It's been a nice start to our school year. Routines are becoming established. We are learning more about our classmates. We are getting used to recess BEFORE lunch! And we are almost always putting our names at the top of our papers!
Here are 4 HIGHLIGHTS of the happenings in Room 102.
STEM challenges - Each Friday in September we did a STEM challenge. STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. Students worked in pairs and in groups each week learning about HOW to think critically and work with others. Our challenges included building the tallest free standing structure using only given materials (which included 20 pieces of spaghetti, string, tape, and a marshmallow to support).
They had to find the best way to support a house in a region that floods. What shape support-structure would be best? Cylinder? Triangular? Square?
Students worked in teams to design and build the tallest tower of given cups in an allotted time limit.
They also had to learn how to be engaged observers as they tested how many drops of water could fit on the head of a penny. We used magnifying glasses and did observations of our given coin.
While we won't have a chance to do these activities every Friday, we will continue to keep them a part of our year in Grade 3.
Word Work - We use a program called Words Their Way and we have kicked off the year with all third graders and lessons called SPELLING IS IMPORTANT! The BIG IDEAS of our lessons were as follows:
Why is spelling important?
What strategies can I use to be a better speller?
What tools and resources in my classroom can help me check my work?
What should I do if I’m struggling to spell a word correctly?
Are there some words that I have to spell correctly NO MATTER WHAT?
Our lessons had interactive google slides that tested students on spelling strategies.
We are looking to SET THE TONE for good spelling this year with these BIG IDEAS and applying strategies to help us as writers!
Now we have been looking at HOMOPHONES for the past 2 weeks! Those pesky words that sound the same BUT are spelled differently and have different meanings can sure be confusing. We are learning how to look at words and use good spelling strategies.
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| Wait...which one do I use? |
Activities for WORD STUDY include word sorts, finding long and short vowel sounds, and breaking words into syllables. We have drawn sketches of our homophones to tell them apart. We have also had to use the new words in application as write sentences or choose the correct word in a given sentence.
Social Studies
We started the year learning about the Native American tribes that inhabited Massachusetts in the 1600s. There were many tribes including the Mohegan, Narragansett, Wampanoag, and Massachusett. We took a closer look at the Wampanoag tribe as we will be learning even more about their rich culture and history when we travel to Plimoth Plantation on October 15th.
We are now looking at the Pilgrims who were the first to Europeans to settle in Massachusetts. We created a timeline and learned about WHY these people would pack up their belongings and leave their homes and sail across the ocean for a new life.
We started with a CHART to share what we THOUGHT we KNEW and what we WANTED TO LEARN. Then we started to read about the pilgrims.
Today we packed our TRUNKS and tried to decide just WHAT we would bring with us if we were only allowed to bring a few things with us?
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| Decisions, decisions! |
MATH
Multiplication is awesome! We have looked at the idea of the multiplication sign (X) saying... groups of, rows of, and jumps of.
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Five groups of 3 is:
5 X 3 =15
and 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 =15 |
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| An array helps us look at rows and columns of objects. |
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| Number lines show jumps of certain numbers. |
Students are learning their facts as we practice all these ways of looking at multiplication. We will be writing and solving our own multiplication and division word problems later this week as well!
Check back again soon and follow us on Twitter each day #180daysofawesome
