3rd Grade MP3 Campus
Monthly Progress
Math
Activities: This month we spent the majority of our time working through our place value unit and students showed their understanding of word form, expanded form, number lines, greater than/less than, ordering numbers, and rounding to the nearest ten and hundred on the final assessment last week. Students grew considerably from our pretest and most students were able to meet their self-identified goals that they set. We also had a chance to do some review of third grade level skills when the students tackled a math mystery, I was so impressed by the deep level of thinking and math discussion that I witnessed. Students had fun with a Thanksgiving themed skill review that included making plans for how to feed a group of 18 people with different sized dishes and seating configurations. This real life application of multiplication, division, and fractions is such a great way for students to see how their math skills are used in everyday life.
Teacher Tip: Self-selected goals help students to take ownership of learning. Ask your student what they want to master and then help them figure out the steps they might need to take to reach their goals. Having a plan can help make the goal become a reality.
Teacher Info: Mrs. Kurashige, skurashige@meridian.wednet.edu
Writing
Topics: narrative writing, strong titles, “show, don’t tell” how characters feel, revising, editing, quality publishing, 7 Minute Writes to build writing fluency
Activities: In this review period, we wrapped up our narrative writing unit. Students applied strategies for making strong, catchy titles. We also practiced making our characters more interesting with the “show, don’t tell” strategy. Students published their stories as books and then celebrated their hard work during our Gallery Walk. During the Gallery Walk, students enjoyed reading each other’s books and then wrote positive feedback to each classmate.
We continue to do our 7 Minute Writes to build writing fluency and practice generating writing ideas.
Teacher Tip: Has your student told you about our 7 Minute Writes? Roughly every week, we start our class with writing for 7 minutes. I always provide a prompt, but students are welcome to write about anything they wish. The goal is to write for the whole seven minutes. After students write, we take time for volunteers to share. The purpose of this activity is to build writing fluency and strengthen our ability to generate writing ideas. You might want to try 7 Minute Writes at home. If your student does the 7 Minute Writes in a notebook or journal, it will be powerful to see the growth over time!
Teacher Info: Mrs. Giesen, jgiesen@meridian.wednet.edu
Technology
Topics: Keyboard Identification and Fluency, Google Sheets
Activities: The focus this month has been learning to create data tables, bar graphs, and pie charts in Google Sheets. We began the month with a quick pre-assessment in which students were asked to create a data table and graph a classmate's Halloween candy. Next we moved on to a quick Mystery Picture assignment to review columns vs rows and cell identification. After this review, everyone progressed through a series of three lessons where they learned how to create good data tables and bar/pie graphs. Additionally, students practiced changing/ adding chart and axis titles, changing font size and color, changing bar/ pie colors, and background color. Students who were able to complete lessons 1-3 where able to move on to lesson 4: using the auto sum/ average functions. Our unit assessment will be the first week of December where everyone will be provided with the car color data sheets they compiled in math last month and will be expected to create a data table, bar/ pie charts with chart and axis titles.
I have been truly impressed with the skills of this third grade class and their level of ability! It has been exciting to see them work so hard and be successful. Each student should be congratulated for his/ her work this month!
Teacher Info: Mrs. Montgomery, rmontgomery@meridian.wednet.edu
Robotics, Engineering, and Design
Topics: EdCreate Kit, EdRemote functioning, EdTank (including tread set up and rubber band launcher), Sending Messages between multiple bots, autonomous vs remote driving, real word robotic applications in fire and construction settings, EdDigger (mini bulldozer), Scientist Biographies
Activities: My 3rd Graders had a super exciting month! They did their first big build with the new EdCreate kits and brand new EdRemotes! They got to build the EdTank which uses 2 Edison robots, one to drive the tank with treads and the other to run a rubber band launcher. They did a fantastic job and once they finished the tank and had it running with remote controlled driving. If they finished in time, they learned how to use EdBlocks to autonomously code the bot to operate like a firefighting robot. They coded the bot to with the push of a single button, drive from the base to the ash line, launch the “water” (rubber band) at the fire, then drive back to safety. They did amazing. We reset kits, shuffled partners and groups and they’ve been working the last 2 days on the EdDigger build making a little bulldozer. The mechanics of the dozer bucket have been a little tricky but almost everybody got it completely or mostly assembled today so I think one more day to learn how to autonomously clear a rubble pile (4 little 2x2 Lego blocks) and then we will be ready to move on! We’ve continued our short biographies of famous scientists series. Some we have covered so far include: Ada Lovelace, Otis Boykin, Alan Turing, Emmy Noether, & Charles Kuen Kao.
Teacher Tip: Baking with your kids this holiday season is a fantastic way to help them practice precision, following multistep directions, and building that endurance to stick with hard tasks that grant awesome rewards!
Teacher Info: Mrs. Clayton - aclayton@meridian.wednet.edu
Social Studies
Topics: map skills, West and Southwest Regions, latitude and longitude
Activities: We continue to hear from a variety of places across the United States. Pictures and information from Flat Stanley’s travels have been received from Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, Alaska, New York, and Florida. It was especially interesting to learn about the boroughs of New York, as the school we heard back from was located on Staten Island. We recognized that urban New York City is not representative of the entire state. To conclude our study of the West Region, our class played a Jeopardy-style review game and worked in small groups to create informational posters. This activity included assembling a map puzzle of the region, marking mountain ranges, rivers, key places to visit, and noting interesting facts. Each group will have the opportunity to present their work. Our class explored informational lessons about the Southwest Region. We studied its climate, economy, natural resources, landmarks, and local cuisine. Students learned how the invention of air conditioning played a major role in the region’s population growth. We also “traveled” to the four states of the Southwest to learn key facts and features, with special attention given to the stunning Grand Canyon and notable places such as the NASA Space Center in Houston, the Alamo, Antelope Canyon, and Saguaro National Park. Using a map of the Southwest, students practiced plotting the locations of various cities using longitude and latitude. An online quiz challenge provided an opportunity for them to demonstrate this skill independently. We will revisit this concept, as it remains a challenging but important skill to master.
Reflection question: Time to take out the United States map. How many states in the Midwest, West and Southwest Regions is your child able to name/locate?
Teacher Info: Mrs. Elgersma- gelgersma@meridian.wednet.edu
