for Friday! Wahoo! I don't think I have been this excited for a Friday in a long time. My students (just a handful of them) have run me ragged this week. I am excited for a fresh start on Monday. 

Without further ado, here are my five for this week...

Of course I forgot to take pictures, but I am so excited about our writing work this week. This trimester is all about opinion writing for our school. (We are using the Lucy Calkins Pathways program.) I really liked the Pathways books for fourth grade, but I didn't feel like my kids were getting enough practice where they needed it with the third grade books. So, instead of having the kids work on one or two pieces of writing all trimester we are writing a shorter piece every week.

This week we wrote a persuasive paragraph about which color was the best. The kids had to brainstorm reasons why a color was the best on Monday, write a rough draft on Tuesday, revise it on Thursday, and we just wrote our final drafts today. I printed out giant crayons on 11 x 17 paper and the kids wrote the paragraphs in the middle oval where "Crayola" would be written. They turned out very adorable.

I do think some of my students were frustrated because I had them redo the crayons if they weren't quality coloring and writing, but we are getting ready to move to fourth grade. Quality counts in fourth grade! I suppose, it counts in third grade too, but the quality bar has definitely been raised this trimester. 

Last week we wrote about why we should get a pet. These turned out great too! (And I did get a picture of one of these!)

In science this week we learned about crayfish. Sadly, all of the crayfish we were sent by the district died. Not just in my classroom, but in every third grade room. I am very upset about that. Last year, in fourth grade, we were sent fish, and all of the fish died too. I wish they wouldn't send us animals that we can't keep alive even when we follow all of the instructions.

Anyway, even though our poor animals died, we still learned a lot. Check out these adorable drawings!

     

We have started to get this little nugget to sleep in her crib at night. We have had quite a few long nights this week, but it will be worth it when we are all sleeping through the night again.

Several of my students have had a hard time remembering which way to draw the symbol for less than or greater than. I made these to help them practice in a fun way. They can practice with the Pac-Men, the alligator teeth, or make their own monsters.

Selfie fun this week...