Civil Rights Collaborative Projects

 

Understanding the Civil Rights Movement is no easy task for third graders, but they are passionate, amazing young people and are clearly developing an understanding about the big ideas about fairness, equality, inequality, discrimination and segregation.  It seemed fitting with the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday on Monday, that we launched full force into our Civil Rights unit this week.


Students are working in collaborative teams of 2-3 students learning about important individuals in history who supported ideas associated with equality for all.  Each team will work on learning about a one person in depth and then teach the rest of us about his/her role in history.

Teams are studying:

• Abraham Lincoln
• Harriet Tubman
• Mohandas Gandhi
• Rosa Parks
• Nelson Mandela
• Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Please ask your child who he/she is studying and what they've learned so far.  Many times students are really still trying to sort out big ideas, so your help with this through conversations at home would be great!

To support non fiction reading development, student teams have four projects to complete.  We hope to have them all completed to share at the EMES Celebration of Learning scheduled for the evening of Thursday, February 23rd.

• A timeline of important events in the person's life.
• A list of key vocabulary associated with the individual and what the vocabulary means as well as its importance.
• A compilation of detailed facts about the person's life.
• An information book that depicts key aspects of the person's life.  

We live in a world that is constantly changing.  It is important for students to learn how events from our past can shape our future.  Please talk to your children about civil rights and what that means to you and your family.  The kids are really working hard to understand these big ideas, and your help would really make a difference.  

Here are a few helpful tips to help your child prepare for this week's sharing.

We have been focusing much of our math time on the four models of multiplication, Repeated Addition, Groups Of, Arrays, and Area.  Here is what each model looks like for 4 X 3

Repeated addition

3 + 3 + 3 + 3 = 12

Groups of 

                 3         3                                                                         XXX                   XXX

              OR               

                      3         3                                                                     XXX                   XXX

Array

X  X  X

X  X  X

X  X  X

X  X  X

Area

     3

4▯

As a way to connect our work in math to our everyday life, I was thinking it would be fun for kids to think about the math around them.  Multiplication is all around us, especially items with equal groups.  Below, kids will find a few ideas to help them as they plan for this week's share.

This week's share may best be addressed as a talk share with a possible drawing or picture to illustrate the equal groups.  Remember students should be prepared to include 2-3 relevant pieces of information about their share.

Maybe you play a game that involves equal groups.  At our house, we play Mancala.  It is a game that begins with each player having four stones in each of their six sections of the the board, making equal groups.

Maybe you craft or have a bracelet or necklace with an equal groups pattern such as 4 purple beads, 4 green beads, etc.)

Maybe you participate in a sport such as dance or swimming.  Your sport may have equal groups of counts, laps, or movements.

Maybe you want to show your model car collection of 8 cars, each with four tires, making equal groups.

This is a tough sharing week, but I bet you can be creative!  Good luck finding equal groups in your everyday life.  If you have difficulty please do not hesitate to contact us.

Have a wonderful Monday, see you Tuesday!

Highlights of the Day!

Today was an exciting day in 3rd grade! Mrs. Lyford visited us and read a fabulous book about kindness, decision making, feelings and doing what is right.  Please ask your child to tell you all about A Bike Like Sergio's by Maribeth Boelts.  If you ask him/her to review the book with you using a 5 Finger Summary strategy that would be great!

Our second highlight was sharing technology projects.  Students worked on multiple learning intentions/goals for these projects. They included:

• Collaborating with a partner (s).
• Writing summaries for picture books.
• Incorporating dialogue.
• Building scenes with Legos.
• Using the application of "Story Visualizer" on the iPads.
• Writing with proper grammar, spelling and punctuation.
• Presenting as a team.

Ms. Arlyn and Mrs. Christy were very impressed with the final results, students really persevered on these projects!  Pictures of team presentations are below.  The actual projects can be seen via this link, Visualizer Project.  Enjoy!

Happy New Year!

Welcome back!  We've had a great first week of 2017.  It was wonderful to greet happy faces on Monday.  We were also happy to welcome a new third grader to our class, it's terrific to have a new third grade friend!  The week got off to a very productive start and we're cruising right along with a variety of new units and events.

Literacy
We launched new units in both reading and writing this week.  Both focus on the genre of informational text.
In reading we've started a unit called: Reading to Learn~Grasping Main Ideas and Text Structures.
Key ideas of this Unit

• Previewing text
• Studying text features
• Understanding the difference between narrative and expository text
• Organizing and summarizing new learning
• Expanding vocabulary
• Identifying main ideas and supporting details
• Summarizing 
• Reading multiple texts on the same topic
• Comparing and contrasting
• Growing individual ideas about a text based upon what has been read

Our writing unit will blend very well with our reading unit, it is titled: The Art of Information Writing
Key ideas of this Unit

• Writing to teach
• Exploring text structures of narrative and expository writing
• Categorizing and Grouping information into topics and subtopics
• Researching facts and staying away from plagiarism
• Working collaboratively to create writing that will teach others
• Improving accuracy in pargraphing, spelling and punctuating written work correctly.

Discovery

Students are doing a great job observing and learning about weather.  This week we've focused on learning about clouds, their names and what they look like in the sky.  We've been collecting and recording weather data through observational journals and reading many books on weather.  Please ask your child to tell you about this work.  It's wonderful to live in such an exciting place where the weather changes many, many times, often within one day!


Next Week's Sharing
Next week's topic is to share SOMETHING NEW.  This does not mean a material item, rather a new experience, goal or activity.  Some examples:

• Trying new foods
• Reading a new series of books.
• Trying a new fitness activity (skating, skiing, snowshoeing)
• Playing a new board game.
• Learning how to cook or trying a new recipe.
• Training a pet.
• Etc.

Updates

• New book orders are included in Friday Folders, they are due Wednesday, January 18th.
• Winter Wellness sign up forms are also in folders.  Please get them filled out and back to us asap!
• No school for students on Monday, January 16th.  This is a teacher inservice day!

As always, please feel free to contact us if you have any questions!

Have a great weekend!

Christine & Kathy