Our First Week of Third Grade

It has been a long but fun first week back to school. Here are some snapshots from my favorite activities.

I have heard a lot about the book First Day Jitters from my teacher friends, but this is the first year that I have used it. I read the book to students on our first day of school. After reading we launched our morning meetings using the sentence stem "I feel ________ because _______." I was very surprised at how honest students were about feeling nervous on the first day.

After morning meeting we played a game called step to the line to help students recognize that they are not alone in their feelings.

In the afternoon we wrapped up our First Day Jitters activities by reading The First Day of School Poem by Judith Viorst. Students then wrote their own similar poem about the "What ifs" they were experiencing on the first day of school. You can learn more about my First Day Jitters lessons by clicking on the pictures.

We also read the book How I Spent My Summer Vacation by Mark Teague and talked about exaggeration. In the story the main character Wallace starts out talking about his summer vacation and then adds in exaggerated details. The students practiced writing their own exaggerated summer vacation stories. Click on the picture to learn more about this activity.

Another one of our first week of school read-alouds was The Tattle Tongue by Julia Cook.  After reading the story we discussed the tattle rules. Above you can see the anchor chart that we created as we talked through different scenarios and which rule they would fall under. You can find the lesson plan and example scenarios by clicking on the picture.

To learn about conflict resolution we read A Bug and a Wish by Karen Scheuer and worked on some strategies for dealing with conflict in our classroom. Students then practiced the strategy using the the talking stem "It bugs me when you _________. I wish you would __________." 

Now when a student comes to me with a concern about another student all I have to do is say, "What do you think you should do about that?" Most of the time they respond immediately by saying "bug and a wish". Other times I have to prompt them by pointing to our anchor chart. You can get the lesson plan, practice scenarios, and anchor chart by clicking on the above image.

As our week drew to a close we put our teamwork together by participating in a mini STEM challenge. Students built a tower out of marshmallows and toothpicks. The tower that held the most weight was the winner.

I hope you enjoyed the snapshot of my week. It is now time to get some rest. I am exhausted! Happy first week of school friends.

Leave your favorite first week of school activities in the comments section.

-Carly

I hope you have found this blog post helpful. To stay connected with Carly and Adam's teaching tips and classroom freebies be sure to follow us on Facebook, Pinterest, Teachers Pay Teachers, and subscribe to our blog!