Sweet Sunshine!

Jump Rope for Heart
Jeffers Pond raised over $20,000 in donations, which surprassed our targeted goal (!!!!) so as a celebration, Mr. Koppang had the school take a vote on what he should do with his hair: (1) shave it all off, (2) put it into a mohawk, or (3) dye it black. The votes were counted and the winning vote was...(drum roll please!) SHAVE IT ALL OFF! The school met in the gym to watch Mr. Koppang get his hair buzzed off. The kids were cracking up the whole time!

A student from each grade level got to help in the shaving of Mr. Koppang's head.

Check out that hair!

And there he is ladies and gents, a SHAVED Mr. Koppang! He was such a good sport.

Luck of the Irish
The class has been enjoying hearing stories about leprechauns (Saint Patrick's Day is right around the corner on March 17). As a writing lesson, we wrote about times when we have felt lucky,

My mom and dad say I love you because it makes my heart happy.

my mom buys me a toy

I meet a new friend!

My dad goes out with me. (To Smashburger)

I get a trophy because I'm super good at basketball.

I play with my friend Sophie.

I find pennies and quarters and dimes.

Here we are making our leprechauns.

Dr. Seuss Stations
Dr. Seuss' birthday was on March 2. In social studies, we learned about his life and how he became an author and illustrator. Our reading stations this week were Dr. Seuss themed.

Sorting word families (ag, ig, og, ug)

Spelling CVC words

Rhyming words

Reading and writing real vs silly words

Reading Focus
We've been learning about and reading nonfiction books. Nonfiction books contain information and facts about real things.  For the past two weeks, much of our focus has been on community helpers. Some of the skills that my students have been working on is studying photographs carefully and thinking about what is going on, asking and answering questions, and reflecting on what they've learned. In a few of our reading lessons, students got to choose which community helper they wanted to learn more about, read and observe the photographs closely in their community helper book, then write about what they learned.

We also talked about how some nonfiction books have labels, which specify different parts of the photograph. We cut out our own labels and put them on photographs of us!

Science
We went outside with our third grade buddies and learned how to find maple trees for tapping.

We will be collecting the sap in jugs over the next week or so. Later when we have enough collected, we will take the sap to a place to convert it into maple syrup. Super exciting!