What a week! As we jumped back into in-person learning, students took some time to catch up with one another. One of our learning targets this week was defining successful collaboration. Students learned that cooperation is a life skill and helped to develop a collaboration rubric for our classroom. To test out out their collaborative skills, students took part in a socially distanced team-building activity that involved popsicle sticks, rubber bands, a plastic spoon and marshmallows... Be sure to ask your student about what they built with their team! Math this week was all about using number lines to compare unit fractions. Third graders worked on ordering fractions from least to greatest on a number line and filling in shapes with a specific fraction in mind. To further master their skills, students collected data on each others' eye colors and plotted the information on a number line. Third graders learned that 3/5 of their classmates have brown eyes, 1/5 have blue, and the remaining 1/5 have hazel or green eyes. This week in Writer's/Reader's Workshop, our focus was on tracking character change in fictional stories (all of which featured themes related to attitude). To start things off, we read The Bad Seed. As a class, we discussed how the main character's attitude and disposition were impacted by events in his past and those around him. We then read Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. We compared the main characters from both books, noting how they are similar and different. We then discussed how a willingness to change impacted their overall attitude.
Next, we watched the Pixar Short, Boundin'. The video's theme song features the phrase "Bound and Rebound." In groups, third graders developed and shared strategies that they use to move from a negative attitude to a more positive one. To round out the week, third graders were asked to determine the meaning of the Helen Keller quote featured below. They did a wonderful job finding the underlying theme and had many insightful responses! The focus on maintaining a positive attitude proved to be a great way to transition back into our work as third graders. We will continue to focus on maintaining positivity and what strategies we can use to do just that! Comments are closed.
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Author
Mrs. Minatta is a third grade teacher at Cottonwood Creek Elementary. See and read all about what third graders are up to throughout the school year! Archives
March 2021
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