An important part of 3rd grade is understanding what a habitat is and what organisms need to survive well. To help with this, we visited the Oxbow Nature Study Area and, with the help of Sierra Nevada Journeys, moved through the park to work towards these outcomes. (Thanks parents for sharing pictures that I could post to the blog!)
It was a great first week of the 2019-2020 school year. We managed to get a lot done including establishing a number of important routines and navigating a lot of challenging content. We started our work with multiplication and division, described part of the scientific process, learned how to participate in a Readers Workshop and Writers Workshop, and did our first art lesson. Below, the highlights.
I cannot believe how many donations to the classroom economy we have already received. Students will have opportunities to “buy” the items during our classroom auctions, which occur throughout the year.
Thank you Vanish Point, Richardson Electronics, Rewalk Robotics, Security National, Alexo Water, ASE Group, Central Services, Applied Optoelectronics, Rick Broida, and Starbucks for your generosity.
The last week of the school year included a lot of academics, our Field Day, and some celebrating. It was a terrific year and one of my favorites professionally. The end was paradoxical in which I certainly looked forward to a break but I didn’t look forward to saying goodbye to 22 terrific students.
With five days left in the year, we participated in a discussion strategy we really like, a Pro Se Court. Over the last two weeks, we read and annotated four articles about zoos, their benefits and their challenges. Students were then divided into three groups. A third were the plaintiffs, a third as defendants, and a third as our judges.
Students didn’t know which role they would be assigned which is important insofar as understanding perspective taking. That said, our seven judges ruled 6-1 in favor of our plaintiffs who argued zoos are bad.
The rain certainly changed our plans a bit but I’m so glad we made the trip. Thanks to all the parents for the help and ensuring that Roy Gomm’s inaugural field trip to the zoo went so smoothly.
Over and over again the 3rd grader teachers were told the following from the O’Gara staff, “These are great kids!” It’s true, they are.
Today we started our newest engineering design challenge. This was the introduction and we worked with different materials to determine what would best protect a fragile package (farfalle pasta). We’ll experiment with different strategies based on a scenario in which students have to engineer “air drop packages” that can be dropped from an aircraft that protects contents and be easy to find, once they hit the ground.
The engineering kit we are working with came from a DonorsChoose project.
This class is amazing and the fact that I could successfully teach about multiplying a one-digit number by a multi-digit number, while outside, proves it. No doubt, we’ll be doing more lessons outside before the school year ends. (I’ll miss these kids!)
As a way of sharing the history of Earth Day, students completed a Digital Breakout. In this case, students solved a series of puzzles and got digital clues. Using those clues, students tried to “break out.”
This was a our first breakout and it proved a fun way of working through new content.
Room 360 