Siobhan Foley

My class just presented me with this birthday book. Since October 20th they have worked on it to make sure that every child in the room made me a page. This included helping my English Learners. (Lord Fluffington the hamster also made one!) My bucket is full!

Launched our data unit by sorting pictures of Halloween candy! Superfun and interesting to see the different classifications - texture, shape, lickable vs. nonlickable. Even ABC order. (Way more candies start with s or t!)

Students analyzed some recreations of artifacts such as a brick of tea, colonial money, projectile points, The Mayflower Compact and some creepy dolls dressed in colonial outfits. Great discussions and observations!

Magical music in an elementary classroom- the rhythmic scratching of 20+ pencils. If you can hear it then you have found that ephemeral time and place where children are lost in their own writing process.

Check your reaction time! How fast can your brain transmit what your eyes are seeing to your hand, so that you catch the ruler your partner is dropping? (It turns out that I need to work on this!)

Sometimes when learning multiplication facts you can start by breaking a bigger array into smaller ones. (I wish I had learned that trick when I was a kid!) These are some ways to break up 9 x 4.

Millipedes visited the class this week! (One took a little side trip into the neighboring office space. . .) We studied the structures and behaviors that help them survive.

Community in action!! The wheels on this bookcase broke and we had to take all the books off. Mr. Brahim and Mr. Brendan removed the wheels and the class worked together to put the books back.

Our corn, bean, sunflower and pea seeds have germinated! We tucked them into some soil, gave them a drink and placed them in the window. Let the cycle begin!

How many ways can you arrange 12 chairs in equal rows? Also - how can you record your ideas? They didn't get any guidance on the second part and had to rely on previously learned strategies. They did great of course! Thanks K-2 teachers!

Some unusual similes.

Poems inspired by other poems!

Fruit dissection!! Have you ever tried to count the seeds in a strawberry, a blueberry, green bean or cherry tomato?? It's not easy but these third graders accepted the challenge.

Lord Fluffington the world's cutest hamster has returned to a new crop of third graders in Room A203!

Playing around with snap cubes. I asked the kids to show me how they could use them to solve equations. They took me literally and included the plus, mult. and equal signs.

First four days of school are off to a great start! Successful launch of our poetry unit.

Thanks to Ms. Lombard we have a giant hamster maze for a little while. Galaxy made it through the first time in 90 seconds. The next time we added food and that really slowed her down - 5 minutes!