Mystery Walker

As students get older, it gets harder and harder to find ways to keep them walking in straight lines quietly. It has gotten a little easier for me in my class with the help of the "Mystery Walker." I have a cup with slips of paper with each student's name on them by the classroom door. Before we go out into the hall to go to recess or lunch or anywhere else, I secretly choose a name of the person who will be our "Mystery Walker" for that trip down the hall. No one knows who it is, so everyone tries to do their best to walk quietly down the hall with their arms folded. If the "Mystery Walker" is following all our hall habits all the way to our destination, they earn a quarter in class money.
I got this idea from a school magazine. There was also a poem in that magazine that I have typed up and is posted right by my "Mystery Walker" cup with names. This serves as a reminder to the students as to what I am looking for as they go down the hall. The poem goes like this:

Who Will Be the Mystery Walker?

I'm choosing someone in my head
To see if you face straight ahead.

Are your hands down by your side?
Do you walk with a quiet stride?

Is your voice off as you walk,
Not a bit of any talk?

If I see the answer's yes,
A special prize for your success.

This works like a charm!

Pen Pals

My daughter is also a 3rd grade teacher. We thought it would be great fun to have our students be pen pals with each other this past year. It was an amazing experience! We started at the beginning of the year and continued on until the end of the year. Pictures, cards, and small gifts were exchanged while friendships were made. I have long been looking for a good way to give more meaning to letter-writing instruction, and this did it. We plan to continue doing this each year. I would recommend this to any 3rd grade teacher. Find another class your students can write to and see how much fun they can have while they are learning the art of letter-writing.

Graphing Lesson

I love to combine data collecting, graphing, and technology into one lesson. I have my students work with a partner, collect data about something of their choice, and figure out which type of graph would be best to show their data. Once the data is collected and the partners have decided which graph type to use, I take them to the computer lab, and I teach them how to use Excel to make a graph from their data. In the past, I have used my own computer hooked up to the projector to show the students how to do this. I have just learned how to use a new tutorial program (Adobe Captivate 5.5) that could also be used to illustrate the steps from data to graph. A link to my tutorial can be found on my UEN page at this link: http://my.uen.org/82232.
The students love this lesson, and it is a great tie-in to technology.

Internet Math Help

I find that review time for math concepts is a hard time. It is difficult to review in away that the students' interest will be perked and they will actually involve themselves in the review. One thing I have done for math review is to use the website IXL with the projector. I have the students grab a small whiteboard and marker put them into teams. I find the appropriate concept on the website, and we go through the review as a competition. Everyone has to write the answer to each question on his/her individual whiteboard. This helps me to see which students are still struggling. The students don't really get tired of reviewing this way.
Sometimes I will add a little something else to the review like having the team that had all members with the correct answer first gets to shoot baskets with the Nerf basketball to earn extra points. There are so many things that can be done to add interest into what could otherwise be a boring math review.
The URL for the IXL website is: http://www.ixl.com/math/
I hope it helps.

Help in Management

I do a baseball theme in my classroom. I love baseball, and I love using that theme because it lends to great discussions throughout the year about being a team and helping each other out at all times. One of my favorite things to do with my class that has helped a lot with management is to hold a class meeting once a week. I have a can in my room for compliments and a can for concerns. During the week the students notice good things their classmates are doing and put that information into the compliment can. If things happen that they are concerned about, they put those into the concern can. This really helps diminish the number of "tattles" during the week. At our class meeting each week, we go through all the compliments (which I then send home with the students) and concerns. It gives us a chance to discuss together the things that are going well in class and the things that need "tweaking." I love the feeling of togetherness this brings.
I then give a prompt to the class such as, "The best things about school is..." The students (who are sitting on the floor in a circle) pass around a talking ball. Only the student with the ball in his/her hand is allowed to talk. This is a chance for each student to express him/herself without any chance of repercussion. I have learned so much from my students through doing this.
Class meeting is one thing we do in our class that only takes about 20 minutes a week but that makes such a difference to the feeling of community in our class.

Chocolate Fractions

A great way to teach fractions is to teach with Hershey's chocolate bars. I like to have the students break their chocolate bars apart and make fractions with the pieces. There are 12 sections in each bar, so it is also a great way to illustrate to the students that the greater the denominator the smaller the piece.
When it comes time to talk about equivalent fractions, I give the students brown paper with a "Hershey's Bar" copied on it. They are given a large piece of white construction paper on which they are to glue pieces of "chocolate" and show equivalent fractions.
The students love this lesson, and it can be used for so many different aspects of fractions.