Author Terri Farley Visits Beck!

On Tuesday, children's author Terri Farley visited Beck students!  Terri is the best-selling author of the Phantom Stallion series for young readers.  She graciously donated a copy of the first book in the series to EVERY 3rd grade student!!   Click here to visit her website.  

2nd and 3rd graders were treated to a special session in which Terri discussed her passion for wild horses and her most recent non-fiction book, Wild at Heart: Mustangs and the Young People Fighting to Save Them.  

During the session, Terri encouraged students to find their passion, and helped them to see that children have a special power to make a difference! 

Terri also ran a small group writer's workshop for 3rd- 5th grade students.  During this session, Terri discussed her writing process and idea development.   She challenged students in the session to use their senses to describe the world around them and write a story using sensory language.   Below are pictures of the workshop and some samples of student work from Beckett in Ms. Schemmel's class!  

Thank you to our Beck PTA for sponsoring these incredible experiences for young writers!! 

Amazing Area Mathematicians!

Welcome to a snippet in the learning life of third grade!  

     Mathematicians in Mr. Flank's class have been working on learning how to calculate area. As an extension to the learning the children created their own, "tiny homes" with a few parameters. The home must be more than 100 and less than 400 square feet. Students then were encouraged to add flooring and take steps to fashion a space worthy enough in which to live. What made this project exciting for many students was that they could use technology to enhance the presentation.  Enjoy! 

Example 1


Example 2


Example 3


Example 4


Each day your children taught and collaborated about their learning. We have been using Google classroom to enhance learning opportunities for our children.  Community and small group discussions have helped foster critical thinking and listening skills, as well as to help each child hold one another accountable for his/her learning. We have become a growth mindset classroom and understand learning takes time and that it is a process. Teaching is for all and learning is for all. Take a look.

Dart Frog Text Feature Challenge

We will create a non-fiction section over dart frogs.  
So that we can provide meaningful information to our readers.
I’ll know I have it when I can design appropriate text features for my part of the class book and justify how they enhance the meaning of the text.  

As readers and writers this week we worked on designing and publishing a non-Fiction class book about Dart Frogs. We were challenged to work together as a design team to create a section of our class book. Not only did we learn about how text features and text structures influence our reader's comprehension we learned a lot about working together as team to submit our section of the book that meets the publising expectations by a deadline. We have shared our work on Twitter and have received some great feedback. We have loved seeing how our work is being celebrated and shared. Our book will also be printed off and added to Beck Elementary's Class Book section in the library.

We are excited to share our published book with you and we hope you learn as much as we did about Dart Frogs.

Showcasing our ePortfolios

This week, Mrs. Sanders, our Instructional Technologist, visited to assist 3^rd graders in setting up their ePortfolios. An ePortfolio offers an authentic way for students to showcase their learning and growth throughout their academic career in Northwest, from 3rd grade all the way to 12th! In the future, their ePortfolio is potentially a resource they can use when applying for college or a job. Students are able to personalize their site as well as include exemplar work they have created here at school. It is a great place for students to share personal and academic achievements and involvements such as; awards, UIL, clubs, choir, etc. See what a few of our students have begun working on!

Noah's ePortfolio
Shashwat's ePortfolio
Sarah's ePortfolio
Ben's ePortfolio