My Arrival in Team Bond

I flew in this afternoon, and only a few children noticed.  I knew I should have waited until the evening, but I was too excited to start learning about third grade.  Luckily, they were not distracted by my presence.  Mrs. Bond, their teacher, was surprised to see me sitting on top of the Everyday Math box.  (I picked this view because it allowed me to see the entire room.)  There are many elves traveling around during this season.  Most of them are reporting back to a special man with a beard that's white, but I am special.  I am a Learning Elf.  Etavonni the Learning Elf!  Each year at this time, I go around to third grade classrooms and see what children are learning about.  Then, I send my reports to educational leaders...people like principals, superintendents, professors, and even some governors.  This year I thought I would try something new, so I have created my very first blog.  It was about time, as more people should know about the cool things going on in classrooms...not just the education leaders!

So...back to my visit in Mrs. Bond's 3rd Grade.  Well, they are located in Commerce Township, MI.  They are a part of the Walled Lake Consolidated School District in Michigan.  I found them when I was on twitter last week @TeamBond2012.  They were tweeting about having fun in their Energy Playground. They also tweeted that they played a game in PE called Cell Tag and learned about organisms.  I thought both of those things sounded super cool, so I put them on my list of classrooms to visit!  

I got to the classroom while they were in lunch, and when they got back from lunch, the students continued reading silently.  They did a pretty good job of being quiet and keeping interested in their books.  Mrs. Bond did have to remind some boys that were behind me to stay focused.  Then the students had to write their books in a book log.  I liked how they had to do a subtraction problem to find out how many pages they had read.  After that, they reviewed for their BA test.  I was curious what a BA test was, and luckily one of the students asked towards the end of the day, and I found out that BA stands for Benchmark Assessment.  Some of the students left with a grandpa that volunteers and the rest of the students practiced area and perimeter using the MOBI, which was kinda like a clipboard that you can write on, but the writing was able to be seen on the wall.  It was neat!  Then the students played a game called Multiplication Top-It.    In Science, the students are studying energy, and they were able to watch a video all about how energy can be transferred.  One boy was surprised to hear that food was a type of energy.  He only thought electricity was energy.  One girl remembered learned about kinetic energy, which another young lady reminded her that it meant moving energy.  All in all, the video was great.  Tomorrow Mrs. Bond said the kids would be creating energy cartoons...I wonder how those will turn out?

Students were able to go outside for an hour for Student Activity Time.  This is a time where third grade teachers get together.  The room was very quiet, so I took a quick nap.  I was exhausted after my long flight.   When they got back, the students worked on word study. Most of the kids had to work on homophones.  I noticed that many children struggled with the word tide.  They did not know how to use it in a sentence, but that makes sense since they don't live by an ocean.  They do have the Great Lakes, but the Great Lakes don't have tides.  Another word that some had a hard time with was hymn.  I don't think people talk a lot about hymns, they must just call them church songs?????  

At the end of the day there was a lot of activity.  Kids filled out their assignment notebooks, children emptied their mailboxes, students got new jobs for the week, and the children had to clean the floor.  I did notice there were a lot of things left on the floor.  Good thing one of the classroom job is Floor Patrol, as the young man did a good job of reminding people to pick up.  

All in all, I enjoyed my first afternoon in Team Bond.  I am looking forward to learning a lot while I am here! Apparently the kids are working on The Secret Zoo projects at home.  I am not sure what that means, but it sounds kinda cool!  Anything to do with secret zoos has my attention!  I guess they have to bring them in by Wednesday!  I can't wait!  I will have to make sure I pick an awesome place on Wednesday to get a nice view of the presentations!  

Thanks for reading my very first blog entry!  Look for more to come!  

Cheers to Learning!

Etavonni  the Learning Elf