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!
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.
Gung Hay Fat Choy! Today our classroom was transformed into the "House of Learn-ING." We used
the Chinese New Year to enhance our learnING.
Our morning work was learning to write the numbers 1-10 in Chinese
characters. Then the students completed a dragon dot to dot written with Chinese numbers. Students even opened the app Sum Stacker and used Chinese numbers to solve addition puzzles.
We had our kinder buddies over. We read our little friends a book about Chinese New Year and then helped them make lanterns for luck.
One of the favorite activities of the day was called "New Beginnings." With this activity students had to pick a word card out of a Chinese takeout box...with chopsticks of course!
Then they read the sentence on the card. There was a bold word in the sentence. Students added a prefix to the base word in the sentence to make it true. For example, "pieces cut before" would be "precut." The students worked so hard sorting and building new words with prefixes.
The holiday gave us many opportunities to read folktales and nonfiction text surrounding lunar new year. It was a terrific day in the House of Learn-ING. Students earned a coin for luck and happiness at the end of the day. Best to all in this year of the rat.
Right, left, right, left.....
Third Grade Boot Camp, here we go.
Come on y'all get in the flow.
We had the best three days reviewing skills...boot camp style. Prepare
for a long post because we have been busy. We started the day with
Enlistment. Students learned the commands for the day and reported for
duty. They were put into companies: Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, and Foxtrot. Students tried to earn points for their squad by showing the
Army values of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor,
integrity, and courage.
Basic training, of course, started with basic skills. First, we began
with identifying complete and incomplete sentences in solider sentence
drop. Students had to find subjects and predicates then sort the
sentences.We practiced this skill as a class, with our platoons, and
in individual assignments.
Next, we worked on proper capitalization. We had a cadence to help us
remember what proper nouns to capitalize. Next more PRACTICE, PRACTICE,
PRACTICE.
Between every grammar drill, we had some physical drills. The cadets
had stations for army crawls, tire runs, sit ups, push ups, and even
trampoline jumping. The students were exhausted by morning recess, in
fact, they didn't want to go out because they were too tired. Ha!
So, it went...grammar, exercise, drill, drill, learn, sweat and smile.
The next grammar skill: sentence types. We reviewed declarative,
interrogative, exclamatory, and imperative statements. We
also practiced putting on proper punctuation.
Then, we reviewed simple, compound, and complex sentences. Call in the
coordinating and subordinating conjunctions! Last, we learned about
choosing between there, their, and they're. These recruits worked so
hard.
Math went much of the same way. Skill drills followed by LOADS of
physical activity. Third graders had to really flex their multiplication
and division muscles. We also played some strategy games. I love games
that have the students practice their basic facts while they are
problem solving and strategizing to win the game.
One of my favorite activities for math and language was the plank wars. Students had to hold a plank and answer a multiplication fact or define a prefix/suffix or root word. The soldier that answered last had to do a push up. The engagement was top notch! I'm pretty sure they all went home tired!
These students were learning and moving ALL. DAY. LONG.
