It has been a week full of excitement and waiting – apple picking, haunted hayrides, pumpkin carving, costume planning and finally trick-or-treating. In and around all that excitement at home, we explored the aspects of strong writing and begun informational writing to share our insect research. Most of the children posted writing and art on their blogs. We’ve been multiplying with larger amounts and we’ve been learning about habitats. There’s lot going on in 3E.

Multiplying and the Distributive Property

The children have been working to solve their problems with efficiency and accuracy. We’ve been working to organize our problem solving steps and follow a natural sequence working from the problem through to the solution. The children are doing a great job with this.

I wish I had saved some of the problems the children did from the beginning of the year to show them how far they have come. In September they were drawing out each set and writing a repeated addition sentence to solve problems like this:

Logan got a book full of sticker moustaches.  There were eight pages in the book.  Each page had five stickers on it.  How many sticker moustaches were in the book at the start?

This week the children have begun using the distributive property to break amounts apart to solve for partial products that they then add together. Here’s a sample of a problem from this week:

Elias read for 23 minutes a day for 5 days. How many minutes did he read altogether? Over the weekend he read for 45 minutes each day. How many minutes did he read over the weekend? How many minutes did he read altogether in the week?

The class is becoming more confident when using multiplication. Many of them are surprised by how quick the work becomes – they are still checking, “do I need to write 20 + 20 +… or can I just write 20 x 5?” The class is being asked to use the strategy that is most efficient AND that leads them to accurately solving the problem.

Knowing Ourselves and Identifying Habits that Lead to Success

– Social Emotional Learning

This week we finished graphing our eight different intelligences defined in Multiple Intelligence (MI) theory. After thinking about how we are each uniquely smart, we began to consider how we best learn as well. We’ve been exploring different parts of school learning to establish a clear understanding of our different capabilities at the start of third grade.   We have been talking about how our habits and choices help us achieve goals. We have noticed from our shared readings that most people don’t do things easily the first time. Learning something new doesn’t usually happen in a snap or the blink of an eye. People work at things for a long time – years and years even. Snowflake Bentley didn’t get one picture of a snowflake in his first season of trying. We have noticed successful people try different ways and have help. Successful people have time, support and opportunity in order to achieve their goals.  We notice that, just like the people in the biographies we have been sharing, we are most successful when we are confident and optimistic, patient and understanding, hardworking and persistent, flexible, and finally creative and resilient. Over the next week or two we are hoping to complete our goal-setting work and collect samples of our reading, writing and math work to share with our families in student-led conferences.  One of the most exciting things we are learning is of our ability to grow and change our intelligence. We can do anything we want to do with effort, determination, confidence and time.

Team Estimation – Building Relationships

This week we had to work to solve two problems with Mr. Caron. First we had to use estimation skills along with cooperation to complete a bridge-like structure. The posts were in the ground and we had to figure out which lengths of wood fit between then. We had to complete that part of the challenge in a short enough time span so that we could find a way to help the whole class cross the bridge to the other side. We had to work quickly, but safely. We had to work patiently and cooperatively. We had to work logically and communicate our ideas so that all the parts of the challenge would be done. The class seemed to feel a real sense of accomplishment when they found a solution for each part of this challenge.

 

 

 

 

Bits and Pieces –

• We are enjoying Quinny and Hopper. It is realistic fiction with strong third grade characters that are helping us consider what it means to be a friend, what it means to treat others with respect and how important it is to talk things out.
• We are creating our insect displays, learning how to use print shop and preparing all our pieces to teach others about insects.
• We completed our first set of math fact checks. We tried all four operations. Division was hard!

 

How Writing Grows

This week we’ve spent time exploring how writing grows. We’ve identified qualities of good writing, whether narrative, informational, or persuasive, and are looking at our own writing to identify and understand what we do well now. From this we are going to set goals for ourselves. It is interesting to see how the children think about writing as both creative and informative. It is fun and challenging.

How We Are Smart

The children used the information from their multiple intelligences surveys to create both a bar graph and a pie chart of how they are smart. We read The Junkyard Wonders by Patricia Polacco to add to our discussion. It gave us a clear example of how understanding and intelligence grows. We are not fixed if we choose not to be. By thinking about what we do and becoming more aware of our choices and attitude toward ourselves we can do most anything we decide to. We are trying to reduce comments like, “I’m not very good at this” or “I can’t do this.” We are trying to add the word “yet” to those statements and come up with a plan to change that.

 

 

 

 

Artist-Writers’ Workshop is a time for that reflection. Twice a week we work at creating a picture while thinking about our choices and our reaction to the work. They write out this process too.  It is a time where if at first we don’t succeed, we can try again. We can make a picture over, using what we like from the first attempt and trying to change what we don’t in the next. Sometimes it works out great, other times not so much. It’s the thought and challenge that are the main goals.

Multiplication Arrays

We spent time this week making sure the class understands what an array is and how this way of understanding multiplication can help us understand area. An array is always a rectangle read as height by base for the multiplication sentences. We worked to see how arrays show themselves on a 10×10 multiplication table. At first we looked at the empty chart. We knew there were 100 empty squares and when hearing that we were responsible for knowing that many facts for both multiplication and division it seemed a lot! But then we began filling the chart in. We filled in the ones. We realized we knew 19 facts there. We filled in the fives and added 17 more facts. Next we filled in the tens and that was 15 more facts. In this way we’ve discovered that we already know half of the chart and we haven’t added the twos and some of the early threes and fours. It is a good feeling to know that breaking this large goal into small steps can make it manageable – it can even feel like a fun challenge to work on a bit at a time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Bits and Pieces –

• We completed our third chapter read aloud, The Trumpet of the Swan. The children each created a feather showing a favorite scene from the story. We’ll put these together on Louise’s wings so he can “fly” across our classroom.
• We are reading Quinny and Hooper now. We’ve just met the main characters and are trying to decide how they are going to fit together and how the plot will unfold.
• We are continuing to practice the clock climber cursive letter set.
• We are planning to create a classroom museum as a way to share our insect research information. We are brainstorming ways to create eye-catching and informative displays.  Be on the look out for an invitation sharing the date and time.
• How is homework going for your family? Some of the children are coming in saying they didn’t have time. I hope that their work takes them no more than 30 to 40 minutes each day. Please let me know if this is not the case for your child.

Again – zip, zing – and it’s Friday. We’ve begun learning our first set of cursive letters. We had a challenge with Mr. Caron that involved cooperation, support and risk-taking to develop trust. We are graphing “how we are smart” and beginning to set fall learning goals.

How Are You Smart – S.E.L. – self awareness

After reading seven+ picture book biographies and autobiographies we know we can find evidence in people’s stories of how they show their intelligences. They show up in their interests, activities and interactions with others too. We’ve also learned that how we are smart changes and grows. If we want to develop an intelligence more all we have to do is practice and try. Over time we all grow and change. You may want to ask your child what his or her four top intelligences are and why they feel that is true. Over the next few days we’ll be making pie charts and bar graphs to show how we are smart.

Trust Fall Challenge – S.E.L. – social awareness and responsible decision-making

This week’s challenge was a “challenge by choice.” One by one students climbed onto the table, stood with their backs to the zipper of classmates are behind them, listened and waited. “Ready?” they asked. “Ready,” the class responded. “Falling.” “Fall away.” And with arms crossed over their chests the students fall back into their classmates arm. A smile of surprise, relief, and pride showed on the faller’s face at the accomplishment. It takes a lot of courage to fall into your classmates’ arms. It take courage every day to try something new, offer a possible answer in the group or choose a new kind of book or problem or picture. You may want to ask your child what small risks s/he is taking each day to stretch and grow his or her own learning. The more the children are aware of the choice they make in growing their own learning, the more their learning will grow.

Multiplication – Division

This week we continued to explore both the set and array models of multiplication. More and more of the children are seeing the relationship between skip counting, repeated addition and multiplication. When you look at your child’s work this week you’re likely to see this growing understanding in their daily problem solving work. I can also see it in the classroom in the number of children who are choosing math activities like Circles and Stars and Tiguous so they’ll have more opportunities to practice multiplication.

We also spent time with fact families to explore the idea of inverse operations. The children are developing a mental picture of how multiplication and division are opposites. One being sets put together in a whole – likely building a regular geometric shape, and the other starting with the whole and breaking it up into groups of equal size. Some children “see” it easily and others remain uncertain. If natural opportunities arise in building, gardening, or crafting to point out how these operations help you figure area or repeated groupings, please do. If children come back into the classroom and share their stories we’ll all have a richer sense of math all around us.

Bits and Pieces –

• We are continuing insect research with paper and online resources. It is exciting to use laptops in the classroom and to learn how to manage our time to make sure our research is completed and then put together to be shared with others. Will we create a class magazine? Will we open a class museum? Will me post on our blogs? It will be fun to choose and plan what we will do to share what we’ve learned with others.
• We are nearing the end of The Trumpet of the Swan. In the book both main characters, Louis the Swan and Sam Beaver, are thinking about what will happen for them when they are grown. Louis overcomes his inability to speak. Sam discovers how he might follow his love of nature and animals to become a keeper at a zoo. We’ve also been thinking about our hopes and dreams for what we might do in the distant “Someday” so now we’ll… You may want to ask your child about that paper in their folders this week.
• We are working to describe ourselves as readers, writers, and problem solvers. It is not easy to find words for those actions. Each child is working to write a personal learning profile to set an anchor of sorts so she/he can more easily notice changes and growth.
• Thanks to the families who’ve had a chance to read your child’s blog and to share it with others. It is super motivation to open up a blog and read comments from family and friends. Many of the children were able to complete a post this week. This was their first personal choice post. There was a great variety of writing and illustrating. Fun!

 

This week passed in a flash! We’ve had lots of different reading, writing, and math opportunities integrated with art and technology. This is our third week of Artist-Writers workshop and our second week of blogging. The questions that come with all new things are beginning to lessen as the class becomes more confident in what they are doing. There are more and more times of quiet focus as the learning happens in our room. The class is learning more about the strategies readers use to understand. They are learning note-taking strategies to guide research both from print and digital texts. We are thinking about “how we are smart” as we learning about the Theory of Multiple Intelligence and growth mindset.

Multiple Intelligence Theory – Knowing Ourselves

After reading about many different people we feel we have a clearer sense of what the different intelligences are and how they looks. We read about Snowflake Bentley, Michael Jordan, Patricia Polacco, Alan Rabinowitz, Henri Rousseau and Jane Goodall. As we read about their lives we tried to connect anecdotes in the stories with the different ways we are smart.   We discovered it is more challenging to recognize some of the intelligences because they are ways of thinking. They don’t easily show on the outside. As we’ve been reading, we’ve been thinking about our interests and strengths. We completed a questionnaire that might help us see how we are smart in all eight ways. We are looking forward to discovering more about ourselves and all the ways we are smart.

Keeping a Record of What We Read

This week we began recording what we are reading. There is a group of children who take a new pile of pictures books each day. There is another group of children who have settled into chapter books series and are reading from 1 to 2 to 3… And there is another group who read a little of this and a little of that, not quite yet able to settle in. Over time the record will help children see who they are as readers and will help us be better able to make a plan encouraging them to choose wisely and to think about which strategies will help them understand more.

We also began to think about how reading grows. We learn new words and fancy vocabulary. We become more fluent and more accurate as we read. Understanding grows too. We are learning about “activating schema” (using what we know and background knowledge) so we are able to understand more by making connections.

Next week each student will be making a video of “a just right” book and set goals for how they would like to grow as a 3rd grade reader.

Numbers of the Week Routine

We have begun a math notebook as a way to explore different aspects of number work throughout the week, along with our unit of study, which for us happens to be multiplication. This week our numbers were 17 for the students in 3E and 46 for the 3rd Graders at NHS. We wrote and recorded these amounts in different ways. We found the sum and the difference using these amounts. We generated number patterns and found ways the amounts could be represented through coins.

We continue to learn more about multiplication. Each week the children are showing their growing confidence with this new operation. They are more often using it when solving problems rather than drawing out and counting. I can see their understanding of multiplicative reasoning growing as I review their daily work. “Do I have to write out 5+5+5? I just know 5×3=15.” We are ready to create a multiplication chart as a class to identify how many facts we already know and to discover the ones we must focus on so we are able to know they all automatically.

Bits and Pieces –

• We are nearing the part in The Trumpet of the Swan where Louis goes to the Philadelphia Zoo. We’ll use that connection to launch a second research project about an animal from the Franklin Park Zoo as we explore habitats around the world.
• In science we are learning about insects and microhabitats. We are learning how to research on the computer and note taking. We will be creating an insect museum as a way to share our research with you.
• This week the class worked to create multiplication riddles following the format shared in the book, Each Orange Had Eight Slices. Most of these got posted on the children’s individual blogs this week. Thank you to so many for checking out your child’s blog and for sharing them with family and friends from away. Children were so excited to find a comment from their parents, grandparents or friends. It gives the children a real authentic purpose for writing when they know they have a wider audience for their work.

It seems impossible that we’ve already completed our first month together, but we have. This week we explored how feelings affect actions and how actions affect learning. We’re developing the idea of personal weather reports to describe our inner moods and therefore our readiness for learning. We’ve continued learning about multiplication in both the set and array model. We’re beginning our first research project. We set up our individual blogs. We’re doing lots. It is fun to be together.

The River Runner Challenge – Deepening Relationships

On Tuesday we joined Mr. Caron outside on the nature trail for a group learning experience. The class was able to challenge themselves in a physical way: could they cross over sections of swaying logs, pass around a tree and continue to the other end? Once that challenge was met, a cooperative element was added: could we divide the class in half and begin from either side, meeting in the middle, passing and reaching the opposite end? Of course all this had to happen without anyone falling off. That meant lots of talking, patience and encouragement. Once that challenge was met, an element of trust was added: could we cross the logs with eyes closed? And finally could we cross from either end in a blind challenge? The children were encouraged to open their eyes whenever they needed to feel safe and sure.

As an observer, I watched children try something they weren’t sure they could do. I saw them choose to give it a try. I saw them trust one another. I saw and heard great care for each other. One student took the role of coach, waiting until the end to cross himself, to support his classmates when they reached the tree so no one would blindly run into the tree and get hurt. There were encouragements, compliments and kind words spoken throughout the challenge. There was pride in work well done and happiness over the accomplishments of the whole group.   It took focus, determination and teamwork to meet all three levels of the challenge. 3E is definitely coming together as a kind and strong learning community.

Understanding Multiplication and Arrays

We began the year learning about multiplication. We have been exploring it through repeated addition. Most of the children understand how multiplication represents repeated grouping. When they select their problems each day, they are more independently able to understand the math story, represent it with an equation and solve it efficiently.

This week we learned about the commutative property – turn around facts, as they call them. If one student has six plates with two cookies each and another student has two plates with six cookies each, they both have the same amount of cookies and that means if we know the multiples of 2 we also know some of the multiples of six. We are trying to help the children develop strategies for knowing these facts, just as they learned strategies for addition and subtraction facts last year.

Blogging

This week Mrs. Wyman came into our classroom and helped us set up our personal blogs. We chose background colors, and title colors. We added a cluster map so each student can see how many people have viewed his or her site, along with where they were when they viewed it. We hope you will begin reading and commenting on our blogs (3enews.edublogs.org). It is pretty exciting and we are looking forward to building this part of our writing curriculum.

Our first post is a copy of our paper blogs. For that each student chose something important to him or her – an interest, a passion, a favorite memory or activity. Each student wrote about it and created an illustration to go with it. We used these to practice our commenting skills with post-its. We know a comment is positive and specific, makes a connection, shares information and asks a question to get a little conversation going.

Next we are looking forward to creating book commercials and math riddles. If you find time to read the blogs, please leave comments. The kids will be thrilled.

Bits and Pieces –

• We are working to complete our James and the Giant Peach project. Our peach is put together and up. Our figures are ready to be placed on the peach as well. The last part is making origami seagulls and surrounding the peach with our favorite parts.
• We began reading The Trumpet of the Swan. Louis has just begun school in Montana while his family is at the Red Rock Lake Wildlife refuge.
• We have chosen insects to research and decided upon the areas we will attempt to discover about our insects. This is a look at a small being in a micro-habitat.
• We are beginning to explore elaboration strategies with writing. We are learning to develop our stories through detail, action, dialogue and inner feelings.
• We are developing our abilities to use questioning as a way to deepen our understanding when we read.