November News

Reading and Social Studies are being integrated during our Molly's Pilgrim and Thanksgiving units. Students are using lapbooks to expand their comprehension skills as we read Molly's Pilgrim, a story about an immigrant girl who helps her third grade class learn it takes all kinds of pilgrims to make Thanksgiving, not just the ones who were on the Mayflower. Students' lapbooks contain a vocabulary match, a character trait graphic organizer to compare and contrast main characters, graphic organizers, and comprehension questions to reflect on the story's conflict, resolution, and message. Next week we'll be watching the movie and compare and contrast it to the book.

During Social Studies we've taken Scholastic virtual field trips to visit the Mayflower, Plimoth Plantation, and a Wampanoag village. Students have been writing facts they've learned about each on a recording sheet in their Thanksgiving booklets. Books we've read about these subjects include On the Mayflower, The Very First Thanksgiving, Sarah Morton's Day, Samuel Eaton's Day, Fact vs Fiction: The First Thanksgiving, and The Wampanoags. Students compared and contrasted their lives to pilgrim childrens'  as well as comparing and contrasting the first Thanksgiving to today's celebration. They also examined a miniature Wampanoag canoe called a mishoon, Native American jewelry, and photos of my trips to Plimouth Plantation and the Mayflower.

In Science we've begun a new unit on forces, simple machines, and types of energy. Students learned how force and friction affect how objects move. We read Simple Machines and then made flipbooks that define and give examples of each. After reading about gravity and magnetism we watched a BrainPOP video about them and scored 100% on its online assessment! During the next few weeks we'll be learning about potential vs kinetic energy and electrical, sound, and light energy.

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Now that we've learned strategies to multiply such as making groups, using repeated addition, and skip counting we've begun learning the 0-12 times tables. Each table is introduced using a song found in students' multiplication folders. Students then write the times table we're learning in a bubble number that goes in their binders. After more practice such as matching equation cards to answer cards or playing "multiplication ball" the children complete a drill. The next day we continue practicing multiplying the number using our Envision math program's videos and workbook. So far we've learned the 0-6 times tables. Students should continue to practice at home using their multiplication folders.

Wishing everyone a wonderful month!

During our "Forces and Machines"  unit students had the opportunity to become engineers and build their own simple machines in the science lab. Using Popsicle sticks with holes drilled in them, brads, and rubber bands they created extension grabbers. Students identified the lever as the simple machine that allowed the grabber to work. Here's our engineers in action...

   Happy learning!

Autumn Bounty of Learning

Reading and Social Studies were integrated during our class novel study of Molly's Pilgrim. The book is  about a third grade Jewish Russian immigrant who helps her class learn it takes all kinds of pilgrims to make a Thanksgiving. Students used "lapbooks" containing a story vocabulary matching activity, graphic organizers, story comprehension questions, a prediction pilgrim, poems, and reader responses during the unit...

In the book, Molly and her classmates are assigned a project to make Thanksgiving pilgrim and Native American dolls. Our own 3rd graders did a similar activity, creating heritage dolls with accompanying reports about their chosen country. Our "Heritage Dolls around the World" bulletin board will be displayed in December when we come back from Thanksgiving break. We've also been hard at work practicing our Molly's Pilgrim play, which we'll perform at the school Thanksgiving Feast!

Learning about pilgrims was also part of our social studies unit about Thanksgiving, the Mayflower journey to the New World, the Plymouth Colony pilgrims, and the Wampanoag who helped them. Using Scholastic videos the class took virtual field trips to the Mayflower, Plymouth Plantation, and a Wampanoag village. We recorded facts learned on a trip recording sheet and created Venn diagrams comparing our lives to the pilgrims' lives. Students had the opportunity to examine Native American jewelry, a model birch bark canoe decorated with porcupine quills, and photos from my own trip to the Mayflower and Plymouth Plantation.

Books about Thanksgiving, the Mayflower voyage, Plymouth Colony, and Native Americans were also part of shared reading and the class library center...

In science we've begun our new "Simple Machines" unit. In class we've used anchor charts, our textbook, a magnets kit, and Brainpop  and Scholastic Study Jams videos to learn about force and friction, gravity, magnetism, and simple machines. We also made "Simple Machine" flip books to define types of simple machines and list everyday examples of each...

During S.T.E.M students had simple machine race contests. Using a variety of manipulatives such as paper towel roll wheels teams raced to see which would reach the other side of the classroom first...

 

In math, we're continuing to learn our times tables in a variety of engaging ways. Teams competed in "The Great Eight Race". Teams solved problems containing the 8 as a factor to move their number eight "runner" along a whiteboard race course and reach the finish line. Another game we played was "Nines Grid Game". Each student lifted a Post-it to reveal a problem containing nine as a factor. The student's team had to solve the problem to earn a point...

Wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving!