It's Christmas time in Array City!  The students made these lovely winter city scenes in art and we added some math content by making and labeling arrays with the window patterns.

 

After students made their arrays, it was time to label with math content.  The third graders had to write the fact family for the array represented.  We even got into a math discussion about perfect squares and square roots.

The students are working hard on learning multiplication and division.  Learning how to multiply/divide and memorizing the basic facts is a huge third grade objective.  We are working hard at building the foundation.  Then, we will spend the next couple months on strategies and fact fluency.  This is a great standard to practice at home.  Multiplication flash cards make a great gift.  Wink, wink!  And, check out this multiplication table puzzle on Amazon!  Ho, ho, ho!  Here is a list of online games to play:

Monster Multiplication

Multiplication Blocks

Multiplication Memory

Clear It

Multiplication Mine

Magic of 3s Bakery

The day before Thanksgiving break was the perfect day for mixing up the learning.  Our classroom was transformed into the Magic of 3s Bakery.  When the chefs arrived, it was time to cook up the days objectives.  What is a thesaurus's favorite breakfast?  Synonym rolls, of course ! We started by putting on chef hats and coats.  Then, we read a recipe for synonym rolls.

First, the students had to sort synonym pairs in baking teams.  Then, each student picked a word on a blank synonym roll.  The students had to use the thesaurus to come up with several words to go on the bun.  They had to navigate their way through the thesaurus using guide words.  The chefs really did some excellent work.  We celebrated their successes with tasty cinnamon rolls.  Thank you to the Grahams for the delicious treat. 

The afternoon brought more bakery learning; however, this time the focus was on author's purpose.  The chefs learned the ingredients that help us determine whether the author wrote a piece to Persuade, Inform, or Entertain....PIE!  We had 24 slices of text.  One student would make a selection. They read the text to the class and had to sort the pieces into Persuade, Inform, or Entertain pie tins.  They worked so hard.  We had great discussions of the author's purpose for each piece of text.  Students had to justify their selections.

And....why were the students so engaged?  Because every six text pieces that the group sorted correctly meant they earned something. At six, the students got a fork. Then for 12, they earned a plate and napkin.  After 18 cards, a piece of pie.  And, at 24 a la mode....ice cream.  Author's purpose has never been so delicious!

Last our bakery got a bunch of orders for a variety of pies.  The orders were put in a graph.  The students analyzed the data and solved several math problems related to the graph.  The students were adding, subtracting, and really practicing their multiplication facts for three.  These chefs are pretty special.  Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

50 Days Smarter

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 and the twist!

We looked at books, articles, and photographs from the decade.  We did a lot of comparing and contrasting then and now.  We also learned some 50s vocabulary and used context clues to put the words in sentences.  During math, we did some graphing and analyzing data.  

Since the 50th day was a half day, it flew by. The next day, we continued to celebrate being 50 days smarter with a mystery.  Mrs. Hornby came in with a really interesting case.  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 evidence.  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.  The students certainly earned "50 days Smarter" award and some bubble gum.  We also celebrated with root beer float popsicles and more hand jive!

Halloween Learning

 Students entered a dark classroom on Halloween.  The "Undertaker" music played in the background and candles flickered under two headstones at the front of the room.  Sadly, we had a couple words come to an untimely end in our writing.  The two words have died from extreme over use.  Said is dead and fun is done. We said our good-byes and tried to think of what to do next.  The students were able to brainstorm tons of words to use instead!

Our writing is really going to be filled with great word choice in the future.  After we brainstormed as a class, the students added the dead word synonyms to their writing journals.  We also played a game called spin a quotation.  Students had to spin for one of our said synonyms and then for a character.  Last, they made up a quotation and put in proper punctuation.  They worked so hard.

One of our fabulous parents made the cutest "make-a-monster" kits for every child. However, during lunch we had a Zombie take-over and our awesome kits were locked up.  The students had to solve all sorts of rounding and multi digit addition and subtraction problems to find out the combination to the lock box. 

      

 Just in time, the students were able to break out! Phew! The last activity of the day dealt with making a monster, but we didn't use our new kits.  We used our knowledge from our science unit on genetics.  We looked at a fictional phenotype of two monsters.  Then, we were given the genotype of three traits: fur color, teeth shape, and eye placement.  The students took the genotypes of the parents monsters and used a Punnet square to figure out the possible genotypes of their offspring.  Finally, the students picked a possible genotype for the traits and then illustrated the phenotype. So smart!  Check out your child's SeeSaw journal to see their excellent work.

The best part of Halloween was the kids! It was a blast to dress up for Halloween this year.  The costumes were terrific.  Here are just a few.  Happy Halloween.