Thank you to those of you who have donated items for E-slot and science. With your help, we are able to provide enriching learning experiences. We have already used many donated items, especially during enrichment time. Our first rotations for eslot were a huge success! Students have been working hard in their interest group for the past four Fridays. The kiddos in Caine's Arcade created cardboard box arcade type games. On Friday, the kindergarten students visited the arcade and played all the games. They even received prizes that students brought from home or that the kiddos in the arts and crafts eslot group made. Many of the kindergarten students and 3rd graders who created arcade games made donations to the Imagination Foundation. What a great way to collaborate and raise money for the Imagination Foundaton! Our other E-slot groups also had lots of fun. The cooking group made pancakes, cookies, and grilled cheese sandwiches while learning various cooking skills. Our magic group was busy perfecting magic tricks and performing them for their group while our computer group practiced lots of coding. Also, we had some wonderful clay creations made by our clay group. The next few weeks during enrichment we will be working on STEAM challenges/activities within our own classes. More interest groups will be offered after that. Coming Up Week of October 3-7 Writing: We are still plugging along with our personal narratives, which we should be finishing in the next few days. We'll learn about ways to end a personal narrative and more strategies for revising. Lastly, we'll edit our pieces and then write our final draft. Reading: We'll continue to read fiction books with strong characters and pay attention to what the character says, thinks, and does in order to infer their traits. Also, as we read, we'll form theories about characters and think about what motivates them to act the way they do and how they change throughout a story. At the end of the week, we'll take a district assessment on our fiction unit. The test will consist of a short passage with a few multiple choice questions and some short answer responses. These tests will not be sent home per district policy, but I'll have it available for you to view during conferences. Math: The kiddos are becoming much more proficient when adding and subtracting. We have learned addition/subtraction strategies and tools/models that mathematicians use to compute. We will continue to practice and review on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, students will take their first district common assessment which will include data analysis. Like the reading test, this will not be sent home. Science: Last week we learned how matter can change states. This week our focus will be on mixtures. We'll linvestigate how mixtures can be separated using various tools. Social studies: More citizenship! We'll read a Scholastic News about the upcoming election and continue to learn about the rights and responsibilities of citizens. Upcoming Events Monday, October 10: Parent Conferences-Don't forget to sign up if you haven't already. Thursday, October 13: Family Fitness Night at 6:00 PBL Launch! We officially launched our PBL, (project based learning) this week. I posted environmental photos to tell a story in Google Classroom. Students "read" the story and recorded what they noticed, wondered, and inferred after each section. They were really thinking deeply and everyone was totally engaged! I was impressed with the inferences and connections the kiddos were making. Ask your child to show you their work in Google Classroom. Noticing + wondering + inferring + PBL= Discovering idea Investigating States of Matter We partnered up with Mrs. Lipe's class to observe changes in matter using a digital thermometer. The investigation started with a pot of ice and the thermometer which was connected to the computer. Then we added heat using a burner and noticed the change in temperature very quickly. The thermometer readings and time intervals could be seen on the Smartboard. Notice in the photo below how much the temperature changed! Our ice melted and then we noticed steam rising from the pot. Everyone had a chance to observe the pot closely and under the document camera. We even felt the steam and the heat! All of our scientist had lots to record in their notebooks as the states of matter changed. Place Value Building As a way to review place value, (and to have a little fun on a Friday afternoon), we created place value buildings. The challenge was to build an impressive building in 5 minutes using hundred, ten, and unit place value blocks. At the end of 5 minutes, partners added up their hundreds, tens, and ones and wrote the number in standard form. Photos from Caine's Arcade Enrichment Group
We invited our kindergarten buddy classes to come try out our arcade games. Everyone really enjoyed seeing their arcade in use and passes out prizes. Mrs. Hanlon helped collect monetary donations to the Imagination Foundation. What a fun way to celebrate our innovative cardboard box designs and raise money for a worthy cause. Thanks to those of you who had kiddos in our group help with prizes and materials for the boxes.
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Writing: We'll continue to work on our personal narratives. On Monday, students will create a time line to plan their selected story before writing their first draft. We'll learn about good leads hook the reader and satisfying endings. Also, we'll learn some techniques to use when revising. Hopefully, we will be able to finish revising and editing by the end of the week. Reading: This week we'll focus on fiction elements and character analysis. As we read, we will notice what the characters think, say, and do in order to infer character traits. We'll start reading partnerships so that each student has a consistent partner to discuss their reading with. Partners will be choosing the same book to read while we study a character. Math: Our focus will be on subtraction strategies including counting back or adding on using a number line, using base 10 blocks, and finding a constant difference. Science: We wrapped up our first matter unit on Friday. We'll take the unit test on Monday and then move on to our next matter unit involving changing states of matter and mixtures. We'll investigate how mixtures can be separated using various tools. Social Studies: We'll learn about digital citizenship and loyalty. Upcoming Events Wednesday, September 28th: Early Release @ 12:00 Highlights from September 19-23Place Value Game We played a game using cards and place value mats. The goal of the game is to make either the largest or smallest 6 digit number using the cards drawn during the game. The hard part...not moving the number once you have determined which place to put it in. It's a fun game that everyone enjoyed! Learning About Rounding with Number Lines and Cars Designing Foil Boats for the Boat Challenge Testing Our Boats for the Boat Challenge! How many pennies can your boat hold before sinking? Exploring Magnetism Making Inferences Creating Constitution Booklets
Coming up this week... Writing: We'll continue to learn qualities for writing personal narratives including adding sensory details, showing instead of telling, and word choice. Later in the week students will choose one of their seed ideas, (small moment story), and begin a draft that they will revise and edit. Reading: This week we will focus on visualizing when reading and making inferences. To help students visualize, I'll read The Seashore Book, by Charlotte Zolotow, without showing the pictures and students will draw their visualization. Then I'll reread, asking students to make a movie in their mind and add sensory images that aren't in the text. Later in the week, we'll begin making inferences by using just photos and wordless books to gain an understanding of how readers use clues and background knowledge to make an inference. Math: Our focus this week will be on using estimating and rounding when solving addition problems. Also, we'll learn addition strategies such as using strip diagrams, expanded form, and modeling with base 10 blocks. Science: More matter this week! Students will design a foil boat that will hold the most pennies, test sink or float ability of an orange with and without the peel, and read about matter as we continue to investigate properties of matter. We'll have our first unit test on Friday. Social Studies: This week is Celebrate Freedom week so we will learn about the constitution. Upcoming Events October 10th-Conference Day Highlights from September 12-16Investigating Matter with Sink & Float and Balloon POP Investigating Properties of Matter Thinking About Seed Ideas! After learning how writers choose seed ideas, (small moments) to write about instead of giant watermelon topics like a trip to Virginia, we enjoyed eating a slice of watermelon. What a great way to help the kiddos remember to think about seed ideas! International Dot Day We read The Dot by Peter Reynolds and then participated in International Dot Day. Everyone had a great time creating art with all kinds of dots. Lots of choices were available including splatter painting dots, using different tools with paint to make dots, coffee filter dots, gluing dots, and even creating dot art using Google Drawings. There were a few students that joined in Twister game as another option. Using Base 10 Blocks to Learn about Place Value Measuring and Recording Temperature
Coming up this week... Writing: Everyone has lots of ideas for writing in their notebooks now, and we have started writing some or our stories. This week, we'll learn how to zoom in on a small moment, or seed idea, and how to "explode the moment" by adding details and writing by showing, not telling. Reading: We'll learn and practice more reading strategies this week including asking questions, making predictions, and visualization. I'll read one of my favorite books called, The Stranger by Chris Van Allsburg, to promote questioning and predicting. This is also a great book to encourage deeper thinking. Math: Most of the kiddos did well on our data analysis assessment. We will be going over any problems that students had difficulty with together so that they can understand the problem and correct mistakes. I'll work with students individually that need additional support with correcting/redoing problems. This week we will begin our 2nd unit on addition, subtraction, and place value up to 9,999. Our focus the first few days will be on understanding place value concepts including ordering and comparing numbers, composing & decomposing numbers, representing numbers on a number line, and describing the relationships found in our base 10 number system. Science: We have some catching up to do in science since we met with our buddies during science on Thursday and we had our eslot, (enrichment), during science on Friday due to the assembly. So, this week, we'll continue to learn about physical properties of matter and states of matter through investigations. Social Studies: We'll learn about what it means to be a good citizen Upcoming Events Thursday, September 15th: Third Grade Parent Night Highlights from Sept. 6-9Learning about Scientists After watching short videos about two famous scientists, students read scientist trading cards and recorded their new learning. Collecting Data and Working with Dot Plots and Graphs We had a great time collecting data! Students measured how far they could jump for a class dot plot, created frequency tables and dot plots in their notebook with data from their Dice Roll and Penny Decade activities, and read bar graphs with partners. Kinder Buddies We met our buddies for the first time on Thursday. First we helped our buddies complete a big buddy page and then helped them log on to the laptops. Eslot Activities
Friday afternoon third graders met with their eslot groups to continue their interest area activities. Below are a few pictures from the Caine's Arcade group and the magic group. Kiddos in the Caine's Arcade group are creating games/activities out of boxes to participate in the Global Box Challenge on Sept. 30th. We will be inviting kindergarten classes to play our games. Other groups have been cooking, painting, sculpting with clay, and coding. These groups were formed the second week of school based on interest surveys the kiddos completed. What we are learning this week... Writing: Last week we finished our Friend Wanted Ads. Students created their ads using a a flyer template on readwritethink.org, (click here to go to the website). They turned out great. This week we'll begin our regular writing workshop by generating ideas for personal narratives. During this unit, we'll craft stories from our lives Reading: In reading, we'll continue to learn strategies to monitor and increase comprehenision. As we read fiction stories, we'll make meaningful connections and sequence main events of the plot. Math: We'll continue learning about data analysis as we interpret data on pictographs, bar graphs, and dot plots. On Thursday we will have a test which we will review for on Wednesday. Science: This week we'll begin our unit on matter. We'll conduct investigations to discover how matter can be classified and measured by its physical properties. Social Studies: Elsa England is launching character education using the acronym LEOPARDS. Each letter represents a character trait. We are starting with L for loyalty this month during our social studies time. We'll also start our first unit on citizenship. Upcoming Events September 9th-Spirit Assembly September 9th-Grandparents lunch September 15th-Third Grade Parent Night Highlights from August 29-September 2We had a full week of learning during our second week, and I think everyone is getting used to our normal academic schedule. Also, we went to the library for our orientation and first checkout! The kiddos were excited to check out books and enjoyed playing a game of Kahoot on the ipads to reinforce library expectations. Each week we will have a 20 minute check out time on Wednesdays. Growth Mindset Challenge For this challenge, each table was given a piece of paper folded and cut with a flap that sticks up in an unusual way, (there was a trick to get the paper that way). Without picking up or even touching the paper, the groups had to work together to try to make a duplicate of the paper design. At first, everyone thought it would be easy, but once they cut some flaps, they realized it really was challenging. While they worked, I recorded some of their comments. "This is impossible." It can't be done." This is too hard." I don't know how to do this." After about 10 minutes none of the groups had figured out how create the same design. We discussed the comments I heard and I asked them if it was impossible. A few still said it was, but then I reminded them that I made the samples so it couldn't be impossible. The point of the lesson was to demonstrate a growth mindset vs. a fixed mindset. They realized it wasn't too hard or impossible. They just needed to know one little piece of information to be successful at the task. Having a growth mindset allows one to embrace challenges and mistakes. Collecting Data for a Dot Plot During math, we collected data on mini raisin boxes. Each student estimated how many raisins were in their box. They also had to think of an estimate that is too low and too high. They recorded all of their estimates on a number line. Then, we opened the boxes and counted the number of raisins. We were surprised that the range was from 24-35! Each student put their number on a sticky note and place them randomly on the board. Of course, it was hard to determine the data when it was all mixed up. So...students discovered that we could organize the data using a dot plot. They made a dot plot in their notebook and recorded the class data. Such an engaging lesson full of math! After learning about science careers, we explored tools scientists use. Each group discussed what the tools could be used for and how they could be used. Then students worked together to match vocabulary cards of science tools.
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November 2019
Mrs. Swyers3rd Grade Teacher |