The beginning of the a school year can be a bit stressful. New students, new challenges, and new little ones to love and nurture into intelligent citizens. One of the nice incentives I have this school year is having the prior knowledge of most of my students. Last year I was teaching second grade and had the opportunity to go back into 3rd grade, with some of my second graders and some I knew from the other second grade teachers. The benefit of being able to do that is that you know exactly what they were taught and what is new. That way when the students are trying to pull the "I didn't learn that" card you know that it is not true. : )
I was excited to begin this year with my smartiesfied classroom, a fresh start, and most importantly being part of a new adventure. We have started the first year of implementing the common core standards in 3rd grade. I was privileged enough to have the opportunity of doing that in second grade last year, but now I get to take all my ideas and take them to a new level in third grade.
As any new year the basics of a successful year is starting off the year with the procedures and routines. At times it seems boring and time consuming but in the long run it will all be worth it. Especially since the students will not have any excuses for doing certain things. To help with this process this year I have tried several new things that seem to work well so far, as we have just finished week two.
One: Successful Student Handbook
In my Successful Student Handbook students will be provided with the Task Analysis of how they are expected to listen, think, talk, and work. The students also have the steps on how to get materials in the classroom, the task analysis of our two classroom rules, and the school's vision and mission. We go over each page and we even practice how each of my expectations look.We also went through our school's mission and vision, changed some words around so that the students can understand it, then the students drew a picture of what the vision and mission is to them. This was a great activity to do with them. I loved it, they did too. Every time they see the vision and mission around in the school they always refer back to the handbook. The students are keeping the handbook in their desk, so that they can reference back to them whenever they are not being successful or need a reminder of how things work in my room. This is also great for new students, so they can review it, and gather important information we tend to review with them. (The handbook idea is an extension of a post I previously did but this time it has the cover with it. I am not adding my class procedures as teachers run their classroom's differently and the school's vision and mission is different. If you would like to see them please let me know. I will be glad to share).
You are able to get these free HERE
Two: Rules, Vision, Mission Everywhere
To go with my Smarties theme, I created posters where the rules, vision, and mission are on a smarties candy. I just love how it looks, and the students are constantly reminded about this information. They are able to see these in the classroom, and when they exit our class.
Three: Smarties Graph
To built upon our Smarties Pride in our classroom, I decided to do this smarties graph. My students just loved this activity, plus it allowed us to see all the different types of Smarties Candy and the different colors. I will not take credit for this activity since I had seen it somewhere online. I can't remember where to give them credit. I just took it a bit farther to include our 3rd grade standards. 
Each student received a Smarties Candy, some students had the same type of Smarties Candy and some had different ones. The students opened their candy and sorted the smarties into color categories. After they categorized the candy they created a graph (by following teacher instruction and using prior knowledge) to represent the different candy colors. Once they finished their graph we added the key and our title, How many Smartie candies of each color are in _____? and they glued the candy wrapping to represent their type of Smarties.
That wasn't all though, after they finished their graph they were to create three questions that they could answer using their graph, and on the back of the paper they wrote their answers.
This was a great way to built upon our class theme and name, not to mention a great way to do a mini lesson on pictographs. This will be a great building background for our future pictograph lesson.
I wish all of you a happy back to school week, month, and year. A quick funny story one of my students tole me. "Mrs. Grijalva I'm Allergic to Yelling." Let's just hope none of our students are allergic to learning.
