Welcome, My Fabulous Room 303 Crew!

Hello! I am so glad you clicked by! You probably learned that I am your 3rd grade teacher and wanted to sneak a peek into the upcoming school year. I'm glad you did. I know this one will be fabulous.

My name is Mrs. Daniel and this is my 7th year at Oakland. I started at Oakland as a student-teacher in a 5K classroom. After graduation, I was a substitute in various classrooms and did a long-term substitute position in 5K. I taught 2nd grade for half a school year before moving back to kindergarten. Last year, I made the big move to 3rd grade, and I have to say, it was the greatest thing in the world! I absolutely love 3rd graders and all the curriculum we cover. It is so much fun to learn our state's history, write creatively, challenge our brains to learn multiplication and division, and conduct exciting experiments in science. You have so much to look forward to!

I live in the Boiling Springs area with my husband, Tyler and my two precious girls, Emary Kate and Ellie. Emary Kate will be in 1st grade at OES and she loves coming to school with me each day. Ellie will be going into 3K at her pre-school. We also have a huge dog named Champ. He is just the right amount of crazy that our house can hold. If you've seen the movie Marley and Me, then that about sums up our Champ. We are very involved in our church and love spending time with family and friends. In my spare time I enjoy reading, writing, and exercising. I think all of these are good for the brain.

When you come for Meet the Teacher, I will give you a little brochure that will provide more information on how we spend our days in Room 303. I also invite you to scroll through this blog to see what we did in class last year. The end of the year video has lots of pictures that show very happy faces all throughout the year. Learning really is a lot of fun!

I am so thrilled for you to join me on our voyage to a land of Wondrous Learning and Adventure.


Here are a few pictures of what my family has been up to this summer.



We enjoyed two trips to the beach.


We showed our love for South Carolina wearing Blue and White.


We spent a lot of time reading and writing.



We went to the library for books and entertainment.


We spent a lot of time by the pool!

What did you do this summer? I would love for you to email me a picture and a brief description. That would make for a great blog post to get to know your friends before the first day of school!

End of the Year Video

It was a fantastic year! I will let the video do the rest of the talking! :)

Fun Day!

School-Wide Cookout

Gem Mining

Book Clubs

For the past week, we have had 4 book clubs going in our classroom. This has been an amazing experience for the children. They have loved every minute! All the books have a unique storyline with one commonality, helping them change their perspective and make them more compassionate about a topic.

King Cotton

Room 303 has hopped in a time machine and is exploring what life was like from the perspective of two children, one a plantation owner's daughter and a slave.

We started our lesson by identifying the meaning of 'perspective' which means how a character thinks or feels about a particular topic. Next, the students had the opportunity to observe a cotton boll and record their observations. Many students described the cotton as soft and fluffy. After the students recorded their observations, we read the first 2 pages of Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt. We learned that Clara was a child slave in the cotton field.

The students learned more about slaves in the cotton fields in our stations.

The students analyzed pictures at "Table Top Twitter".

They read diary entries from Sarah, the daughter of a plantation owner....

and a conversation between two slaves.

The students listened to recordings of voices of real slaves during the time of the Civil War on Ed Puzzle.

After each students has visited all the stations, we will observe the cotton again to see if they feel something different this time.

We know reading can not only make us smarter, but also more compassionate on topics that we do not know a lot about.

Stay tuned to read if these stations changed how we think and feel about a topic.