Day 2- BIG PLANS! Big plans, I say!

I flippin' love this book!

As it turns out, my students loved it too! It's all about a boy, who seems to be a bit of a trouble maker, who sets out into the world to accomplish his big plans. Nothing is going to stand in his way!

We in 3rd grade have big plans as well. After reading this book we realized that the boy was really just a kid with a dream, and dreams have a way of coming true.... if you know what to do with them.

So, this year I am looking to start a new segment on this blog. Last year our special "thing" was Celebrity Story Saturday. This year we are going to have "Big Plans for the Weekend". We want to interview people who have accomplished their Big Plans! We might not be able to do it every weekend, but it's a fabulous goal to have!

To get started, we made a list of occupations that we would like to be a part of our Big Plan in life. The words in orange are what we want to be when we grow up (I chose actress, preferably on Broadway), the blue words are the occupations we think are cool, but don't necessarily want to become.

I do have some connections to some of these occupations, but others might be a little more difficult. For example, I have a sister who is an editor at a publishing house in Nashville, but I don't personally know any Olympians.
My soldiers and I discussed different ways of communicating with everyone: face to face in the classroom (we love visitors!), through letters (like to the President), possibly through Skype (maybe with my sister in Nashville), we are open to ideas! I'd be willing to travel with my camera if necessary!

But now we need questions to ask our victims...er...participants. To make everything fair, we came up with a list that we will ask everyone. I am proud of how well my soldiers did with this assignment! Their questions were very insightful, and only needed a few modifications.

To be honest, my kids wanted to ask about money first. I had to explain that here in the south, such things were not openly discussed and we had to disguise it in a more polite way. (see question #7) Bless their hearts. :)

Here are the anchor charts we created for math:

 Looking at what we know about addition and subtraction. We looked at Fact Families, had a turn-and-talk session, and we shared our findings when we looked at some equations.

Yes, my art skills leave much to be desired. At any rate, my students know what I expect when we have class discussions.

Our writing activity came right out of my students' heads. We were walking back from recess and one of my soldiers asked, "Mrs. Delk, can we squiggle write today?" To which the rest of my kids said, "Yeah! Squiggle write!"

Who could argue with that? We each created a squiggle, traded papers with a partner, created a picture out of the squiggle, then wrote a description of the picture. And boy did they work hard!

Here are some examples of their work:

My favorite- she asks: To be continued?

There were a few snags during the day, but in the end I'm glad to see how much we accomplished. We earned 6 compliments in the hallway from other teachers, and 6 kids were able to finish their homework at school, so no homework for them! 

Tomorrow is another day! I'm aiming for no snags at all!