Friendship Day

To wrap up our Friendship reading unit, Biomes science unit, and Government social studies unit, we displayed our Friendship country projects and participated in games with the 'countries' we had made! 

At the end of the day, we got to look at the lunar eclipse!

Telling Time to the Minute

Upon request of the students, here is the "clock" we made in class; each stack of blocks has 5 blocks to represent the 5 minutes between each number on a clock; the numbers on the clock show the number of stacks (or groups of 5) we put on the board.  After we made the clock and practiced counting to the minute, we made a number line in the same way to show how the two are related!

For visual learners, this sure seemed to click (plus, no one ever turns down a chance to play with blocks...) :)

Biome Art

Has your child come home this week talking about silhouettes?  Watercoloring?  If so, it's due to Mrs. S's wonderful art lesson to help wrap up our biome unit!  Students had to use what they knew about their biomes, as well as pictures from their research materials, to create a silhouette of some of the plants and animals in their biome.  They did such an amazing job!

Check back later for final products!

Fun Moments

Wondering what those fun stories were that came home tonight?  Today, for spelling, we used the following writing prompt to write a story using our spelling words.  I was so inspired by students' creativity!

GoNoodle.com provides mini brain breaks for our class during the day.  Our favorite video so far is Shake Yo Foot!

You should've seen this in your orange folder tonight.  Please return this ASAP.  I look forward to meeting with all of you and discussing your child's progress in third grade thus far!

Biome Projects and Presentations

We started with research (reading and note-taking and group discussions, oh my!)

Each group took notes and created an organizational chart, and then a poster from that information.

Then we moved to mixed groups, with one 'expert teacher' from each biome group.  The expert then taught the other students in their group about their biome, using the poster their group had created.

Everyone was responsible for taking notes about the new biomes they were learning about.  The notes went into our biome books!

Here are the Biome posters.  Great work, everyone!

Starburst Multiplication!

On Friday, we put our problem-solving skills (and sweet tooth tendencies) to work!  I asked students to find as many different arrays with a total area of 24 square units as they could.  Working in a group, everyone found that possible arrays included 1x24, 24x1, 2x12, 12x2, 3x8, 8x3, 4x6, and 6x4!  It was a great way to apply multiplication, review the commutative property, and work as a team.  Plus, each group that completed the activity got to eat two Starbursts afterward!

To keep straight all the concepts we've been learning lately, we reviewed with this poster...

Keep up the great work practicing multiplication at home!

Recent Adventures in B17

Fruit and Vegetable Friday has been a big hit!  Thank you to all the families who have supplied us with nutritious and delicious snacks to taste and write about--so far, we have tasted watermelon, pineapple, white nectarines, pomegranate seeds, and green bell peppers! A lot of students have found new foods they like :) 

Here, students are writing in their Fruit and Vegetable Friday journals: 

Here are some of the books for our group Biome research project:

Students also did mini-research projects on government-related subjects with a group of 3-4 other students, then put their research on a poster and taught other students about what they'd learned:

 

 We had our first student reach Superhero Status on our clip chart!

 We go to the library every Wednesday and have gotten to check out two books a week.  Don't forget to bring them back the next week!  Students have the opportunity of checking out books for fun, for their 20 Book Challenge, and for their research projects!

We are so thankful for our helpful and kind student teacher, Mrs. S!