The One With the Tournament

Wow! I’m going to share with you the start of our March Madness: Tournament of Books, but first let me say I think the kiddos took “madness” to heart! State Testing + Indoor Recess Weather = Madness in Room 21. Hopefully, just like the weather in March, they will be in like a lion, out like a lamb! 

 

Luckily, despite the silliness, we are still learning! Last week I changed our bulletin board in anticipation of the start of our March Madness. It’s not too late to join in, seeing as the correlating tournament has yet to begin! I found my vision from Brown Bag Teacher and she has GREAT, FREE resources to get you started! I changed them a bit to work with my class but it was a great visual to get me started!

First, I made a list of the books we’ve read as a class or that are always flying off our class library shelves. Then, I paired the favorites together (Dr. Seuss competed against Dr. Seuss, Grace for President competed against Duck for President.)

The actual creating the brackets on the board took some thought and planning, but still managed to turned out how I imagined.

This week we discussed what the actual NCAA Men's Basketball Championship was and the similarities to our own Tournament of Books. The first round of books were Dr. Seuss, which worked out perfectly with his birthday! The Lorax went up against Bartholomew and the Oobleck and won. To cast their vote students completed a book review. Slowly and painfully our book reviews are improving. It’s shocking sometimes how quickly students forget how to write a summary. I’ll chalk it up to our weird week again.

As our class bookie, and in my professional opinion, I think the best bet is Diary of a Wimpy Kid or The Day the Crayons Quit.  

The One with Just a Minute

Yesterday I started brainstorming my kiddos Valentine’s Day party. Valentine’s Day is a major holiday at our school so I probably should have thought it out further than four days ahead.  We are celebrating on Thursday because we have a lovely data day Friday. (The day off is not in observance of Valentine’s Day like some of my students think) 

Last year I made these adorable little robots – they were a hit! Mostly because the amount of candy involved.

This year I was on the Pinterest search for both homemade Valentines and an activity. After putting together some different ideas I came up with *drum roll please*

Minute to Win It,Valentines Edition!

The Minute to Win It activities aren’t revolutionary, all are taken from their website and the YouTube example videos. I did turn them into a Valentines goodie bag which will double as my gift to them. They can also take home their baggie and play over and over at home – sorry parents!

Here is a look at the activities we will play – I also turned the labels into a freebie. Check it out if you’re a last minute Valentine planner like myself!The titles link to the YouTube example of the game...it's an easy way to explain how each is done! 

Separation Anxiety

In this game students have 1 minute to separate the colors of M&Ms into the mini cups! 

Suck it Up

Students will have one minute to take the tart hearts from one mini cup, across their table to the other mini cup using a straw.

Candy Pick Up

Using two straws like chop sticks students will have to move the candy hearts from one mini cup to another mini cup across the room. 

This Blows

Students will stack their cups across the table, blow up their balloon, and knock the cups over with the air in the balloon in one minute.

My students LOVED Minute to Win It last year for our end of the year party – I’m hoping this will be another fun-filled day! Updates will come Thursday with student participation!

The One with a Freebie…And a Dog

Today I’m going to try my hand at TpT! For now, just freebies until I perfect my skills. (I did create a literacy center game to pair with Bananagrams a while ago, but that was a copyright issue, oops – I’m new!) 

A few weeks ago I did a mini lesson around the book, The Daythe Crayons Quit by Drew Daywalt. Amazing book! There are many different writing ideas you can take out of it but since our overall unit is Opinion we went the persuasive route. Recently we jumped into Lucy Calkins with two feet. While my Lucy fandom varies from day-to-day it can be monotonous – cue our crayon mini lesson. 

For us third graders who have been working on voice and persuasion in speeches the lesson took 3 days, for others it may take longer depending on the level of exposure to opinion writing.

In the lesson freebie it goes in to MUCH more detail but I will keep it short and sweet for all of you! 

Day 1

We read the first page of the book with purpose, trying to hear what the crayon was persuading the boy to do. Then we read it again listening to his great voice and examples. I read a few more colors which we added to a chart that organized what the crayons wanted and examples of how they spoke directly to the audience. 

That was all the more time we needed to start brain storming objects in our lives that would want to quit. My class example was our pencils, (something students have knowledge on and something that really would quit in room 21) students came up with their Xbox, tablets, couch, grass, soccer ball and much more! 

After our objects were decided we did many partner brainstorms and class share-outs to decide why they want to quit, examples the object will use, and how they will address the audience (them!).

They did surprisingly well taking on the role of the object and writing to themselves – it’s something we’ve never worked on but they fooled some teachers around the district who came to observe. 

Day 2

Most students wrote more the day before than they have all year. I think that has to do consistently using Lucy and having a motivating activity in front of them. Either way we were done drafting and ready to revise! 

Today students heard three other crayon colors stories (they begged for even more!) and this time really listened to the emotion and vocabulary the crayon used. We took this as an opportunity to add better emotion and vocabulary to our own writing. 

Day 3

We finished the book, The Day the Crayons quit, spoiler – the last crayon is the funniest and will have your class in stiches. Add an extra minute to your lesson so they can come down back to class. 

Today students finished revising, did minor editing, and published their page for our class book. Students who finished early could add a drawing to enhance their writing. 

My kids really enjoyed this lesson and I’m happy to pass the idea along! As promised in the title of this post … a puppy! 

This weekend I had the absolute JOY of dog sitting my 3^rd grade teammate/dear friend’s sweet dog. My dog fix was not satisfied this weekend and instead I’m toggling back and forth between doggie websites. A puppy here I come! Tagdog is a beautiful Alaskan Malamute whose beauty you all need to see. Thanks for sharing him for the weekend, Em! In true Colorado fashion it was 70 all weekend and we got to spend a lot of time outdoors – he also received more compliments at dinner than a supermodel (or so I would suppose) a record 30-40+. Luckily it doesn’t go to his head. 

 

For sticking out the lengthy post, here’s Tag!