Weekly Blog

We have had a wonderful first week and a half in third grade. We've been lucky enough to add 6 new students to our already excellent classroom community and everyone seems to be getting to know each other, connecting...you know, the good stuff.

I know you guys are busy, but you would like to be in the know about what's going on in our classroom. Each Friday, my goal is to give you a quick run-down about what we are learning about, cool anecdotes, and sometimes a discussion topic. You can always feel free to post a comment below with your thoughts and insights.

Reading
This week, we read the book Mr. Lincoln's Way by Patricia Polacco. It's an excellent book that helps us have discussions about appreciating the differences in people. In fact, Mr. Lincoln is one of my all time favorite "book heroes". Using the story, we thought about the idea of how authors create a story with a theme in mind. Sometimes it comes out that a character learns something over the course of a book, or they go through a change. Many times, the theme is connected to that idea.

We also spent some time over two days reading three of the Olivia the Pig stories. These books are hilarious. We learned about how words and illustrations can depend on each other for meaning construction. For example, in Olivia, if you were to isolate the text, you would get a very different meaning than when you read it with the pictures. Together, the tone is actually quite sarcastic.

Writing
As writers, we began our year just writing. Sometimes, we as teachers wait for kids to "be ready" to write. Instead, some of my colleagues and I thought it would be an effective exercise for the kids to start the year creating books. Setting the tone for what we do as authors. We also spent a good deal of time setting up expectations for our workshop and coming up with ideas for how to use it. One idea is to create a list of possible topics for writing at the back of our notebooks. This way, when we feel the dreaded Writer's Block, we can access our list to help inspire some creativity.

We also have been learning about how our life and the events we experience can be the basis of a story. I used my story about when I got in trouble as a kid for throwing mud at my baby brother. I didn't remember everything, but we discussed how I can change some of the details and it can become a fictionalized version of a real event. We paired up and shared our stories aloud before we began writing them down and it was remarkable how much more comfortable the kids were at creating these pieces.

Math
In Math, we've been learning about how division and multiplication are connected, including the different properties these operations have. In the process, each day we are building our knowledge as we connect our new knowledge to our background knowledge about arrays.

Students are working in pairs called "learning buddies" as they coach each other up in Math Workshop. Before they work independently, they move through a problem set together and this puts each child in the role of a teacher. They are given the chance to communicate their strategies to another person.

Ecosystems
As you already know, our science unit right now is ecosystems and habitats. We have gone out to different natural areas around our school to observe the living and nonliving things. We are also discussing how people impact natural areas in positive and negative ways.

The students are preparing to begin a group project where they are researching an ecosystem together as a table. They are discussing the physical features, animals, and plants that are in a particular environment. Then, they will use this research to create a giant one-page nonfiction page that reflects their learning.