50th Day Mystery

The 50th Day of school started out in style.  The students and teachers looked like cool cats!  The room looked like a diner and the music was rock'in!  We even danced the hand jive!

Then, our fifty's day took a mysterious turn.  Mrs. Hornby came in with a mystery.  Someone had stolen another boy's microphone.  She had six suspects and a description of each.  We had to be her detectives to solve this 50th day mystery. 

We solved reading and math puzzles to get clues.  Then, we used the clues with the descriptions to help us solve the mystery.  Students had to read passages and infer, solve math word problems, practice rounding, and balance equations.  It is a good thing Mrs. Hornby asked these third graders to solve this mystery because they have the skills!

We did it!  These super sleuths cracked the case and delivered their findings to Mrs. Hornby.  She gave the sleuths a "50 days Smarter" award and some bubble gum.  We also celebrated with root beer floats and more hand jive!

Van Gogh's Sunflowers

What do you get when Mrs. Jensen is the guest teacher?  A beautiful art lesson and a wonderful story  about Vincent Van Gogh.  Mrs. Jensen shared a great book called Camille's Sunflowers.  The book describes Vincent Van Gogh's time in a French village where he becomes friends with a family that lives next door to him.  It was during this period of his life that Van Gogh painted his famous sunflowers.  We used the text to analyze narratives.  After reading, we not only sequenced the plot events, we also sorted the events by important and less important.

Then, the students' favorite part!  They drew and painted their own sunflowers.  The students used oil pastels and a watercolor wash to create these amazing works of art.

Halloween Zombie Breakout

We arrived at school full of Halloween excitement!  Some of our wonderful parents made delicious treat packs for each of the students.  However, somehow the zombies got to them and locked them all up!  The students had to work in groups to solve a series of clues.  The clues had the students practicing our math standards like rounding and multi-digit addition and subtraction with regrouping.  When the students solved a clue, they got one of the combinations for the lock box.

The students worked hard to unlock their treats!  It took a lot of team work and trial and error.....and time!  Students worked hard all day to solve this breakout!  These third graders' perseverance was no match for the candy stealing zombies.

Kindergarten Buddies

This year, we are pairing up with Ms. Cousin's class to be buddy classrooms.  We will do all sorts of learning activities with our kinder friends.  For our first activity together, we designed a pumpkin patch marble maze.  The third graders really enjoyed being the older students in buddy scenario for this first S.T.E.M. activity (science, technology, engineering, mathematics).

Around the World

Since the beginning of the year, we have been researching our way across the seven continents.  I did not intend for this inquiry project to span over three months but our third grade researchers have so many questions and are learning a ton with each continent.  Through our research and writing we are covering many reading and writing standards, as well as, science and social studies objectives.  For example, we have been studying the patterns of world climate in science.

Let's back up a bit, we started with a question board.  The students generated questions they wanted to answer about each continent.  Then, we categorized the questions.  Students had questions about the location and size of the continents.  For example, what hemispheres is the continent in?  They also wanted to know about famous landmarks and landforms.  I think this may be the students' favorite research topic. Many of the students have quite a list of places they would like to visit.  Better get those passports ready! Of course, animal and plant life was another interesting category.  Last, the students had questions about languages, holidays, and food which we put under the category of culture.

In order to find the answers to all our research questions, we had to dive into nonfiction text.  We've learned about nonfiction text features and how they help us navigate our way through text to find what we need.  One activity we did was called a book pass.  Students passed books around the circle searching for features.  They really know their stuff.  We also played Headbands with the features of nonfiction text.  It was such an entertaining way to learn the features of nonfiction text.

We have charts with notes hung all around the classroom.  Each chart we started together, but the students quickly took over going on their own fact finding missions.  When they found new information about the continent, they used a post-it to share their new knowledge.  Students research each continent using an EPIC collection of books, our school's online encyclopedia subscription, and books from the library.  After they had time to research and take notes, each student filled out a information book about the continent.  We keep all the continent books in our "suitcase."  We will have so much information when this journey is complete.