. . . at Green Bean Books

I stopped by Green Bean Books today and picked up our new Read Aloud

Matt Morton Stopped By Yesterday

Our class is wondering who they are going to vote for.

 Matt Morton came by and visited our school today.  He is running for The Portland Public School Board for our cluster, so we thought it would be a good idea to talk with him.  We gave him a tour of our school and showed him all the of the great stuff going on at James John.

Who else is running in Zone 2? I was able to phone John Sweeney, who said he might stop by sometime, I was unable to contact Maggie Brister-Mashia.

Of course we would love to visit with all of the Portland School Board Candidates running for the Roosevelt Cluster.

Congratulations Elias

Congratulations Elias, our Learn for Life Student of the Week!

Saying Goodbye

We had to say goodbye to our U of P friends today. Ms. Hussey & Ms. Klafter's time with us is coming to a close. We are all very sad, but thankful for our time together. They will be amazing teachers someday soon.

Will Hornyak

We had a great assembly this morning with storyteller Will Hornyak.





As you can see he got everyone involved in his stories.


http://www.willhornyak.com/

Location:N Oberlin St,Portland,United States

Why Dictionaries?

I am a little bit of a word nerd.  I have always loved learning new words.  I remember when I was in elementary looking through a dictionary for a specific word and getting easily sidetracked scanning pages of words that I didn't know.  It was so fun getting lost in the search.





Today's search engines quickly and efficiently provide us with an answer to our question- but  rarely do they provide discovery.

Dictionaries still allow for this incidental learning and discovery.

Today during our Word Work time, your Third Grader was given a list of words that were not in their normal working vocabulary.  They looked their words up in the dictionary and then tried to write them in a sentence.  Using a dictionary is a specific type of reading that is different from reading chapter books.   It is critical that your Third Grader leave our class knowing how to locate information from reference text.  Tomorrow we will add these new words into our draft books to help us expand our vocabulary.  

Multicultural Night!

Tonight was a great reminder of the rich authentic diversity at our school- that many private schools can only try to manufacture. It was great to see the look of pride on the faces of kids and parents as we celebrated our ethnicities that span the globe.

Poets that didn't know it!

We have been reading several different poetry books as we write poetry this month.  We started with writing List Poems like we read in Falling Down The Page.  Last week we worked on writing Haiku.  

This week your Third Grader is rewriting Nursery Rhymes giving them sometimes bizarre, violent, but always fun endings like we read in Gris Grimmly's Wicked Nursery Rhymes.    

Next week we will be writing some nature inspired poems when we read Poetrees.

All of these great books were suggestions from Jennifer at Green Bean Books.

All of the poems we write this month are up outside Room 12 and under the Student Writings Section of  the blog.

Come to Multicultural Night & PTA MeetingTonight!

Join us tonight in your native attire at 5:30 as we celebrate all of the wonderful cultures that make up our school.  There will be student performances, a parade, food, and so much more!  Stay afterward and find out all the great work that your James John PTA is up to.

Congratulations to our Students of the Month

Congratulations Emlyn, Emily and Destiny, our Students of the Month!

Haiku Coming To You!

We're writing Haiku.

Reading from the book Guyku

Read our Poems HERE

We had 16 kids this week who were on time everyday this week.
Great Job Brenda, Cameron, Chris, Deondre, Destiny, Deigo, Elias, Hunter,James, Jesus, Julio, Nani, Orlando, Taylor, Thea and Trinity 

Beautiful Day in The Reading Garden

Yesterday we thought we would take advantage of the beautiful weather  . . . .  

 . . . and use our Reading Garden for the first time.

Thanks Gigi for the pictures.

Today we chose which photo we were going to write about.  Ms. Julia led our class in the "Gift of Words" exercise where children commented on photos using terms: Light / Shadow, Composition, Shapes, Textures, Lines, Design, Pose, and Perspective.  Ask your 3rd Grader which perspective they chose for their photo.

Congratulations Brenda!

Brenda is our Learn For Life Student of the Week

Photo Fun

We had our The Best Part of Me Photo Shoot this afternoon.



Kids took pictures of each other from different perspectives.





I took a few pictures as well.

Spring Art Project

This afternoon we started our Spring Art Project called "The Best Part of Me"


Ms. Julie, our Artist in Residence is teaching us how to use digital cameras.


Ask your 3rd Grader about the different perspectives for taking pictures.


Kids will be partnering up to take pictures of each other.


Your 3rd Grader will be asking you questions to help them with their project.


Our Spring Art Project is funded through a grant through The Right Brain Initiative.