Mr. Salsich's Class
Third Grade Explorations in Learning
Archive for Collaboration
The results are in from Round 2 of our poetry tournament and the winner is… The Land of Bumbley Boo! We had 71 votes and Bumbley Boo got 27 of them, while If Only was a close second with 21 votes.
Poetry Madness 2012
Poetry Madness Round 3
This week we have four new poems to listen to and vote for. Here are the readers for this week’s poems:
- Mosquito is read by Brian, Dylan, Nate, Bryan, and Jennifer.
- Migration is read by Jocelyn.
- Jabberwocky is read by Luke and Braedon
- Seal is read by Creighton, Carly, Hanna, Shea, Joseph, Kayla, and Chase
Which one will join Monster Mothers and Bumbley Boo in the final four? You decide! Have a listen and then vote for your choice.
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Which poem did you choose this week? Why?
How was our reading?
We love sharing and learning with other classes around the world. We are QUAD blogging buddies with three other classes!
*Mrs. Yollis’ Classroom Blog U.S.A.*
*Open the Door to B-4 in New Zealand*
*Mr. Salsich’s Class Blog U.S.A*
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Quad Blogging
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This is our final week of Quad Blogging, and it’s time to meet B4 from Reefton, New Zealand!
They are a class of 20 year two and year three students (grade 1 and 2) aged 6 – 7. Their teacher is Mrs. McKenzie and they live in the town of Reefton in the beautiful country of New Zealand.
They put up a special post to welcome their quad-blogging buddies. It has suggestions of posts for you to enjoy.
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So, head on over to B4′s blog and get to know our “Kiwi” friends – they would love to hear from you.
Remember to mention where you’re from!
We are very lucky to be part of a “Quad Blogging” partnership with three other amazing class blogs: Mrs. Yollis’ Classroom Blog, 4KM & 4KJ, and Open the Door to B4.
Quad Blogging 2012
This is our week to be the featured blog!
Welcome blog buddies!
Please explore our recent posts and leave a comment on one that is interesting to you. You can also explore older posts by using the Tag Cloud on the right-hand sidebar (the “inquiry” tag has some interesting posts!)
Also, here are a few popular posts from the past year:
Red Roosters Don’t Drink Rootbeer
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Right now we have 3,427 comments! I bet we will get our 3,500 comment this week. Maybe it will be your comment!
(Here’s a little math challenge: How many comments do we need to reach 3,500? How about 4,000? How did you figure it out?)
Thanks for visiting!
The results are in from Round 1 of our poetry tournament, and the winner is: Monster Mothers! Thank you to everyone that voted. We had a total of 50 votes and 34 of them were for Monster Mothers.
Poetry Madness Round 2
During Poetry Madness we have been working on reading with fluency. Poetry is a great way to practice fluent reading. Reading fluently means:
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Reading smoothly at the right PACE – not too slow, not too fast, and not choppy.
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Reading with EXPRESSION – changing your voice to make the reading sound interesting.
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Paying attention to PUNCTUATION -stopping at periods, slowing down at commas and line breaks, and sounding excited at exclamation points.
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Reading with good PHRASING – make the reading sound like natural talking.
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This week we have four new poems to vote on. They are read by Braedon, Sophia & Maura, Chase, and Shea.
Which poem will join Monster Mothers in the final four? You decide! Have a listen and then vote for your choice.
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Which poem did you choose? Why?
How was our reading?
Do you have a favorite poet or poem that we might enjoy?
Mr. Avery is a great teacher from Massachusetts, and he is one of our main blogging buddies.
Mr. Avery
He maintains Mr Avery’s Classroom Blog which is a model blog for classes around the world. Mr Avery is very talented at making videos with his students to help them understand math concepts.
Mr Avery has been blogging with his class since late 2010, and Mr. Salsich and his students have enjoyed blogging with his class since that time. We had a great writing/Skype project with his class in the fall.
Saturday March 17th is a special milestone for Mr Avery. It is his…
Mr Avery’s blogging buddies wanted to surprise him by getting together to create a special birthday post!
Here is a Prezi that we collaborated on with Mrs Yollis’ class, 4KM & 4KJ, B4 and Mrs Watson’s class.
Please leave a comment to wish Mr Avery a happy birthday!
Every March in the USA there is a college basketball tournament. It has the nickname “March Madness” because it is always action-packed and full of excitement.
We have our own version of March Madness, but instead of basketball teams, we have a tournament of poems! We call it “Poetry Madness.”
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This is how it works: There are 16 poems in the tournament. Every day Mr. Salsich reads two poems and the students privately vote to see which poem is more popular. The winner moves onto the next round and the loser is out of the tournament. After the first round, we will get down to 8 poems, then 4, then 2, and finally we will crown the champion poem.
You can help us vote!
We want to have our families, friends, and blogging buddies be able to vote for their favorite poems too. So, each week we will record four poems from the tournament and ask visitors to vote for their favorite one. The most popular poem will advance to the next round. After four weeks we will have the “Final Four” most popular poems. Then these will face off against each other to see who is the champion poem of 2012.
Round One
Here are the first four poems to vote for, read by Chris, Kayla, Joey and Taylor:
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Which poem did you choose? Why?
How was our reading?
If you have written a poem you would like to share with us, please write it in the comments.
We love sharing and learning with other classes around the world. We are QUAD blogging buddies with three other classes!
*Mrs. Yollis’ Classroom Blog U.S.A.*
*Open the Door to B-4 in New Zealand*
*Mr. Salsich’s Class Blog U.S.A*
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Quad Blogging
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This week, let’s meet 4KM & 4KJ from Geelong, Australia!
They are 52 fourth graders who share two classrooms. Their teachers are Mrs. Morris and Miss Jordan.
4KM & 4KJ
They put up a special post to welcome their quad-blogging buddies. It has suggestions of posts for you to enjoy.
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So, head on over to 4KM & 4KJ’s blog and get to know our friends “down under” – they would love to hear from you.
Remember to mention where you’re from!
We love sharing and learning with other classes around the world. We are QUAD blogging buddies with three other classes!
*Mrs. Yollis’ Classroom Blog U.S.A.*
*Open the Door to B-4 in New Zealand*
*Mr. Salsich’s Class Blog U.S.A*
The idea of Quad Blogging is that four blogging classes come together and learn about one another, one week at a time. Quad Blogging will help each class increase their readership while flattening their classroom walls and learning about the wonderful world we live in.
Quad Blogging
This week, let’s meet Mrs Yollis’ third graders from California!
Mrs Yollis’ class has prepared a special post to introduce themselves to you.
Click here to visit their post.
You will find some great information about blogging and commenting.
Mrs. Yollis' Class
Instead of leaving a comment on this post, head over to Mrs Yollis’ blog and leave a comment for them!
They would love to hear from you.
Remember to mention where you’re from!
Last week we received a very special visitor, Mr. Davo the travelling Tasmanian devil!
Our special guest
Mr. Davo is originally from Ms. Wyatt’s class on the island of Tasmania, south of Australia.
From Tasmania to Connecticut
He has been travelling around the United States and Canada for several months, visiting schools, classrooms, and student homes.
You can learn more about Mr. Davo and his adventures on his blog: Travelling With Mr. “Davo” Devil.
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The first thing we had to do was introduce him to our two mascots; Juan Pablo and Perezoso. They quickly became good friends!
New Friends
Since Mr. Davo’s last place to visit was with Mrs. Watanabe and the Apache Junction School in Arizona, we were a little worried that he might feel cold here in Connecticut. Luckily we have a mini Sonoran desert right here in our classroom to keep him warm and remind him of his friends in Arizona:
Our saguaro cactus
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Then he read with some of us during our Daily 5 time…
Reading a Good-Fit book
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We introduced him to our mural of Clifford…
Meeting Clifford
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That was enough for our first day – we didn’t want to overwhelm him! We will give him a full tour of the school this week.
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Information about Tasmanian devils:
Tasmanian Devil
If you’d like to learn more about these amazing animals, here are a few links:
Tasmanian Devil Information for Kids
Tasmanian Devils – Creature Features
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What interesting facts did you learn about Tasmanian devils?
What should we make sure Mr. Davo sees while he is here?
We have a brand new blog by one of our classmates! Taylor has started a blog called As Told By Taylor: My story, my life, my words…
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Here is a a line from her welcome post, explaining what her blog will be about, “I’m so excited to tell all of you about my life and exactly the way I see the world from my point of view.”
She has a fantastic post about her part in an upcoming performance of The Sound of Music.
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