There’s a lot going on in 3E. We’re learning about food chain and food webs, making our zoo habitats and working to complete our informational paragraphs. We’re planning to set up a new “art gallery” featuring our animals so you’ll have a preview of what you’ll be seeing as you enter our zoo. We’re reading and writing and doing science and math projects most days. We’re also working very hard to behave in thoughtful ways to support learning for everyone.

SEL – Self-Awareness and Responsible Decision Making

We’ve gathered together our reflections and set learning goals for the year. We’ve set goals as a class, and the children have set their own. They have an idea about what they would like to achieve as readers, writers and mathematicians. They know what their strengths are and what their challenges are. Each child has chosen work to show who they are as beginning 3rd grade learners.

It is challenging to write about thinking and learning. Some of their reflections and goals will make you smile. They are beginning to realize that they are in charge of what they accomplish. They are growing each day and working to positively impact our learning community.

Pushes and Pulls All Around

This week we’ve continued learning about invisible forces – pushes and pulls – and how engineers use what they know about lines of force to create and build. We explored pushes and pulls by creating “Hopper Poppers.” We learned how to launch them and then tried to think of ways to modify them to change or increase their lift. Next, we learned about bridges and how they are built. We learned about pillars and arches. We learned about suspension bridges and about trusses. We learned some about the story of how The Golden Gate was designed. Later, we used our information to build a bridge with two sheets of paper. At first, “that’s impossible” was heard throughout the room, but then we discovered how folding (making trusses) makes the paper stronger. We learned how arches change the lines of force by pushing up. Our strongest designs used pillar to support the span of the bridge. It was fun to see how the groups worked and persevered. Our next challenges involve learning about friction and gravity.

Hands-on science is fun. You may notice that your child is coming home with unfinished papers related to these topics. At this point in our study the class is quick to make and build, to do and create. Planning and recording are low on the priority scale at this point and that’s fine. When you talk to your child about these projects you can hear what they are learning and thinking and discovering. We can tell their curiosity is growing as well as they understanding and that’s what science is all about – developing a sense of wonder and asking, “what if…”

Rounding Numbers and Learning More About Problem Solving

This week we learned about rounding up and down. We are comfortable rounding to the nearest 10. We are learning how this process extends toward rounding to the nearest 100 and 1,000. Larger amounts are challenging for the children to think about and organize. They can easily picture how tens group into hundreds. Beyond that is a challenge, but they are working to feel more secure about the rules of mathematics – 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 round up; 4, 3, 2, 1 round down whether ones, tens or hundreds.

We’ve also been working to solve problems as efficiently as possible. You’ll notice changes back and forth between adding and multiplying. We need to practice different fact sets. In class we’re working to bring automaticity to 2’s and 5’s and we’re exploring the power of 10.

Bits and Pieces –

We all participated in the Trust Fall Challenge with Mr. Caron. It was scary and exciting. Even though we have a very talkative class and one that jokes when it might be nice to be serious, we all realized we can count on each other. That’s nice.

We began our fourth chapter read-aloud, School Days According to Humphrey. We are looking forward to what happens in Room 26.

We are looking forward to our conferences and sharing our work with you.

We are also looking forward to setting up our zoo. We’ve been creating our habitats and writing about our animals. We’ve explored a variety of leads so you’ll be encouraged to stop by and read our information posted with our exhibit.

 

Exploring Invisible Forces

What a week! Even with so many starts and stops, we’ve quite a list of accomplishments. We completed our paper airplane competition – ask your child about the difference between a hard, fast push to launch the planes and a slow, gentle push. Ask your child if he or she has an idea about what shape makes a paper airplane go straight and fast. Ask your child if he or she has ideas of the forces that make an airplane go once it leaves a hand. We know about the push of thrust and the pull of gravity. We know the air provides lift if the wings are just right… We are going to continue our exploration of Invisible Forces over the next few weeks and then we will have another go at folding planes to go straight and fast. I wonder what we’ll discover.

Writing Letters of Gratitude

We spent some time writing letters to soldiers for the 500 letters for the 50th day of school. The class took time to thank our service men and women for their time and effort to keep each of our families and us safe. We are grateful to be living in a country with so much. The class expressed its appreciation of the risks taken to grant us freedom and safety. Our class was excited to be part of this project. We look forward to writing more letters to service men and women in the future. It felt good to take a moment to think of the many things we have to be grateful for.

Habitats and Food Webs

We are continuing to research and write about our zoo animals. We are getting ready to create our “zoo exhibits.” As we learn more about habitats and ecosystems we are thinking more about the interconnectedness of all creatures in our world. We first wondered what would happen if there were no more mosquitos. Some said it would be a good thing, while others were not so sure. Once we’ve explored the idea of food chains and food webs more, we’ll go back to that question – perhaps mosquitos have an important place after all.

Self-Awareness – Learning to Set Goals

We are putting together our work samples and reflections for our student led conferences. We are thinking about what we are doing now as readers, writers and mathematicians. From that starting point, we are thinking about what we hope to be able to do and what we’d like to accomplish throughout this 3rd grade year. It seems amazing that a third of it is nearly over!

Our week has been full of research, multiplication, small group challenges and whole class challenges. We also had the opportunity to meet Greg Trine, author of the Melvin Beederman, Jo Schmo and Willy Maykit series. It was really fun to meet an author that most of the children knew through his books. He shared how he came to writing and how many years of writing and rewriting and rewriting again it took (12) before he had a story published in a magazine. It took six more years after that before he had a story long enough to become a book and then a series. Mr. Trine drew for us, held an evil laugh contest and had members of the audience act out a super hero story as he told it to us. Later on some in our class had the opportunity to meet in the library for lunch with the author. They learned about his upcoming books – a new series with a dog and a cat. We’ll have to look to see when that will be published.

S.E.L. – Self-Awareness

We added Self-Awareness and its three “I can” statements to our Social Emotional Learning chart. We are growing our understanding of how learning about ourselves can help us achieve more, while also creating a more peaceful learning environment for everyone. We shared books and tried to discover how feelings affect behavior and the choices we’re making. We are exploring our strengths and challenges and connecting this back to the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. Additionally, we are learning how a positive outlook helps us meet challenges. We learned to add “yet” to statements when are not working out. “I don’t get it…yet.” “I can’t do this…yet.” One little word changes everything because it encourages us to see failures and mistakes as opportunities to learn.

At the end of last week during our discussion about Responsible Decision Making and Self-Management the class decided they would like to do something to reduce disruptive behaviors interfering with learning. Many shared management systems that had been used before to encourage students to be more mindful and respectful. And so we have come up with a process of keeping track of behavior. Talk to your child to see how s/he feels this process is helping make more time for learning.

Invisible Forces

We have begun a study of force. We began our week by flying the three different types of paper airplanes we’d created the week before. One was designed to go fast and straight. The second was designed to glide gracefully and stay aloft for a long time. And the final plane was designed to spin and turn.

From those experiences the class has worked in small groups to design a plane to represent their group in a competition.   Looking at how those four planes fly will help as discover more about the invisible forces that impact our lives – the pushes and pulls that effect every movement.

Learning to Use the Distributive Property

Last week we discovered how many multiplication facts we already know – they were as easy as doubling or counting by 5’s and 10’s. We may need to practice a bit for them to be automatic, but we can figure them out. Using this knowledge we’ve been working to solve problems that ask us to multiply larger amounts and to do this by using the distributive property.

Here’s one of the problems that was a choice this week:

Mackenzie decided to read the Clementine books.

There are seven books in the series.

Five of them have 160 pages.

Two of them have 176 pages.

How many pages will Mackenzie read to finish the series?

Using the distributive property it would be solved like this:

• 5 x 160 =                                             2 x 176 =
• 5 x 100 = 500                                    2 x 100 = 200
• 5 x 60 = 300                                      2 x 70 = 140
• 5 x 0 = 0                                             2 x 6 = 12

The final answers to the two parts come by adding the products of each equation. The class has been trying to practice using multiplication rather than adding or counting. It’s tempting to add because it is more comfortable and familiar. Because of that, it is also easier. In the first part of the problem 5 x 60 is a place value challenge – could it be hundreds? Almost as much as five hundreds? They begin to doubt themselves when multiplying where they wouldn’t when adding 60+60+60+60+60+60. When you review your child’s work with them this weekend, compliment him or her for effort made. Some have become very comfortable with the process, while others remain hesitant – they haven’t used the distributive property “yet”, but they will. All of them should feel proud of how they are each working to understand multiplication.

Bits and Pieces

• We’ll be working to write letters to soldiers next week for the 50 Letters in 50 Days project. If you’ve decided to do that with your family as well, please send them in with your child next week so they are ready to send on Veteran’s Day.
• The class is preparing for student led conferences. Please find a sign up for those to be held before, during and after school in Monday and Tuesday, November 21 and 22.
• Our Zoo will be opening on December 1 from 6:00 to 7:00 pm. We are excited to be sharing our animals in their habitats and our first pieces of published informational writing. Save the date. More details will follow.
• Report cards will be coming home on December 2. We will meet the following week for parent teacher conferences. We will use the work your child shared along with other work and assessment samples to set learning goals for your child’s year.