Give Me LIBERTY!

Last week we did a unit on US Symbols in conjunction with our Reading story: The Story of The Statue of Liberty by Betsy and Giulio Maestro. This is one of the activities we completed. The students made their own Statue of Liberty. Then they wrote one opinion and one fact about the statue.
If you are interested in having your students complete this fun activity click on the photo to go to my TPT store. It is $2.00 but will be on sale during the Leap Year Sale on Wednesday! Have a look!

Live Scoring

We have been practicing our constructed response questions to get ready for our upcoming spring testing session. A great way to do this in your class is with Live Scoring! We did a live scoring session when we were wrapping up our unit on Fractions. The students were placed in groups of 4. They were given a large sheet of chart paper, a question and one marker. The students then worked together to answer each part of the question. When they collectively thought they had a score of “2” (which is the best they can get)- they called me over to check their answer. If they had a “2” we celebrated and I marked their paper. If something was missing, then they were given a different colored marker so they could make corrections or add to their answer.

Why do they have to change their color? Each time the group thinks they have answered the question and you check their response, they should get a new marker color if they have corrections to make. This is an important step in live scoring because it helps the students see what they had to do in addition to their original answer to get a perfect score. All to often students give a minimal answer and think they are finished. This really shows them how close (or far away) their answer is to being perfect (or DISTINGUISHED).

Here is a group’s finished answer.

This group had to change their answer to Part C so you can see that they changed from their original color of purple to orange to make the changes. This gave them the “2” that they were looking for.

I hope you will consider doing a live scoring session in your classroom, too! I would love to hear about it!

Candy Converstations

I can’t wait for Valentine’s Day! I have so many fun and engaging activities planned for my thirdies!! For Math we are going to do my Candy ConverSTATIONS. I love it because there is a little of everything included: measurement, estimation, fractions, subtraction, graphing and more! Plus the kiddos get to eat their manipulatives when they are finished. Yay!!

All you need is a bag of conversation hearts and your ready to go! I use Valentine’s Day cupcake baking cups to hold a generous amount of hearts for each child.

Click on the below picture to get your copy of my Candy Conversation Heart graph. If you want my complete set of “Converstations” go to my TPT store. It’s on sale for $2.50 until Vday!!

Love ya!

Melissa