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Welcome to our class blog! Here is where you will be able to find important class updates and news. I will do my best to update this on a regular basis. :) -Mrs. Haralson
Updates!
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1. Christmas
I love the holidays. The excitement it brings and all of the fun activities and celebrations. Even so, it's nice to have time to relax after it's all over. :) The holidays go by so quickly, though, so I wanted to take a minute to recap some of the fun that was had over the last few weeks:
In December, students read holiday novels in small book groups over two weeks, in which they participated in group discussions and activities while working on strengthening their skills of making connections, asking questions, and summarizing the text. During this, students created a connection chain to be the garland for our classroom reading tree. Each link was a different connection made by a student while reading. After reading, students worked in groups to create their own large trees where they summarized the events of the book, identified the character, setting, problem and resolution. On the ornaments on the trees students wrote questions they had while reading that helped them better understand the events or characters within the story.
In addition, of course, students completed their present book reports and we had fun exchanging them and trying to guess what the books were based on the items inside the boxes! After each guess, the kids then shared their items with the class and told us a little about their book through these items. They were really creative and thoughtful about the items they chose!
In math students worked on division by dividing up reindeer food, ornaments on trees, and presents that the Grinch stole to give them back to the Whos in Whoville! They created snowmen in Social Studies to show and describe the three levels of government and had lots of fun during Grinch week practicing a readers theater play of the Grinch, rewriting the song using antonyms to show how the Grinch was at the end of the story and doing a character comparison to show how the Grinch changed. In addition to these and other activities, students wrote persuasive pieces where they were asked to think of someone they know who they think deserves a special present this year. The kids worked very hard on their writings and I was very impressed with how they really took on the task to look beyond the typical wants of the season to produce some very thoughtful and sweet writings. Your kids are amazing.
In addition to the activities going on in the classroom, the kids also worked hard to prepare for their holiday spectacular. The kids sang beautifully and looked so nice in their holiday best! It was also great to see so many of you there as well!
 
 
To end the season, we had our Polar Express Day and Christmas Party. I was amazed with everything that you all did to make the day such a memorable one for the kids (special thanks to Gena Cramer for organizing everything!). I also want to thank you all so much for the thoughtful gifts and to all who contributed to the incredible gift card tree! I am overwhelmed with your thoughtfulness and generosity. Thank you for sharing your wonderful kids with me each day and for everything. I hope you enjoy these pictures and that you all had a great holiday season!
-Mrs. Haralson
 
posted 1/3/2012 9:19 PM
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2. Just another week in 3rd grade...
Parents,
I want to share with you some of what we have been doing in class over the last couple weeks. I know most of you probably get the "nothing" or "I don't know" responses when you ask your kids what they did at school, so I will try to post pictures for you here and share with you a little about what your kids have been doing lately here at school!
Last week we began looking at government. This is a very difficult unit for most students because it is so abstract; so, I like to have the students participate in a lot of activities where they can better understand the parts of government and how they work. Our first step is to look at national government and the three branches. To introduce the branches, I have the kids engage in a simulation called "Adventures of the Tired King." The students are presented with a story of a King Louis the Umpteenth who is so tired because he has far too much to do. He decides to delegate his jobs by creating three departments - the lawmakers, king's guards, and judges. The lawmakers have the responsibility of making new laws, the guards have the responsibility of making sure people follow the laws and catching those who don't, and the judges have the responsibility of deciding if people are guilty of breaking the law or deciding what a law means. The kids then go through a pile of letters that were mailed to the king and have to decide which department should do each job. Here are a few pictures of the board once the kids discussed and decided where each letter should go.
This week we are looking at the "departments" and relating each one to a branch of government, focusing on the duties of each branch and how they work together!
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In reading we have been working on making inferences over the past few weeks. this is a difficult skill because it requires students to "read between the lines" and provide evidence from the text to support their judgments. To show that good readers infer while they read, students have been writing down inferences they make while reading their AR books and have shared them with the class. I am so impressed by all of the great inferences the students are making while they read!! Here are just a few...
We have also been reading the Candy Corn Contest by Patricia Reilly Giff. This is a great book that touches on great lessons like honesty, friendship, and internal conflicts. In addition to looking into these themes and the narrative elements of the book, we are having a candy corn contest of our own! In the book, students get to make guesses as to how many candy corns are in a jar on the teacher's desk based on how much they read. Last week and this week students in our class are making guesses for every book they take an AR test on and receive an 80% or higher! Higher point books = more guesses, so students have been really eager to take their AR tests lately! :) Here are our guesses as of last Friday...
The student with the closest estimate on Friday (11/18) will be taking home the jar of candy corn for Thanksgiving!
posted 11/14/2011 7:43 PM
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3. Pumpkin Book Reports
I wanted to take a minute to share all of the wonderful pumpkin projects that were turned in last week! I am so proud of all the hard work and am very impressed with how creative they are! The kids kept talking about how fun they were to create and they enjoyed looking at each others' pumpkins and hearing about the different characters. Here are a few pictures for you to enjoy.
 
  
posted 10/30/2011 8:32 PM
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4. Greek Day Recap
Parents, thank you so much for all of your help in making Greek day a huge success! I appreciate everyone who was able to volunteer by sending items in, or through giving your time to come and help out. The kids had a great time and learned a lot about Ancient Greek culture first-hand!
If you were here and took pictures, please send them my way! I have several of them when they were with me during the Olympics event, but I would like pictures of the kids in the other rotations as well. I know they're usually too big to send through email, so if you would like to send them to me through a CD or flash drive, I will download them and return it right to you. :)
Here are a few pictures from Friday.
posted 10/12/2011 6:53 PM
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5. Greek Day
*Greek Day is this Friday! Thank you to all parents who have volunteered to send in food items. You will be receiving reminders this week of what you have chosen to send in and how much we will need.
Students should come in costume (Ancient Greek dress) this Friday! Ideas for places to find costumes and ways to make a costume were sent home in the packet last week, but please remember that all costumes need to follow the school dress code. :) If you have an extra sheet & safety pins to send with your child on Friday in the event that someone does not come in costume, please feel free to help out. Everyone is very excited and I hope this will be a fun day of learning that the kids will never forget!
Friday is also picture retakes day. If your child needs to have his/her picture taken on Friday please send him/her to school ready for pictures. We will do pictures first thing and then students will have the opportunity to change into their costume. PE is also Friday, so students are welcome to bring tennis shoes to change into if they wish.
Also - We need a few Frisbees for the “Olympics” on Friday. If you have one you can let us borrow, please send it in (labeled) by Thursday. THANKS!!
posted 10/3/2011 6:37 PM
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6. Schedule Change/ Scholastic
Parents, As of today we have changed the lunch and specials schedules. We will now be going to specials from 11:40-12:20 and then will have lunch from 12:20-12:50. Please note this change in case you would like to come eat with your child. Also - scholastic orders went home yesterday for September. Orders are due next Wednesday, September 28th. Scholastic does a special each year only for September where they offer thousands of extra bonus points for orders of $200 or $275. These must be placed by september 28th, though, so I can submit the order by the deadline. Extra bonus points allow me to select tons of free books for the classroom for the kids to read and enjoy. If you are planning to buy books for your child, this is a great time! :)
posted 9/20/2011 3:57 PM
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7. GYSTC
Don't forget! Our in-school field trip with GYSTC is this Friday. Please don't forget to send in your $5 if you can to cover the costs of this trip so we can enjoy this fun-filled day of learning!
posted 9/12/2011 5:08 PM
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8. Math Resources and Class Blog
 We are using two online programs this year to help students improve in math. XtraMath is a great site for all students, and especially for students who have difficulty with recalling math facts quickly. This is a great tool to use daily as it only takes 5-10 minutes each day. IXL is a website for standards-based math to practice skills taught in class. The login and password for IXL are each student’s lunch number, but you must go to the web address above for this to work (www.ixl.com/signin/coweta). If you try to sign in from the main page, you will need to use your child’s lunch number @coweta for the login.
KidBlog:
This week I have introduced the students to our student blog. Kids can access the blog at http://kidblog.org/MrsHaralsonsClass and from the "students" page to the left. This is a great way for kids to work on their writing skills while discussing topics they are learning in class or books they are reading. I will also have “Club Cranium” challenge questions from time to time for students who wish to participate. These are questions that require students to go a little above and beyond regular curriculum and may require research to find the answers. They are optional, but rewards will be given for students who choose to put in the extra time to find the answers to the questions each time. To access the blog, usernames are listed on the website, lunch numbers are student passwords. It is completely safe and used only for classrooms. No one can see any posts unless they are students in our class and students must be logged in to view the blog or comment on posts. Please let me know if you have any questions!
posted 8/29/2011 8:36 PM
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9. First Week Update!
We are off to a great start! We had a FANTASTIC first week of school and are ready to jump into a full week of exciting learning! We met new friends and created our classroom community which the kids have named the Learning Rockstars community. We talked about how our classroom will be a positive learning environment and wrote our classroom rules and pledge to go along with this goal. Later in the week the kids applied for jobs, chose collaborative partners for this quarter, and even set up our classroom economy, complete with money and a store full of rewards! I can already tell that we have an amazing group of kids and are going to have an incredible year!!
posted 8/15/2011 6:41 PM
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10. Rodeo Roundup/ Back to School!
Hello everyone!! Can you believe summer is almost over? I know it's sad that summer goes by so fast, but I am so excited to start a new school year! This blog will be a way to stay updated with happenings in our classroom. I will try to keep it updated as much as possible so you can stay informed about exciting projects and classroom events. Feel free to leave comments as students share about all of the fun they'll have throughout the year!
I hope to see you all on Thursday, Aug. 4th at our Rodeo Roundup. Drop by between 5:30 - 6:30 to see your new room and meet some of your new classmates, then join everyone upstairs for an ice cream social until 7:00. We are ready to show you just how much Third Grade ROCKS!! :) I hope you are all ready for a fantastic year!
Enjoy your last couple weeks of summer!
Mrs. Haralson
posted 7/23/2011 6:59 PM
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Mrs. Haralson's Class
Brooks Elementary
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