First week back!

What an amazing first week back.  I must tell you how fortunate we were to lave Laurie Mekkelsen as our long term sub.  She really got our year off to a great start.  The community in our classroom is evolving strongly.  This group of third-graders really are fantastic and I look forward to the rest of the year with them.
In math this week we worked on subtraction, we are trying to be sure, that all students have a strong and masterful understanding of this operation as we work to get into multiplication.  The discussions we have had so far have yielded results that show me where we will focus over the next few weeks.

We have also come up with some ideas for classroom celebrations.  Within the PBIS framework, class member receive a small wood chip when they are doing what is expected, these wood chips are collected in a small bucket in the classroom, and when this bucket is full we stop and celebrate!  I, personally, love these celebrations as they are celebrations of a week's worth of doing what is expected, being a part of a community, offering small kindnesses (is this a word?) to one another...you get the idea.  The list of ideas we have for these celebrations this year, is full of tag games, and other super active and fun games!  I am looking forward (even more than usual) to filling up our bucket and celebrating.

In the coming weeks I will be delivering some assessments to students in reading and spelling.  These assessments are essential for me to know where to meet students in their learning, as well as to track their progress throughout the year.  These assessments are used for instruction and I generally report out student outcomes on them during our conferences on progress reports.  If, however, you would like to know the outcomes for your student sooner please let me know, and we can set up a quick meeting.

I hope you have enjoyed your weekend, and look forward to tomorrow morning!

Dave

Welcome to a new school year!

This is post is a welcome to all the third graders and their families.  I am looking forward to our year together, and am excited to meet you all.  It is important to note that I will be on parental leave until September 14th, and that until that day Laurie Mekkelsen will be teaching third grade.

I like to use this blog as a means of communication with you all about what is happening.  I will post to it weekly-ish.  In these posts you will find information about what is happening in and around third grade.  If you ever want more information, please let me know and I will get it to you.

Please enjoy this weekend, and we are looking forward to seeing you on Monday!

-Dave

Final post...

...submitting this post from the home office.  All is well here, Alice is settling in, and so is Rose.  I just wanted to say thanks for a wonderful year with your kids, and I hope to see you all around next year.

Also below is a link to a Google album of the Boston Field Trip.  I wish I could have gone, it looks to have been fantastic.


https://goo.gl/photos/QXcjLdB5dvGhTRjGA


Take care,

Dave

Only a few days until our Boston Trip!

So, we have continued working hard and keeping our focus, while, at the same time, feeling the stoke for Boston!  We have been working on decorating some team shirts, and have reviewed and sent home a letter with information about this trip.  If you have yet to see this letter, please check with your student, and if you need another copy just let me know and I will send one home on Friday.

We have also continued working on deepening the understanding of the relationship between multiplication and division.  That culminates today with an exploration with a balance and some cuisenaire rods.  This investigation will help to solidify the notion that whole numbers and collections of component groups.  For example, 3 tens will weigh nearly the same a 6 fives (I say nearly the same because the production standards of these rods is different than it used to be and they are very close to having correct proportional weights, but these weights are not exact).

In other news, I will be leaving for a paternity leave in the next few weeks.  As of now, it looks as if I will be out starting the 23rd of May, but that might change.  The long-term sub we have lined up has been in our room observing this week, and is getting ready to take over the action.  Her name is Anna Paterson, and her mother is one of the teachers who already works with our class!  If you have any questions about this please let me know and I will get the answers for you.



Have a relaxing and restful weekend.

-Dave

Gerry Cheevers and Art-man

An interesting title for this post I know, but we were on a small tangent this morning, and we ended up talking about Gerry Cheevers!  Anyway we has a wonderful week.  We worked on adding leads and conclusions to literary essays, investigated fractions with common and similar denominators, and continued our work with Lego Mindstorms Robots.

In writing we have been working on crafting essays that hinge on a thesis, and aim to prove this thesis to the reader.  This week we worked on crafting leads and conclusions for these.  In leads we worked to introduce the large theme that connects to our thesis, and "funnel" our readers toward the thesis statement. In conclusions we worked on reminding our readers of our thesis statement, humanizing our evidence, and giving our readers a follow up action.

We are also diving into adding and subtracting fractions with common denominators.  Many students are grasping the idea that in order to add fractions denominators need to be the same.  We are modelling this concept with fraction strips (these are just pieces of paper) that we can fold to illustrate different fractions.

Here are some authentic reflections from the week:

This week, we were working more with Mindstorms’ robots. We were trying to get them to find and follow a dark line. I was sick on Wednesday, and I have not done Robots since Monday.

Today has been a awesome morning!  I loved waking up knowing that I would have time to get ready for school!  I also loved that I had fun on the bus ride, that doesn’t always happen!  I can not wait to Green Up today!  I love Greening UP!    

This week the ukers are staining their ukuleles (I’m one of them) and we’re still programing robots. Arlyn won’t be in library when we're doing library, but we’re doing digital passport with a sub.

This week we have been studying the human body and what parts of the body intrest us to study, senses, muscles, bones...etc… I am going to focus on the brain and the eyes, and how they connect. The first step would be what parts of the eye the light passes through, and about those parts. Next there would be how the light passes into the brain and sends the message to the body and the image appears.


As always have a restful and relaxing weekend.

-Dave

The week after break...

...is always exciting, and this week was the same.  We continued our work in writing, working on crafting a thesis and proving it to readers.  We also have revisited fractions, as well as begun to look at the relationship between multiplication and division.  

This week we also began an investigation with Arlyn.  This work will focus on programming robots.  We started by using Bee-Bots, and sequencing movements for these robots to use to navigate a maze.  After that we moved on to Mindstorms robots, for some more in depth programming.  We will also be using these robots to learn about our senses.  We will be comparing our reactions to information that we receive to how our robots react to information that they receive.

Here are some authentic reflections from the week:

This week, Arlyn (the library/technology teacher) was teaching us how to program robots. We started with Bee-Bots, and on Tuesday we switched to Lego Mindstorm robots. Now, we are trying to use the light sensor on our Mindstorms’ to stop at the end of the board, which is white.

This week we had Mrs.Scott as a substitute teacher and we almost filled our bucket but yesterday we filled it!  Know today we are going to have a longer outside time. We are also going to have some robot time later and it is in the library. We also made a lot of writing about the book The miraculous journeys of Edward Tulane one of my teachers favorite books.

This week we had a sub named mrs. Scott. It was fun because we played lots of games. I hope we have Mrs. Scott again soon.

This week was pretty cool because on Thursday I had I had baseball practice.    I was very excited to meet my new coach and when I met him he was awesome, I have another practice today.   And  on saturday before I came to school I shot a 19½ pound turkey.   His beard was 9 inches and his spurs were ⅞  of an inch.

Have a restful and relaxing weekend!

-Dave

Thesis, evidence, and hexagon...

As we have worked toward the April break, we have been focused on the topics listed above, as well as others.  During our literacy and writing time we have been working on crafting a thesis about the characters in our books.  Once we have a thesis we have worked to prove it by citing evidence from the book.   This evidence takes the form of lists of attributes about the character, character actions that connect to a theme of the book, along with well chosen quotes.

Hexagons...we have been using these to understand and illustrate circles and how they are measured.  If you have a hexagon, and circumscribe a circle around it, the length of one side of the hexagon will be the same length as the radius of the circle.  This can also be a helpful illustration as to why circles are measured in 360 degrees.  The interior vertices of the six triangles that make up a hexagon, all have the measure of 60 degrees, and as there are six of these angles the sum of these...you get the idea.

Authentic reflections:

This week has gone by fast but it was a blast. We also worked  on triangles and hexagons to and we got them wrong or right and nobody picked a fight. This week in pe we played man hunt with you and we had a large playing ground where we could  run and have fun. This leads up to April break with lots fun but everybody had fun in this last week of school. And we had a blast with our friends but in this last week school nobody went boo hoo hoo.

This week has been an awesome week at school, I had GOTR and there was the school talent show, but one one thing that I most liked doing this week at school was learning how to make a hexagon out of triangles.  After we made the hexagon we made a circle to see how precise are hexagon(s) were.  That was very fun!  What we did at girls on the run this week was an activity which includes running in the hallways.  Then we got ready to go on a run (we were stretching.)  Also this week I went to the talent show, it was really, really good. Today I am going to see the talent show again at school.  That was my awesome week at school.

This week in Library we have been working on our book trailers. Some people decided to partner up with others and form a team. First we chose a book, I chose Gregor the Overlander written by Suzanne Collins. Then we made a planner filling out the scenes, what they would say, and how we would make them. Finally we are starting to take pictures of our scenes and doing the writing work. To actually finish the project we upload the videos and images onto WeVideo. Most of our projects end in a ? to leave the people who are watching the presentation with a mystery. This makes them want to read the book and find out how the mystery ends, just like a movie trailer. With in the presentation we can choose different fonts to emphasize the feeling of the book, for example, scary, sad, happy… etc…

In math we have been drawing triangles.& we made hexagons it was off by a few inches  and then we made a circle around the hexagon.   

This week I was happy because we were  doing nature journaling and I was doing lots of cool stuff in football like  intercepting the ball and making touchdowns!   We were learning some cool stuff  like in literacy we were talking about forest fires and how they can spread.   I was amazed when Mr.Willard  told us the story about when the guy was going to get swallowed by blazing hot fire, but listen to this he made another fire and got in the ashes is it that crazy!       The best thing was the talent show.

Enjoy your April break, and we will see everyone again on the 25th!

-Dave