Another week down in 3rd grade, and students are cruising! Third graders have been working hard across all subject areas, while having fun in the process. This week, we wrapped up our first bend/unit in Reader’s Workshop. The bend centered on ‘Building a Reading Life,’ where third graders develop reading habits aimed at creating goals, monitoring progress, and utilizing strategies to comprehend fiction. The unit also included reading a mentor text, Stone Fox. The book serves as a representation of both determination and grit, skills we work to foster throughout third grade (and beyond)! Moving forward, we will continue to work with fiction. We’ll be analyzing author’s purpose, evaluating figurative language, and being thoughtful in our responses to text. In writing, we wrapped up our opinion pieces on trampoline parks. Third graders developed final drafts via Google Docs. Even with typing being a newer concept to most, students did an awesome job of typing out their pieces and even adding pictures and formatting! Next week, we’ll be targeting descriptive writing by embarking on a real estate listing project. Math this week was all about multiplication strategies through arrays. Students learned that rather than count all items in rows and columns, you can simply count over/down and multiply to determine how many items are present. We also practiced multiplication equations on a number line. Next week, we will work on developing multiple strategies to solve tricky multiplication problems. As a third grade team, we’ve been eager to get into the innovation space and utilize our new green screen room! That opportunity came this week, with third graders reporting out on their favorite Denver building that they visited on the field trip last week. On iPads, students were recorded in groups talking about their chosen building. Third graders then superimposed a picture of the building they discussed behind them and edited their videos to look realistic. This was such a fun process, and we’ll be sharing videos soon! Business:
What a week it's been in third grade! We started our week with a field trip and ended with Run4Fund$ prize day. Luckily, we managed to get some work done in between! Writing this week centered on one guiding question... Are trampoline parks safe? Third graders read an article that detailed reasons these destinations are both fun and dangerous. They then determined their own opinion, and began writing about it. Next week, we will continue with the drafting process and take our rough drafts to the computer to type them out! In math this week, we were focused on multiplication groupings and measurement. Third graders realized that multiplication is simply repeated addition... It's just a more efficient strategy to use! For example, rather than write 6+6+6+6, we can simply write 4 x 6. As we progress through the unit, we'll continue working on these multiplication facts. Students also practiced their measurement and estimation skills this week. Our goal was to make size comparisons between various objects and use them to determine the length/width of other objects. We are still developing this skill, and will continue practicing! Reader's workshop this week was all about grit. It takes grit to be a successful reader, especially when we come across tricky words! As a class, we went over strategies we can all use to figure out words that initially stump us, and how to show grit through the process. Third graders are definitely motivated to keep trying, even if obstacles stand in their way! See below for a few fun pictures from our Denver field trip. Third graders did a great job exploring and learning about the downtown area. Next week, we'll use all that we've learned throughout the Denver unit and report out using Cottonwood's new green screen! Another toasty September week in the books, and third graders are still hard at work! This week, in addition to stretching their minds in the classroom, third graders had the opportunity to visit Z Space, a mobile classroom that travels throughout the Cherry Creek School District. While visiting Z Space, third graders had a chance to experiment with virtual reality applications. It was an awesome experience... We had tons of fun! In our own classroom, third graders worked on one last stoplight writing piece. Students planned, and wrote rough drafts final copies independently. Woo! All this was to gauge overall understanding of the paragraph writing process, and to provide a chance to show off independent skills. Next week, we will begin an opinion piece with the overarching question: Are trampoline parks safe?
We have officially concluded our first unit in math, and are moving onto our introduction to multiplication! Third graders started by analyzing groupings and drawing connections to how repeated addition is very much what multiplication is all about. We will continue with this next week. Reader's Workshop this week was all about making strong predictions and retelling a story. As readers, we make predictions without even noticing! Our goal this week was to notice, and also back up our predictions with explanations on why/how we thought something would happen. Retelling a story was also a teaching point this week. Often, when retelling a story, we feel the urge to talk about the whole thing, and try to incorporate every little detail. As readers, our goal is to only feature the main points, and engage in the retelling process to improve overall understanding. Social studies was all about famous Denver buildings this week. Third graders learned about the history of the Brown Palace, the D & F Tower, and Union Station (to name a few). We are officially prepared for our walking tour, and are excited to see these historic buildings in-person! That being said... Our Denver Field Trip is Monday, September 17th! Because we will be taking a walking tour of the city, third graders will need the following:
We've cruised through a short week, and third graders really hit the ground running! In addition to learning new academic content, student displayed their Cottonwood spirit through participation in our Run4Fund$! It was great watching third graders fly through their laps, and many were determined to keep on going. Lap cards are traveling home with students, and any pledges/donations are due back September 14th! In the classroom, our work in Reader's Workshop was focused on envisioning, collecting information, and making predictions. Third graders practiced visualizing and collecting information from both our mentor text, Stone Fox, and their own independent reading material. Students were also challenged to make predictions and take them one step further by not only thinking about what could happen, but how it could occur in the story. Next week, we will continue working on making strong predictions and retelling stories. Denver History this week was focused on the famous people of Denver's history. Specifically, those that made a name not only for themselves, but also for our capitol city. Our first individual of study was Molly Brown, known for her "unsinkable" personality. Third graders were riveted when learning about her travels, most specifically her plight on the Titanic. Next week, we will be studying even more famous individuals, and work to discover their influence on Denver! In math, third graders tackled multi-step story problems, with a focus on the key words. Specifically, what operations the problem required, and what strategies to utilize. Third graders wrapped up the week with a checkpoint, and will soon be through with Unit 1: Addition and Subtraction Patterns. Up next, we'll dive into Unit 2: Introduction to Multiplication! Don't forget! Our Denver field trip is Monday, September 17th. Our class is incredibly lucky, and has already had multiple volunteers to chaperone. Unfortunately, we are only able to bring 4 chaperones with our class on the trip. Because of this, third grade teachers will randomly select chaperones from each class through a lottery system. If you are not contacted to chaperone by September 12th, this means your name was not drawn and we will not be needing you. Thank you all so much for volunteering. There will be another opportunity in the spring! Also... Our story parent sign-up is live! Feel free to sign-up by clicking the button below. On your story day please, bring in some books to read aloud to third graders. They love it! Business:
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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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