Week in Review: September 26-30

It's been another great week in third grade! In language arts, we are done revising and editing our personal narratives and will be writing final copies next week. I have been busy testing the reading level of each student, while the rest of the class works on their independent reading and practicing the new strategies we have learned. We also completed our first reading passage with comprehension questions as a class. I taught them lots of great test-taking strategies that they will use on Monday when we complete the district's unit assessment.

In math, we moved on from addition to subtraction and learned a variety of strategies students can use to solve word problems. We also used an online tool called Thinking Blocks to solve challenging problems with strip diagrams. We will have a unit assessment over addition and subtraction on Tuesday, after completing our review on Monday.

Recording our thinking on paper, while using the Thinking Blocks website for strip diagrams

Using base ten blocks to learn about "constant difference"

Math review around the room

In science, we are learning about changes to matter and have done some fun explorations. Ask your child about the Go Temp lab, or the melting ice cubes. We also tried two new strategies for learning academic vocabulary this week in science, including Touch and Talk and Vocabulary Sort. See photos below for more details.

Using the Go Temp thermometer to record temperature changes to a pot of ice as we add heat

Touch and Talk: students touch a photo while they talk about what they think it represents

Vocabulary Sort: Students matched definitions to terms, then tried to find matching photos. This is a bit trickier than it sounds because many of the photos could actually represent more than one term. They had to choose the BEST one so that each term ended up with only one photo.

In social studies, we are studying the impact important citizens have had on history. Using Pebble Go for research, students will be creating a "Bio-Cube" about the person they chose. We will share these in class so that each students gets a chance to learn about several important figures in history.

I hope you all have a great weekend!