3rd Grade Book Reviews

3rd graders in Mrs. Redenbaugh's room created iMovies about pictures books of their choice.

First, we picked and read books. Then, we filled out a storyboard. I created a story board with 6 boxes: title, beginning, middle, problem, solution and ending. In the box, they drew a picture and underneath they wrote words to describe that part of the story.

Usually, a book trailer wouldn't give away the solution or the end, but I wanted them to show all the parts of the plot. Next time we create these, we'll leave the trailer hanging with a question.

These turned out great for our first big project of the year!

First Skype Calls of the Year

As I mentioned, we are participating in the Global Read Aloud again this year. I simply love this project, and I am glad so many teachers at my school have partnered with me to make this a fun and successful project for the students.

The 6th graders were anxiously awaiting a call from Mr. McCleary's class in Buford, Ontario.

First, each class presented three facts about where we are from. It turns out, we live in very similar small towns. Both of our towns are rural and rely on farming, and we have the Wapsi river, while they have the Great Lakes close by. 

Then, we wrote about how we'd feel if we were Melody and couldn't walk or talk or control our body movements. Several students shared things that they would miss doing. It is really easy to think about the physical limitations--not being able to play sports, etc, but we also talked about the mental frustrations Melody must experience since she is so, so smart, but no one knows. Being able to speak and communicate is something that we all decided we take for granted.

Our 4th graders got to chat with a class from Noblesville, Indiana. We had a few connection issues, but we were still able to tell a few facts about our school and listen to theirs. 

We also shared our thoughts about the book so far. We are excited to keep this connection going with Ms. Mertens this week--we are Skyping again tomorrow! 

First graders got to meet Ms. Murphy's class in Wisconsin this morning. 

Both classes had prepared 3 questions based on the reading to ask the other class. At first, we were a little shy and no one wanted to talk, but by the end we had opened up! Hopefully we will get to do this again soon!