May 8 - 26

Hello 3rd Grade Families,

The past two weeks have been filled with Portland Bridge activities and state testing!  In all, we have spent 5 days organizing ourselves around testing, and the rest of our time immersed in our Portland Bridge Studies, which has provided the perfect balance.  Here’s a recap of the highlights of the past two weeks!

 PORTLAND BRIDGES

Our Portland Bridge Unit began with a discussion of what we already know about the Portland Bridges.

 And what we want to know more about:

We had some of our questions answered within the first few minutes as we got acquainted with our new Big and Awesome Bridges textbook, authored by none other than a Sellwood resident, Sharon Wood Wortman. 

We took a book-walk to notice the interesting things the book had to offer.  We spent a great deal of time stopping, reading, and learning many interesting facts, as students called out page numbers and we took turns sharing what we thought was interesting.

We learned that there are three main types of bridges: arch, beam, and suspension.

We also learned that there are three main movable bridge types: the bascule, swing, and vertical lift bridge.

On page 24 it shows that the longest bridge in Portland is the Fremont Bridge at 382 meters long.
We also learned that the shortest bridge in Portland is the Steel Bridge at 64 meters long.

On page 186 a pictograph shows bicycle traffic on a few of the Portland Bridges. 

Some other interesting things we found in our book...

A map of the Portland/Vancouver area showing the location of all of the bridges...

Even the Tilikum Crossing Bridge is featured in our textbook.

Templates for building each Portland Bridge from popsicle sticks can be found in the book.

The students had a genuine interest in learning the information in the book and had a great opportunity to preview all that it has to offer us in this unit.

We continued our study of Portland Bridges the next day as we read about the 3 main types of bridges and then built a model of one type: the beam bridge.  Our model in particular, was a truss beam bridge made from triangles. 

Check out the pics of the students building their toothpick trusses.  

 It's all about the triangles!

Our initial introduction to bridge building continued beyond the toothpick truss bridge into the realm of suspension bridges. We first explored the idea of the suspension bridge in it’s simplicity, with the use of string and two textbooks.   

(photo from last year)

The students were expected to fashion a bridge that could hold the weight of a scissors, using a string and textbooks.

(photo from last year)

I then introduced a third material—masking tape. 

Using the tape, students were led to the idea of an "anchor" for their bridge.  This "anchor" gave our second bridge design much greater strength from the resulting tension.

The success rate of the load test improved dramatically with the addition of the tape as an anchor.

We discussed that the crucial element giving suspension bridges their strength was the tension created after securing the string to the book or desk. Within this discussion, we also recognized that the most tension was achieved when the string was pulled across the towers and secured to the desk.  This design gave stability to the towers and the most tension to the string.  We then made the connection between the parts of our model to the required parts of a suspension bridge.

Our next exploration in bridge building was the model of a beam bridge using the following materials—straws, tape, and penny weights for load testing.  

           

 After conducting the load tests of our beam bridge, we transformed our beam bridge into a suspension bridge by adding a new material (string) to the existing structure. 

We then load tested our new suspension bridge designs and saw firsthand how much strength was added by introducing a cable and tension to an existing beam bridge.  Some of our bridges could hold twice as much weight! 

Now that the students had some knowledge of the basic types of bridges, it was time to explore the bridges we have right here in our own backyard.  

  

Pairs of students chose a Portland Bridge to research and report on.  They were expected to read about their bridge in our Big & Awesome Bridges Book, fill out a fact sheet, write a summary, and make a poster to illustrate their bridge.  

 

(photo from last year)

We will be finishing these up this week and then the students will begin presenting their information to the class in order to teach their classmates about each of the Portland Bridges.  We will also use these presentations to begin building a timeline of Portland Bridge construction.  I will post pictures of their Portland Bridges Posters next week.

                 

LITERACY + SOCIAL STUDIES

In addition to studying Portland Bridges, our literacy and social studies focus turned towards Portland History. 

Each day we began by reading from our “Portland, Our Community” text to learn about the early events that took place in Portland.  After reading about each event, we created an image of the event in our individual "Book of Portland".  

This book will serve as an illustrated timeline of Portland's History.

Our first reading from “Portland, Our Community” led us back in time 20 million years ago.  

The story tells us of a time when Oregon was under a shallow ocean.  Later, due to tectonic plate movements at the coast and volcanic activity to our east, Oregon’s two mountain ranges rose, forcing the shallow ocean water to either flow into the beginnings of the Willamette River or out to the sea.  The formation of our beloved mountain ranges resulted in the creation of the Willamette Valley.  Much later on, the Missoula floods contributed to the formation of our fertile valley and the Columbia River Gorge.

In order to better understand this early timeline of Portland’s Landscape History we created an illustrated timeline of these events. 

In addition to illustrating each of these early events, we also watched a documentary on the mystery of the of the Missoula Floods.  The documentary helped convey to students the complexity of this event.  Ask your child what they know about it.

 

 

Next, our reading brought us forward in time, to when Portland was not yet settled, and covered in a thick forest.

In conjunction with our own personal illustrated timeline, we are building a collaborative mural to show the evolution of our city over time.

We also learned, that amid the forest was a natural clearing of land along the Willamette River.  

This clearing became a gathering place for the Multnomah Indians inhabiting the area.  They used the Willamette River for transportation, food, water, and safety.  The gathering of people at the clearing gave early roots to our city.

We added the clearing and tipi structures, camp fires, canoes, and fish to our mural.

        
This week the story will continue as we read about  the arrival of Lewis and Clark and how Portland got it's name!

PORTLAND BRIDGE TOUR

FIELD TRIP

Thursday, June 1

                                    

BRIDGE TOUR CHAPERONES---This Thursday! 

Davis Palmer (Rowan's Dad) 

Sarah Gamber (Gabriel's Mom)

Carl Whitehouse (Jasper's Dad)

Shannon Schupp (Peyton's Mom)

Lincoln Wachtel (Brooks' Mom)

Karli Del Biondo (Juniper's Mom)

Loan Dang (Kayla's Mom)

Caitlin Stauffer (Ryan's Mom)

Danielle Cass (Sara's Mom)

Liz Winter (Colby's Mom)

Aimee Guarriello (Connor's Mom)

Teresa Atkins (Noah's Mom)

Crissy Shaffer (Marlowe's Mom 

Sawv Kleiv (Anna's Mom)

           
Chaperones: Please wear comfortable walking shoes, and bring plenty of drinking water, a sack lunch, and your cell phone.  You will be responsible for supervising two students, your child plus one other.  I ask that you stay in close proximity to both students all day.  Please be forewarned that we do extensive walking during this field trip, starting near 1st and Flanders and ending up at the Tilikum Crossing.  Please contact me if you have any concerns about your ability to walk long distances.  

Thank you so much for volunteering to chaperone!!