Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Counting Class Collections



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Each third grade classroom selected an object to collect throughout our last math unit...we were quite successful!

Mrs. Ankerson's class collected nearly 1,000 plastic bottle lids. Perhaps there is another mural project in their future! Mrs. Ayer's class collected over 1,100 pennies which they plan to donate to the Richmond Food Shelf. Miss Darby's class collected nearly 5,000 metal pull-tabs to donate to the Richmond Grange to help support the Ronald McDonald House charity.

All in all, it was a successful project giving all scholars an opportunity to practice addition strategies with real world applications! A huge thank you to everyone who helped with our collections!

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Science: Organisms

Our current science thematic unit is "Organisms." This year in grade 3 we are studying this unit in two parts. Part one, which we are studying now through November, focuses on classification and structures and functions. The essential questions for this part are: How are groups of organisms alike and different and how does this help us classify them?, Why do we classify organisms?, and How do the characteristics of organisms help them survive?  Part two, which we will be studying in the spring focuses on life cycles. During that time we will hatch chicks and grow "Wisconsin Fast Plants" with our classroom grow labs. Our essential question for that part is How are organism life cycles the same and different?

One big aspect of helping students learn about classification is getting them to make careful observations of the world around them. We have each student keeping a Scientist's Notebook. One of the first entries in this notebook is a scientific drawing for which students collected an interesting plant and made a careful, detailed drawing including labels for the parts of the plants that they knew. While we did not expect students to know all the parts of the plant at this point, it was an exercise to help them begin to notice details about organisms and their structures, and how scientists and naturalists might use drawings of what they find to begin to identify them. Then students compared and contrasted stuffed animals using a Box and T-chart frame. Again, to help students begin to look carefully at features, but to also teach them how to use a specific comparison tool.

From there students began looking carefully at photographs of different animals and classifying them by creating their own categories that made sense to them ("furry animals," "animals with tails," and so on). Students were asked to record their categories for classifying the animal in their scientist's notebook. Our field trip to ECHO helped us with the next step in learning about classification. There we participated in a school program that focused on the specific features the five vertebrate classes have that scientists use to classify them. We have followed up by having students work in groups to record criteria for each of these five classes and then teaching other groups of students about them. They also worked on writing riddles in which they list features for a specific animal and by the end of the riddle they should have provided enough information for other students to "classify" them.

Our next step is to zoom in on specific characteristics of organisms and how these features or characteristics help them survive. We look at structures and functions of plant parts, and compare and contrast them to human structures. We study bird beaks and feet and what these features tell us about those particular birds and how they survive (what they eat, where they live). Students look closely at the organism they are studying in readers and writers workshop and determine what special features or characteristics that organism has to help it survive.

In the spring we will come back to organisms to compare and contrast similarities and differences between organisms' life cycles. To get a closer look at specific life cycles we will hatch chicks and grow "fast plants" in our classroom grow lab. This will be a great way to wrap up our year-long theme of "Growing, Moving, and Changing."

Sunday, November 3, 2013

Our Current Math Unit

We are more than halfway through our second numbers in operations book called, "Collections and Travel Stories: Addition, Subtraction, and the Number System 2".  Throughout this unit "students practice and refine their strategies for solving addition problems with three-digit numbers to 400 and subtraction problems with two- and three-digit numbers to 300. In addition to solving removal problems, they expand their understanding of subtraction as they solve comparison problems and problems in which they find the missing part of a whole.They increase their understanding of place-value as they extend their work into three-digit numbers up to 1,000 and study the structure of 1,000." (©TERC 2012)

There are many things that  you can do to support your mathematician at home during this unit.  The most important thing you can do is to help them master their addition and subtraction facts, through FASTT Math, games, flash cards, etc.  Mastery of the basic facts will allow your mathematician to be more confident and fluent in the computation of larger numbers.  Students are using basic facts like 9 + 5= 14 to help them make sense of 90 + 50 =140.  For example,if 9 ones plus 5 ones is the same as 14. then 9 tens plus 5 tens is the same as 140.  All third grade students should be fluent in their basic addition facts by the end of November!

The link at the end of this page will take you to a sample lesson that we completed this week.  In this lesson, you can read about the way in which we are teaching subtraction to third grade mathematicians.  While we no longer want them using the number line for addition, the number line is a very valuable tool to help model subtraction!  When subtraction problems go home in the next few weeks, please encourage your child to use a number line if they are stuck.

Addition Strategies Mathematicians Should be Using to Solve Addition Problems

math strategies

Link to a math lesson from this week:  http://investigations.terc.edu/library/curric-gl/sample_g3_u3_s3-3.pdf

Thanks!