Array City

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 Threes 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 their 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, Mr. Wilke 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!  The students were put in teams of four or five.  They had 24 slices of text.  Each group member made a selection.  They read the text to their team and had to sort the pieces into Persuade, Inform, or Entertain pie tins.  They worked so hard.  Each team member had to agree on 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 that team got to play a round of Pie Face!  Oh my goodness!  Author's purpose has never been so fun...or sticky!

50s 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!

 

Kindergarten Buddies

This year, we are pairing up with Mrs. Highfill's class to be buddy classrooms.  We will do all sorts of learning activities with our kinder friends.  We have met twice now. We did some getting to know you activities and made the cutest little hand turkeys. The third graders really enjoy being the older students in buddy scenario.  They are doing a great job being peer role models.

Main Idea

In reading and writing we have been focusing on identifying the main idea and supporting details.  We started with mystery bags of details.  Students worked in small groups.  They took different items out of a canvas bag.  For example, in one bag there was a movie, popcorn, tv remote, and candy.  The group recorded the details and created a main idea sentence.  In the detail bag above the main idea could have been something like: We love to relax and enjoy movie night at home.  Students got lots of hands on practice with this concept....main idea and details.



Check out SeeSaw for more ways we are practicing with main idea and details.  The students love our main idea song (also on SeeSaw).  The November at home reading challenge has students writing an IVF sentence after reading a chapter each night.  This practice is helping students identify the main idea of each chapter.  The more ways we practice, the better we become.