Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday break! I was excited see everyone as it felt like it had been too long (not sure the sentiment was shared)! We celebrated the new year and coming back to class with some resolution writing for 2014 along with the launch of our PBL! Finally!
Examples of living walls | How can we, as 3rd grade engineers, design and create a self-sustaining living wall that is both educational and enjoyable?Both Ms. Klope and I thought it would be wonderful to give this year's third grade a chance to leave a physical impact on Queen Anne Elementary through the creation of an educational living wall. This Friday we have the opportunity to hear from local experts from Solterra Systems who have worked to design and create a living wall at a private residence in Wallingford and one on the UW campus. Field trip forms will be sent home today. Please fill them out and return them before Friday as we will be visiting both sites to see in person two local examples. |
Happenings in the class...
The switch to non-fiction Reading and Writing:We have taken the dive into meaningful and purposeful non-fiction text exploration. Through interesting and leveled non-fiction articles, we are understanding how text features help us access new information, practicing asking questions to guide our reading, and taking notes right on the page using our non-fiction code that helps us shorthand our background knowledge, reactions, questions, and reactions to text. Non-fiction texts are also a lot of fun to share and talk about with friends and we have explored how to use each other as a resource to gain a deeper understanding of the text. Overall, it has been a great opportunity to demonstrate critical thinking and learning everywhere and together. | Last one to croak: Discovering the Math within origami frogs!Math has become a blend of multiplication fluency practice and the hands on application of organizing data and measurement as seen in our origami frog jumping contest. This week we are exploring the connection between area and multiplication along with comparing area and perimeter. As a class, we are becoming quite adept at using the distributive property of multiplication to break intimidating multiplication sentences into easier to manage chunks. As for memorizing multiplication fact families, we are taking timed tests every Tuesday and Thursday and keeping track of our improvement and progress. In the end, it comes down to repetition and practice and I hope to continue to provide many different fun ways to access and practice multiplication fluency. |
Goal Setting: High expectations, personal expectations.
Upon coming back from the break, we have revisited and reflected on appropriate and effective goal setting along with discussing the types of goals we can set for ourselves. I hope to help create thoughtful and reflective learners and I think goal setting is at the foundation of being a self-directed learner. We used the new year as a way to write yearlong goals for ourselves in the form of a New Years resolutions letter along with personal goal conferencing where we meet one on one to discuss next step individual goals, both academic and social.