Leap Over Read Over

 

One of the best parts of the read-a-thon was our Leap Over Read Over.  On Saturday, February 29th all the third graders were invited to my house.  We had great snacks, great books, and great company.  During our time together the kids read 100 minutes!  Wow!  Of course we didn't read for the 100 minutes straight.  On leap day, a game of leap frog is a must!  

Blast of With Reading

One of my favorite times of year....the Read-A-Thon!  This year was bigger than ever.  All Eagle Cliffs students participated, kindergarten to 5th grade.  Our readers are out of this world!

As defending champions, we were NOT going to let that trophy slip away.  The Magic of Threes worked so hard.  What an amazing team of incredible readers! The students were so motivated. We were encouraged to read with mini trophies, space junk treats, dress up days, and more!

At the end of the read-a-thon, our third grade class read over 20,000  minutes in ten days! Five students read over a thousand minutes!  And.....EVERY.SINGLE.STUDENT...read the goal of 300 minutes or more.  Hard to beat 100% participation!  Best of all, I see true improvement in the students' reading.  The extra work has propelled them even further with meeting academic goals. I was so proud!  The school had great participation and our students were shining stars! And.... drum roll, please.... the trophy returns!  Not only did our third grade have 100% of the students read 300 minutes, the ENTIRE third grade class made the goal of 300 minutes in 10 days.  We will have a pizza party soon to celebrate our read-a-thon victory!  Thanks again for your focus, commitment, and support of our reading!

Fraction Action

Over the last month, we have been working with fractions.  Third graders have several objectives to learn and master.  Students worked with picture models, number lines, fraction bars, and even rulers to gain a deeper understanding of fractions.  As always, these curious minds are like sponges.  We are learning so much!

We did this really great digital breakout on fractions. Not all students were able to finish but, boy, were they engaged and working hard!  The breakout not only works on our fraction standards, but it also has the students collaborating and using problem solving skills. If you and your child want to try the breakout at home, click on the link below.  You'll need to be logged into a Google account to solve the digital puzzles.  Let me know if you give it a go!

Escape the Galaxy

Of course, while working on fractions, we need to keep our multiplication and division skills strong.  Here is a similar digital breakout that works on multiplication and division.  Again, we worked on the breakout a couple of days in class, but not all students were able to get all the puzzles solved.  This would be a great way to keep the learning growing at home.

Escape the Submarine

Forces of Flight

We love Project Lead the Way! Our last module was about the forces of flight.  There were five activities that we worked our way through.  Each activity was a project based, hands on scenario that had the students using science, technology, engineering, and mathematics to learn about flight.



We started by learning about balanced and unbalanced forces.  Ask your child if they know the four forces of flight: lift, weight, thrust, and drag. Through the study of flight, the students were introduced to Newton's laws of motion. We used an app to design different gliders, then we created gliders from our blueprints.  Last, we tested our gliders from our own binder launch pad.

In our final project of the flight module, students will create another glider that would carry weight or cargo.  The scenario was that there was a community in Nebraska that needed some relief supplies.  The gliders could get there faster than trucks on the roads.  Students have to design a glider that would carry as much cargo as possible to Nebraska.  Nebraska is 120 cm from the launch site.  Students will get three flight trials.  They are to record at least one trial and reflect in the caption.  Please check your child's SeeSaw in the next couple weeks to see their flight trail video. 

Happy Heart Day

I couldn't think of a better group to spend this Valentines Day with!  We celebrated with yummy treats, the cutest decorated boxes, sweet cards, and beautiful friendships.  We even had a dependent and independent clause candy bar hunt.  It's just not Valentines without complex sentences.

The students posted about their creative Valentine box designs on SeeSaw.  Please check out our learning journals with the SeeSaw family app.  Email me if you need the access code to see your child's digital portfolio.

Are You Ready For Some Football?

In honor of the upcoming SuperBowl, we football-ed it up in the classroom!  Our main learning focus was putting together our secret measurement playbook.  In our playbook we took notes on measuring length, perimeter, capacity, weight, and time. We also had activities to practice each of these important measuring skills. The students worked very hard but I don't think they realized it...we were having too much fun!

With all this measuring work going on....I promise that I didn't ignore our English language arts objectives.  We worked on building informational paragraphs.  After assigning referee signals to different punctuation marks, we edited and read sentences with our signals.  We also played a game on our mini football fields where students could earn yards by identifying a sentence as simple, compound, or complex. Touchdown!

100 Days Smarter

We celebrated 100 days of working hard in third grade.  In years past, we worked on numbers up to one hundred. However, third graders...we needed a challenge. Guess what else goes in a 10 by 10 grid: a multiplication chart!  We went on a Hershey kiss hunt.  I hid 100 kisses in our classroom.  Each piece of chocolate had a product from the multiplication chart.  The students had a hundred different products to find and place correctly on the chart.  They worked really hard and smiled the whole time.

By the end of third grade, students should have all the one digit by one digit multiplication facts memorized. This is not an easy task and one that requires continual maintenance.  You've heard, "If you don't use it, you'll lose it." This certainly applies to memorizing multiplication facts.

This is an easy standard to practice at home.  There are some wonderful apps to use for practice. Three of the students' favorites are Teach Me Math Facts, Math Bingo, and Big Math Cards.  If you have a computer at home check out these links.  

Meteor Multiplication

Fruit Splat Multiplication

Bleepy's Gifts Multiplication

Croc Doc Division

Demolition Division