Word Study: This week's words are: called, fixed, hooked, loved, finished, owned, counted, needed, lifted, played, smiled, and lived.
Additional words you may want to use for at home activities include (see earlier post http://3rdgradehudson.blogspot.com/2011/09/parent-information-highlights.html): stopped, batted, raced, voted, picked, mixed, mailed, dressed, chased, baked, dotted, patted, joined, cared, grinned, tried, broiled, closed, skipped, applied, multiplied, ignored, spaced, and flipped.
The three general categories for the sorting should be words in which -ed sounds like /d/, like /t/, and like /ed/. In order to make the past-tense form some present -tense forms undergo a spelling change. Words in which -ed sounds like /ed/, the pat-tense form has more more syllable than the present-tense form.
We reviewed plural nouns and action verbs as well. We will contrast action verbs with linking or being verbs next week.
Reading: In reading we returned to main idea using the 5 W's and sharing them as complete sentences that contain a minimum of a Who, a What, capitals at the beginning and punctuation at the end.
We also started our new read aloud, The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg, by Rodman Philbrick.
I will be conducting Developmental Reading Assessments on all students next week to monitor growth in accuracy, fluency and comprehension.
Writing: We wrote pen pal letters to our partners at Tremont.
Math: We are deeply immersed in multiplication in math and are developing our understanding of multiplication as efficient addition of same sized groups. Unlike the way most of us learned multiplication through drill and memorization, we now focus on strategy based fact fluency and using arrays to model multiplication as addition. We utilize a lot of vocabulary in math and I've introduced multiplication in terms of factor x factor = product.
I've introduced fact fluency strategies for:
0's - any number multiplied by 0 is simply 0 because there are no groups of N factor.
1's - any number multiplied by 1 is equal to the other factor because the number model represents one group of N factor.
2's - we utilize our addition strategy of doubles
3's - are doubles plus one more group of N factor
4's - are double doubles or two groups of our double
We are modeling story authentic story problems with:
- Factor X Factor = Product model
- Number model
- Array
- Fact triangle and all number models (This supports learning division as multiplication)
Before we get to multi digit multiplication, I'd like to share that our district strongly discourages teaching the traditional algorithm (the way most adults perform multi digit multiplication) as it does not foster understanding, but simply memorization. The traditional algorithm is a convenient, but arbitrary algorithm that does not require any understanding of the operation. I'll elaborate on this further when we introduce multi digit multiplication.
Science: This year's first Science Buzz Around was a huge success. Every student at Windermere was engaged in science and engineering throughout the building on Wednesday morning. Third grade focused on engineering as well as 21st Century Skills of collaboration and communication. Each third grade class rotated through the three classes to experience a different engineering lesson. Our classroom used Keva Planks (aka Citiblocs). In our room, students began with a short video clip from the movie Apollo 13 that showed authentic engineers solving complex problems.
Students sat across from a partner with blinds and six blocks each. The "engineer" was given 60 seconds to construct a shape. Then they had three minutes to talk their "builder" through creating an identical shape. Neither student was allowed to look at the other's work until the time limit was up. After both students had an opportunity to experience both roles, they were challenged with building the "most simple" design they could think of and finally with building an "interesting" design. Once we were done, we compared what we did with what the Apollo 13 engineers and astronauts did in a life-or-death situation.
We will have our next Science Buzz Around in the spring and are hopefully working towards quarterly Buzz Arounds in the future. It is my sincere hope that when these students revisit Windermere as graduating seniors, they will excitedly ask, "Do you still do Science Buzz Arounds?" and will share their plans to major in science and engineering (oh, and they still play ukulele).
Important Dates & Reminders
No newsletter next week. Have a wonderful and safe holiday.
Please begin collecting items for the Ohio Wildlife Center. See earlier post: http://3rdgradehudson.blogspot.com/2011/10/ohio-wildlife-center-wish-list.html.
