Welcoming Parents Into Your Room

I don't know about all of you, but I know that building relationships with my students is my number one priority! I LOVE working with my students and making sure that they know how much I appreciate each of them!  Along with students, we get another set of people though, their parents!

Setting up a time to meet parents, before school starts, or after it has begun is very important.  These parents are entrusting their children into your hands and they want to know who you are.  I have always had a night where the parents have been invited to my classroom so they can meet me, learn a little bit more about our school year, and then check out our classroom as well.

Right when parents walk in they will see this sign on the board! I LOVE that it matches our class decor and it makes sure that they are in the correct location.  My team teacher and I do welcome night together, so that way parents can get to know both of us at the same time. They enjoy it because then they are able to learn about how we are going to transition their children. While we have them there we make sure to go over our year plan, big projects we are going to work on, and the curriculum we teach.  We make sure that the parents understand what our expectations are, and how we are going to help their children transition to become more independent.

After you're done going over everything you want to tell parents, I love having them go out to our photo booth and take their pictures.  Then I sedt it to a one hour photo so I could pick them up on my way home and give the pictures to their children on the first day of school! I have special signs that parents could use and cards that parents could write to go with their picture as well.  This was a great way to show the parents that they are an important part of our community, and that we wanted to help build the relationships between all of us.

After parents use the photo booth the next day I have the students use the photo booth! I save all of these pictures for the end of the year when I am able to give to parents so they can see how their children grew over the year!

You can find the sign that we leave out next to all of our other welcome papers here. I put this out with a box of mints so that the parents have a snack while we are talking. What are some things that you do when you meet parents?  Do you have a meet the parent night before school starts or after?

How to Set Up Classroom Routines & Procedures

One of the biggest things that can make or break a classroom are the routines and procedures.  I love a routine and students to do.  But many students don't know exactly what you expect from them unless you show them.

What exactly are routines & procedures?  Routines are the things your students will do over and over again.  Procedures are the steps your students need to take in order to accomplish a routine.

3rd Grade Websites I Can't Live Without

Hello darlings!  Amy here from That Teaching Spark!  If you are like me, you use some semblance of technology in your classroom.  You might be 1:1 with each student having a device or you may have access to a few devices for your entire class!

I'm lucky enough to have a class set of chrome carts to share with my grade level of five teachers.  We rotate the chrome books around to each other.  I also have four devices that I use for math rotations every day!  I have to admit, I would be lost without them!

There are so many amazing websites and resources out there!  I asked all of you in the All About 3rd Grade Facebook Group, to share the websites you use on a daily basis.  I have reviews those websites and have included the ones most often recommended in this All About 3rd Grade Symbaloo. A Symbaloo is simply a bookmarking site.  You can copy and paste this link on your classroom website, Google Classroom, or other learning platform for your students. Then students can click the icon to take them to the recommended page.
https://www.symbaloo.com/mix/allabout3rdgrade



Most websites that I included are free or at least allow for a free version with less bells and whistles.

Here are 3 of My Favs

1.  Epic 

Epic is perfect for sharing books on your projector. It has over hundreds of popular books!  They have some books read aloud but I really like it for the nonfiction and collections that it offers.  You can even create quizzes for your students. Watch this video for a little overview. 

2.  Prodigy Play Math Prep
My kiddos use Prodigy everyday in math rotations.  I can assign them any standard I want and it will create questions for them.  This is what students see. They create little avatar wizards and then battle through lands that they unlock.  They even earn pets that can have powers!  They unlock and earn power ups by answering question correctly.  You can assign the skills or have the game do it for you!

In this video, I explain how to assign test prep, but it is the same directions for other assignments. 

3. Go Formative

This is a new website for me!  I am super excited to try it next year!

• create online assessments, classwork or homework 
• connects seamlessly with Google Classroom
• ANY GRADE, ANY SUBJECT, ANY DEVICE
• create a class & track student data
• students can type, draw or upload images
• get LIVE results & give instant feedback to your students
• very easy to use
• FREE & PAPERLESS for both teachers and students

Check out the video for a sneak peek on how it works!

Join us in the All About 3rd Grade Facebook Group to learn more amazing tips like this!