Awards Day

Van Winkle had our annual Awards Day this morning. Mrs. Johnson's class was well represented! Congratulations to all the students who received awards today! Mrs. Johnson is so proud of you all!

Dwinesha, Jendaya, and Jaylin received the Honor Roll Award for having honor roll all year long! Wow!

Dwinesha also received the Good Citizen Award for being such a help to Mrs. Johnson and her classmates. In addition, Dwinesha has the highest grade point average of all third graders in Language! Super job, Dwinesha!!

Sherrina received the Music Award from Mrs. Williams! Sing it girl!

This year has been great! Our class has been and will remain the best around! Mrs. Johnson reminds us of that daily! We must always act and perform like the best by trying our best and never giving up! We know that this work ethic will carry us through our next two years at Van Winkle.

What a year!!

MCT is OVER!!!!

How do we feel now that the MCT2 is over?

Take a look...


We worked extremely hard this week on the MCT2! We believed in ourselves, and our teachers did too! But, we must say we are SO glad it is OVER!!!

MCT Pep Rally

Today was Van Winkle's annual MCT Pep Rally. Each year, prior to state testing, Van Winkle celebrates our hard work and motivates our students to do their best on the test! This year each class made a banner for the parade, and each grade came up with a cheer to perform for the entire school. It was great fun!

Our sign outside our class

Look at all that hard work!

After several practice sessions, we were ready for the parade!

Alric, Jameel, Charles, and J'Darrien showing their MCT spirit!


Our class sign for the parade

Woo hoo! Zoom! Zoom! Watch us crank and watch us roll!!!

Doing our class cheer - the best one of the day!

Our class actually came up with the cheer for third grade! It was a huge success! We sang "Stanky Legg" to Mrs. Johnson, and she put new words to it:

If you're smart here, we'll be doing the MCT, doing the MCT, doing the MCT!
If you're smart here, we'll be doing the MCT, doing the MCT, doing the MCT!

If you're proficient or advanced, rub your hands across your head!

Take your time on the test, chick!

You can do it too!

Snap your fingers in the air, and shake your pencils too!

You can lean with it, and you can drop with it!

You can switch the other leg, and you can stop with it!

Now, get it! Get it! Get it! Get it!

Do the MCT2! Do the MCT2! Do the MCT2! Do the MCT2!

It was an exciting day! Now, we are ready to show the world what we know! Bring it on, MCT2!

Field Day Fun

Today we had our annual Field Day! It is always so much fun to spend a day outside playing and competing with other classes! We certainly deserve it after all the hard work we have done to get ready for the MCT2. Mrs. Johnson made us matching t-shirts, and we pulled out our "fruity accessories" from an earlier event. Miss Greenwell brought the girls ribbons for our sleeves, and Mrs. Johnson painted our faces. We were set!! Our class competed with Mrs. Jierski's class all day. Both classes did a great job! We cheered for the last people to finish no matter if they were winning or not. Mrs. Johnson was very proud of our good sportsmanship! Of course, we have tons of pictures from our fun day! Mrs. Johnson always has her camera handy! Enjoy! We did!

The class lined up for our first event

Mrs. Johnson even let Charles wear a clown wig!

Sherrina put her game face on!

Alric is moving fast in the Pool Ball Relay!

Jameel and Markeith are tied up for the three-legged race.

Shanora and Dwinesha struggling through it! They had tied the wrong feet together!

The hula hoop race was a new addition to field day, and we loved it!

Boys in the space jump

Girls in the space jump

J'Darrien and Mrs. Johnson take a rest

Arrion, Lyric, Alric, Markeith, and Ja'Von just finished the basketball shoot.

Sponge Relay - This was a very close race, but we pulled it off in the end!

Ja'Von jumping tires in the obstacle course. Mrs. Jierski and our class tied.

Lyric is trying to keep that egg on the spoon!

Our class can double as cheerleaders too!

Getting ready for the 5-in-1 space jump.

potato sack race

A worn out class after all the events!

We had so much fun! Thank you to all the teachers who helped put such a great day together for us!

Lights! Camera! Fashion Show!

Friday night was the night for our Van Winkle students to "strut their stuff!" We held our annual Van Winkle Fashion Show, and it was a huge success! All the students looked fantastic in their sporty, casual, or dressy attire. Special thanks to Mrs. Torrey and all the other teachers who helped to put this night together.

Jendaya modeling her basketball uniform

Selicia and Sherrina modeling their dressy attire

Jameel on the far right lookin' good!

Nareuna modeling casual wear

Lyric strutting down the walkway

Jaylin striking a pose in her casual wear

All of our students looked so cute in their regular clothes! Mrs. Johnson is used to seeing uniforms. This was a nice change. Great job class!

Here's the Scoop...Reading is Cool!

One of the great things about being a third grader is the opportunity to work with Junior League of Jackson. Each year, the Jr. League gives every student in our school free books multiple times throughout the year. They also work exclusively with us - third grade! Each classroom has two volunteers who read with some of our students twice a week. These ladies donate their time to help us learn to read more fluently, and they help instill a love of reading. We look forward to their visits each week! Thank you Junior League of Jackson for all you do to help our students!

As their time with us came to an end this year, they prepared a fun surprise! We had an ice cream sundae party Friday afternoon! It was so fun!

Some of the volunteers serving ice cream

We were so excited!

Charles and Alric are dying for some ice cream!

Yummy!

Mr. Graves even had some ice cream!

As if reading with us, giving us free books, and throwing an ice cream party was not enough...the ladies also brought gifts for all our teachers! Mrs. Johnson, Mrs. Taylor, Mrs. Hicks, and Mrs. Jierski were given beautiful pitchers and a bright dish towel. They were so happy!

The teachers with the chairperson of this Jr. League project, Mrs. Lisa.

Thank you, Junior League! Your service has proved to be effective in many ways. Third grade reading test scores are evidence of your hard work. Our teachers love to see us reading on our own initiative also! You helped to encourage our love of reading! We wish you could work with fourth grade next year so we can read with you again!

Easter Egg Hunt

Thursday was our last day before Easter break. Mrs. Johnson and Miss Greenwell had a fun day planned for us. First, we worked in centers ALL morning. We love centers! Then, for math, we worked on adding and subtracting four-digit numbers. But, our teachers planned a fun way to do this. We worked some problems on eggs. When we finished our work, we decorated our Easter eggs. It was fun!

Tyrell working on decorating his egg

Antasia, Brindarius, and Charles showing off their eggs

Kadajah, Selicia, Jaylin, and Lyric look like they had fun!

After lunch, we had our own Easter egg hunt! We brought plastic eggs and candy to school. We all helped to fill the eggs. Then, Miss Greenwell and Mrs. Johnson hid the eggs while we went to counseling. It was SO much fun! We were screaming and laughing the whole time. Mrs. Johnson said that it took them 40 minutes to hide all the eggs, and it only took us 4 minutes to find them! We moved so fast, Mrs. Johnson only got a couple of pictures.

Selicia even brought her own Easter basket.

Sharnecia found an egg in the tree.

Thursday was lots of fun! We hope everyone has a great Easter! See ya Tuesday!

How To Make A Windsock

In preparation for the MCT2 coming up in May, our class has been practicing with various reading passages. Today, our passage was titled "How To Make A Windsock." It gave directions to making windsocks. Mrs. Johnson pointed out the text structure of the passage: steps in a process, or simple procedure. Simple means "easy." A procedure is "something you do." So, Mrs. Johnson told us Simple Procedure is "something you do that is easy." It is easy because the passage gave us step by step instructions to make our own windsock. In order to make reading more fun, Mrs. Johnson let us follow the instructions to make our own windsock. After all the steps, there was a paragraph that told how windsocks work. After reading that, Mrs. Johnson let us go outside in our courtyard and fly our windsocks. It was so much fun! It was a perfect day because it was so windy!


Maybe after this fun activity, we will remember what simple procedure is.

No Bones About It...Science is Fun!

This week, in science, we learned about the skeletal system. We learned, among many others, that our head is actually called a cranium, our thigh is actually a femur, and our fingers and toes are called phalanges. Phalanges is Mrs. Johnson's favorite! She just likes to say the word! For the finale of the unit, we made Pasta Skeletons. We talked about the real names of the bones as we added the pasta. How much fun!

Sharnecia is placing her cranium on her skeleton.

Look at Charles' finished skeleton!

Dwinesha admiring her work!

He should have a name, don't you think?