Halloween Party

After returning to the classroom from the Halloween Parade, we started our party. I had stations set up around the room. Students rotated around the stations to do different Halloween activities.

The students made SCARY witch's hands with gloves, candy corn and popcorn.They decorated cupcakes to look like spiders.

The students made cute Halloween magnets! They played Halloween Bingo and won a new book,

and made caramel apples!

A BIG thank you to all of the parents that helped out! I couldn't have done it without you!

Halloween Parade

The Halloween Parade started around 2:00 on Thursday. The entire school met on the playground to parade around the field area and check out each others' costumes. We saw princesses, vampires, goblins, and ghosts! Look at those scary creatures!

Bilbray's Annual Fall Festival

On Friday, October 24, Bilbray held its annual FALL FESTIVAL in the evening. Many students attended the event with their families and enjoyed the fun, food and games!

October Character Traits Assembly

Congratulations to the students who earned awards at the Character Traits Assembly on Friday. Baili earned the award for Creativity because of the exceptional word choice that she uses when she is writing and speaking. Her stories are very creative! James earned the award for Self Control because of the change I have seen in him since the beginning of the year and how he is improving his self control in the classroom. Alexis earned the award for Respect because she always shows the utmost respect for everyone she sees - adults AND students! Abigail earned the award for Positive Attitude because she always has a positive outlook on any task that is put ahead of her. Abigail misses class each week to attend GATE, and she is always happy to finish the work she misses with a smile and is genuinely a happy person! In November I will be looking for students who can show good character, gratitude, and loyalty!

Halloween is quickly approaching. We will be having a Halloween party on Thursday, October 30. We will start by having a school-wide Halloween Parade and then return to our classroom for our party. Students will rotate between center activities to play a Halloween card game, make caramel apples, decorate cupcake spiders, and other fun activities. Rather than shopping for treats for the party, please send in $2 and our room parent will take care of everything! Thank you!

Incorporating TECHNOLOGY into our Day

Students were introduced to using the LAPTOPS on Friday. WOW, were they excited! I introduced them to the website "Ticket to Read". Students are able to read passages at their reading level and answer comprehension questions to earn tickets. The tickets can be used to 'buy' items to decorate their clubhouse. The students loved using the laptops. We will be working on incorporating them more into our days. There is a technology link included in the weekly newsletter to offer suggestion for students to practice skills on the computer at home.

Jeffersonville, Nevada

We have been learning about Geography in Social Studies for the past few weeks. All students should be able to name the seven continents and four oceans. We learned about using coordinates on a map to find specific locations as well as using the compass rose to move around the map. We use "Never East Soggy Waffles" and "Never Eat Shredded Wheat" to help us remember the directions in the correct order as you go around the compass rose. Everyone made a map of an imaginary city (Jeffersonville, Nevada) and used a map key to add symbols on their map to show schools, rivers, forests, buildings, and parks.

Autobiographies . . . Coming Down!

I wanted to get a shot of the bulletin board outside of our room before I take it down. (If you double click on the picture, you will see it up close and personal.) These is the "Hollywood" pictures that we took along with the autobiographies that the students wrote. They did a great job! I'm so proud of these 20 kiddos! They are genuinely nice people who I enjoy spending my days with!

Data, Data, Data

We have started to learn about collecting data and making data representations this week. We started by surveying the class yesterday and sorting data into categories. We found out that some students' favorite places to eat are at restaurants, at Grandma's house, or at the park for a picnic. We found that there are many ways to sort data.

Today we extended our data collection and then got into groups to sort our classroom data. Each group had to determine how they were going to sort the data and what each category name would be. The groups took turns explaining their data and how they sorted. They also had to write "We noticed . . . " sentences about their representation. The students did a great job working in groups!

Citizenship Assembly

Friday was out first Citizenship Assembly. The school recognized three students from each class who showed each of the three chosen character traits: friendship, cooperation, and responsibility. It was a difficult decisions, but I decided to really pay attention to student behavior and interactions with other students to decide who is worthy of the awards this month.

First, Gregory was chosen for FRIENDSHIP this month. We learned about friendship the first few weeks of school so I looked for someone who displayed that character trait during the week. The reason I thought that Gregory was a good choice was when we were lining up to go to science, one of the students accidentally dropped their pencil box and all its contents went sailing across the floor. Out of all of the student in the classroom, Gregory was the only one who bent down to help that child pick up the spilled items. He showed true friendship and consideration when helping that child.

The next week of school we learned about COOPERATION. I chose Haleigh to earn the award for cooperation because of how she helps so much in the classroom and helps with other students. She is conscientious about what needs to be done in the classroom and all it takes is a simple mention of the task, and Haleigh is first one to help! She is a real asset to our classroom.

Finally, Journey was chosen for the RESPONSIBILITY award this past week. She is a student who shows responsibility in completing all classwork and homework assignments. I can count on her to always be following directions when moving from one subject to another. She is a born leader and I'm proud of her for being a role model in our classroom.

Keep up the great work! We have many more character skills to learn this year so I'll be watching!!! Who will you be next to get the award?????

Fun Friday

Something that the students really look forward to is FUN FRIDAY. For the last 20 or 30 minutes on Friday, the students are rewarded for being responsible throughout the week. To be a part of Fun Friday, students have to follow our classroom rules and complete all of their classwork. Students get to choose from a variety of activities. Some students draw on their white boards while others like to play with Lego sets or write stories to go with their Squiggles. Some children also choose to put together the giant puzzle of the United States. No matter what they choose, they express their anticipation for the fun each week!

September Update

We have been so busy!!!! Last Wednesday evening was Open House. It was a great turnout, and I was pleased to be able to meet so many families. The students made a cute invitation during the day and created a matching design on their desks by using pattern blocks. Parents had to match up the design on the invitations to the design on the desks to figure out which desk belonged to their child. It was fun to see families searching around the classroom for just the right one! The students were tour guides around the classroom and showed their parents everything we have going on.

Reading groups are up and running. The students enjoy Literacy Stations the most! At these centers, the students play games and activities that support our skills for the week. This week the students are using letter tiles to build words that have certain values. Below is a picture of Greg and Jordan giving it a try. The letter tiles are kind of like Scrabble tiles. At another center Bailey is using alphabet stamps to stamp out our Word Wall Words for the week.

We are learning about place value and the value of each digit within a number. We have been using number cards to play math games this week. Today we are heading down to the computer lab to use technology as a way to practice. This will be the first time taking our whole class to the lab so that should be . . . interesting.

Open House is Wednesday

Bilbray's Open House is scheduled for Wednesday, Sept. 10 from 6:00 until 7:30. I hope families are able to join us. Students will be the tour guides and taking their parents on a Scavenger Hunt. We finished up our autobiographies and got some great pictures of the students hung up. Can't wait for the parents to see them! Below are the photos of Baili and Joseph . . . They Ought to be in Pictures!

It's a SURPRISE!!!

Today was the surprise that the students had been waiting for all week. We have been reading a story called "Officer Buckle and Gloria". It is a story about a police officer who goes into schools with his dog to teach kids about safety. What better way to teach our students about safety than to bring in a police officer and his K-9??!!?? Officer Corbett and his dog, Rex, visited our class today. It was awesome! We learned that people give off an odor called apocrine when their adrenaline is running. We can't smell it, but dogs are trained to smell apocrine on people. This is how the K-9 dogs are trained to catch the bad guys. So far, Rex has helped apprehend 39 criminals and put them in jail. Rex has found bad guys in the mud, under water, in bushes, and on roofs.We also learned that Rex has to go through training every day and take tests every 3 month to be able to stay as a police dog. Officer Corbett and Rex have been partners for the past 2 years, and Officer Corbett originally got Rex from Holland. Most impressive is that Rex takes all of his commands in German. Wow - a bilingual dog! That's cool!

Day 2 . . . 178 more to go!

We are off to a great start. Today we got one more student so we are up to 20. We read the story "Officer Buckle and Gloria". I wish I had a dog like Gloria! They are such a team together. We talked about genres also. Officer Buckle and Gloria is an example of fantasy. We also started brainstorming our ideas for our autobiographies. The rest of the week will be spent organizing our ideas and putting it all into sentences.

The students had fun sharing their "Me Bags". Everyone put 3 - 5 items in a bag and brought them to school as a way to share about themselves. You'll see a picture of Cory. He is a football fanatic so he brought in a picture of himself when he played with the Hawks as well as pictures of his family. Journey is also in one of the pictures. She brought very clever items like a branch (because she likes to climb trees), a book (because she likes to read), and pen, rock, shell . . . It was great fun and the students loved learning about each other.

First Day of School!

We had a great first day of school. We have 19 students in our class so far. We were so busy today and got right to work. I am thankful for such support from the parents so far in sending in necessary supplies and materials for our classroom. Today we played Name Bingo as a way to get to know each other's names. We also started working with cubes in math as we learned about place value (tens and ones). There's so much to learn. . . and so little time!

One more day of summer . . .

Tomorrow is the last day of summer vacation. I hope that all of you will get a chance to spend one last fun day together with your families. I know that many of you are new to Bilbray, and I hope that you will feel welcome in our classroom. We will be working on building strong relationships with each other so the students will always know that they have someone on their side! If anyone is feeling nervous or anxious about third grade, just remember that you aren't alone.

I got to meet a few of you on Friday at our Informal Open House. I'm looking forward to meeting the rest of you very soon. I hope that you all received your letter in the mail. I have some fun things planned for our first week of school. We are going to be reading lots of books about friendship, writing autobiographies, and playing Name Bingo on Monday. We have a special guest coming to visit on Thursday, but ssshhhhh!!! It's a secret! You'll have to wait until then to find out who!!! See you bright and early Monday morning!

Getting Ready!

An empty classroom . . . just waiting for students to arrive!


I have been busy getting ready for all of the students to arrive on August 25!! Our classroom has a "Hollywood . . . At the Movies" theme with lots of gold and silver stars. Students will have jobs in the classroom to learn responsibility within our classroom community. I have placed the desks in groups for optimal learning. Students learn so much from engaging in conversations with other students so we will be doing lots of cooperative learning activities. I'm getting excited to meet all of the new third graders. We are going to be learning so many things this year!