Mrs. Cranley's 3rd Grade : Our Third Week of Third Grade

Greetings Families!

We had a wonderful third week of school. The students are really getting into their groove. Daily homework habits are being developed, students are working hard in class, and are already demonstrating increased stamina for the demands of third grade. I am very proud of all of the students!

LITERACY

This week we read the fable What About Me? The story was about a boy in search of knowledge. He thought to himself, I should visit the wise Grand Master, and he will be able to give me knowledge. The Grand Master then sent him on a quest in search of a rug, telling him that he would give him knowledge he sought if he brought back a rug.

The boy's quest for a rug, led him on other quests--first in search of thread, and then in search of a goat, and again in search of a pen, as each person he visited thought “What about me? I have needs too.” Eventually the boy is able to help each person fulfill their need which leads him back to the Grand Master with his rug. The Grand Master then tells the boy that he has no knowledge to give him, because the boy already has it. The fable teaches the lesson that knowledge cannot be given, but it can be gained in the process of helping others.

Once again, the comprehension skill this week was sequence, so we added another graphic organizer to our interactive notebooks in order to help us understand the sequence of our story.

Since this week's story involved so many interesting events that took place in a logical order, we first focused on identifying a wide variety of transition words that would help us understand and communicate the sequence of the story.

The next day, students paired up for their Tuesday partner read, and then used their sequence graphic organizer to help them complete their Tuesday Reading Response Task.

Today's task was to retell the main events from the story in the order that they occurred.

They created illustrations and descriptions of each important event from the story, in the order they occurred.

They worked hard to complete this task, and they did a great job! You can expect to see these come home tomorrow.

On Wednesday, the students completed their first Reading Street Story Test of the year. These will also come home tomorrow.

We ended the week by solidifying our understanding of genres of literature. This is an important concept to understand before we begin launching our Reader's Workshop.

To do this, we created a flip chart in our notebooks where we took time to discuss and record the characteristics of 10 genres of literature.

The students did a great job with this activity.

WRITING

This week the students continued to work on their informational paragraphs about their summer.

They made progress moving through the writing process and many students are ready to publish their final copy.

In addition to our writing process wall,

students also have a writing process folder to help them learn to use this process effectively. These folders are their's to keep.

We also use a writing checklist to help keep us on track. Right now, we are getting familiar with these tools, but as the year goes on, students will get more and more sophisticated at using them.

In addition to our informational writing, we also worked on two grammar skills this week.

After setting up our grammar section of our notebooks, we completed our first grammar exercises of the year - complete sentences.

In order to practice this concept, we completed a waterfall sentence as we discussed at each step of the way, whether or not we had a sentence, or a fragment.

The sentence above was a collaborative effort on part of the students.

Once we finished our discussion of the grammar concept, the students were then ready to complete the workbook pages in their grammar practice book.

Each week, new concepts will be added, and grammar practice becomes a regular part of writer's workshop.

Our second grammar skill of the year was subject and predicate.

Students learned that the subject of a sentence contains the noun (person, place, or thing) and the predicate of a sentence contains the verb (action). We completed a color-coding matching puzzle piece activity to reinforce the concept visually.

MATH

In Math we continued exploring graphing as we made and interpreted pictographs and line graphs.

We collected data on our favorite ice cream flavor and used the data to make our first pictograph.

The challenge during this lesson came when the students had to figure out how to represent the class data using only 15 ice cream cones. Many students quickly discovered that one cone would have to represent multiple students. Most students chose to represent a value of 2 students for each cone.

Picture from last year. Forgot to take a pic this week before they were sent home.

The next day, we completed the same type of graphing activity, only this time we collected data on our favorite genre of literature.

We had to survey the class a couple times before we had everyone accounted for.

Students graphed the results of this data, once again, as a pictograph.

The class was much more at ease with the process the second time, and immediately understood the importance of the "key" on the pictograph.

This time many students chose to make one book equal to 3 students. That way it was easy to represent the 15 students in our class who chose fantasy as their favorite genre. Although, this led to another problem we had to solve when we needed to graph the value of 5.

We took a break from graphing on Thursday, as we took a look at our September Calendar patterns.

It appears to be all about measurement!

We took this opportunity to complete one of our first Estimate, Measure, and Compare Activities of the year. These activities get students up and moving around as they measure various objects in the classroom.

Thursday's measurement activity had them using inches to measure the length of various objects.

They were expected to first estimate the length, then measure the length, and finally compare their estimate to their measurement as they find the difference between the two lengths.

They were pretty excited about this activity!

In addition to the pictograph, we also explored the line graph this week.

In order to explore the line graph, we recorded the daily temperature at 9:05 AM each day.

We then used that data to make a line graph in our math journals.

We talked about the importance of a line graph as an appropriate way to display any data that relates to time, specifically, something that changes over time.

Up next, we will be finishing up graphing as we explore our last type of graph, the line plot. We will also review our fluency with subtraction facts. Students have already been tested on their fluency with addition.

SCIENCE

In science, we began our Environmental Science Unit centered around the study of forests. The students shared some of what they already know about forests as we began to answer the question, "How are forests helpful to the earth?" Almost all students had a prior understanding of the process of photosynthesis- the process by which plants use water, sunlight, and carbon dioxide to create sugar and oxygen. Forests essentially help cleanse the earth's atmosphere through the absorption of carbon dioxide and production of oxygen. Despite the students prior understanding of photosynthesis, I had each student do an illustration just to be sure they had a solid grasp of the concept.

Next, we answered the question of "Where are Oregon's Forests located?"

In order to do so, we used an interactive map on-line, that shows the location of all 7 of Oregon's types of forests.

The students were introduced to our mobile lab this week as they each logged onto a Chromebook Laptop computer and visited Oregonforests.org. Here they learned to maneuver around an interactive map of Oregon, while they color coded and labeled where the different type of forests are located in Oregon.

This was our first chance to utilize the Chromebooks to support our learning. The students did a great job!

This week we begin learning what a healthy forest looks like.

ART

On Friday we continued to work on our Fall Tree Sillhouette art work.

Students were once again asked to practice the design principles of off-the-page, variation, and over-lapping. By paying attention to these visual techniques, they could achieve more visual interest in their tree branch designs. This is easier said then done.

In addition to practicing these design techniques, we also added fall leaves to our tree branches - some hanging, some falling, and others collecting on the ground.