Merry, Merry!

Our days before the holiday break were filled with Christmas songs, ugly sweaters, great holiday stories, holidays around the world, jammies, treats, and friends.  We had a breakout box, art lessons, read ins, and so much more.  It's hard to blog about each activity, so here is just a few photos to enjoy.  Hope you all have a fantastic break!  See you in 2021!

Nutcracker Program

Totally 80s!

These decade days rock!  80's day was radical!  Righteous even! Music was rocking all day.  Of course, if you know me at all, it wasn't just a dress up day....we used the theme to experience rigorous academics in a tubular way!

With so much neon, I got out the black lights.  We started the day with a multiplication word/equation find.  Highlighter really pops in the black light.  The students bopped all morning, working on academics with 80's music. 

We also used the highlighters to analyze the organization of some informational text. We read an article about the 80s and used our new NEON READ ON highlighters and glasses to read closely and highlight the different sections in different colors.  For example, the main idea was in green.  The key start ideas or facts were in yellow.  We used pink for any elaborations, evidence, or examples that supported the key start ideas.  With the text in bright color coded highlights the students could really see a pattern to the article.  We used the same pattern to outline our own informational writing during writing workshop.

For math, we warmed up with the best number of the 80s. Students had to think of as many equations as they could for 867-5309.  They could use addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division.

We played two different glow games during math.  Both games were designed to work on multiplication fluency. First we played tic-tac-glow.  Students had to give an answer to a flash card and then take a place on our huge glowing tic-tac-toe board.  It was face paced and fun!

The second game was glow spin.  The students spun a glow in the dark top. They had to solve as many multiplication facts as they could before the top stopped.  The students tallied how many spins it took to solve the page of problems. We will continue to work on memorizing facts.  This game put some time urgency to solving problems but in a fun way.

Hour of Code

We are up for this challenge again this year.  We love to code.  Click start to begin writing your lines of code.

START

We celebrated "Computer Science Education Week."  The week was declared to bring computer science into schools and promote student interest in coding.  The Magic of Threes wrote over 2000 lines of code.  I see some future programmers in this class.  Click here to be linked to the challenges we worked on in class.  The students had to solve puzzles to program characters through mazes.  While they thought they were "playing" they were programming with loops, conditionals, and algorithms.  Students used logic and problem solving skills.  The challenges also tested their persistence and "I can" attitude.  As the students moved up in levels, the students received video tutorials by gifted computer scientists in the field like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. 

Multiply It!

 

These third graders have been working hard at building a foundation for multiplication and developing strategies for multiplication.  This is one of our most critical standards for third grade.  We will continue to work hard on both multiplication and division in the New Year.

At school, we started with word problems with both multiplication and division situations.  We have drawn out multiplication with circles and stars.  We built arrays and even did an array hunt around the classroom.  One of my favorite activities has been building a multiplication chart out of arrays.



If you follow us closely on SeeSaw, you will notice so many posts deal with multiplication.  Another strategy we have been hitting hard is skip counting.  This would be great to practice at home, in the car, any old time!  It will really help with multiplication fluency.  At school, the students have enjoyed the skip counting mazes.  I did put them in your child's backpack to continue over the break.

We will continue to work hard all of January to fluently multiply and divide.  We will be practicing with apps, card games, one minute timers, the computer, dice, and even fidget spinners! Memorizing math facts is an important foundational piece to future math success.  As with any memorization piece, it won't stick without continued maintenance.   We will continue to practice at school but at home practice is essential to sustain fluency.  There are some fabulous apps for quick practice.  Check out Quick Math, Math Bingo, and Math Cards by clicking on the app names.  You may remember these apps from when we were working on addition and subtraction fact fluency.  These apps grow with you.  Also, if you have a computer at home with Flash, here are some fun interactive games to play.  Click on the links.

Meteor Multiplication

Fruit Splat Multiplication

Bleepy's Gifts Multiplication

Croc Doc Division

Demolition Division

Grinch Day

Here at Eagle Cliffs we LOVE Grinch Day!  This year was filled with the best Who-dress and kind hearts.  For Grinch Day 2020, the Magic of Threes celebrated with big smiles. We read the book on the whiteboard and made a Grinch drawing.  We also used the song to study similes and metaphors.  The Grinch song is packed full of them! Then we brainstormed adjectives and wrote our own similes.  Check out your child's post on SeeSaw.  Happy Grinch-mas!

Candy Land Magic

It was the week before testing and what better way to review than... a Candy Land transformed classroom.  Oh my lollipop!  The students definitely had visions of sugar plums, but also worked with standards like vocabulary context clues, making inferences, creative writing, reading fluency, multiplication, and more!

One of the students' favorite Candy Land reading activities was a fluency exercise.  With a fluency partner, students were given different nonfiction cards.  The students read the cards three times with their partners focusing on accuracy, rate, and expression.  When they were done with fluency readings, the students had to answer a question from the text.  Then, the partners traded cards for a new piece of text.

In math, the students also had several activities in the theme.  Students played Candy Land with a multiplication twist.  Each color on the game board represented a count by, for instance, a blue card meant count by 3's.  Before students could move their gingerbread man they had to skip count by that number.  Students got a lot of practice and they thought they were playing a game!  We also had candy themed word problems.  

Check out SeeSaw for some more of our Candy Land posts! Also, on Wednesday, your child will bring home a folder with more of their Candy Land work.  The students really got into the creative writing.  They were begging for more time to write!  We wrote a descriptive piece about their favorite sweet treat.  They also made up stories about Gingerbread Men and being lost in Candy Land.  You'll have to check out their imaginative ideas!