How To Blow A Bubble

Today during our writing block I gave each of the kiddies a piece of bubble gum and told them to practice blowing bubbles. They were quite excited to participate in such an activity! Afterwards they  were given their task:
to write instructions on "how to blow a bubble." Everyone was extremely thrilled to be practicing their procedural writing skills with such an authentic learning task! Tomorrow we will edit up our writing and begin sharing as a class!

Data Management

Today we began a math unit called Data Management. In this unit students will collect, organize and display data into graphs and charts. They will also interpret data that is presented in graphs and charts. The main types used throughout this unit will be Venn diagrams, pictographs, bar graphs and tally charts.
This is one of my favourite math units and is usually the students too! We have a lot of fun with many different hands on problems and activities. Before going into teaching I actually was headed down the road of research (specifically health sciences), so I am kinda a "data nerd" as Mr. Linse would say!

Practice Problems!

1. Emma has 24 crayons to put on six boxes. She wants to put the same number of crayons in each box. How many crayons should she put in each box?

2. Ashleigh has 4 pairs of mittens. How many mittens does she have?

3. There are 7 days in a week.

How many days are there in 6 weeks?

4. Erica wants to share her 18 marbles with two other friends. Including Erica, how many marbles will each of them receive? 

Math Test

We have been very busy preparing for Tuesday's math test. This test will cover both multiplication and division. 

Some key ideas to review are:

- Multiplication is repeated addition.

- Students must be able to make addition sentences from multiplication ones and vice versa.

- To multiply you must have equal groups.

- Practice songs and facts (0-7 times table and 10 times table).

- An array is equal rows.

- Division using both groups and arrays.

- Fact families.

- Solving different word problems for both multiplication and division.

I have posted some problems to practice too.

 

Procedural Writing

Today we started learning about a writing form called procedural writing. I kicked off the unit this morning with a really cute activity. I tell the kiddies that I am going to give them instructions that they need to follow carefully.
Here are my instructions:
Draw a square, next draw a triangle, then draw a rectangle and finally draw a circle.
I then ask all kids to reveal the house that they made. Twenty kiddies look at me very confused since they all just had some shapes drawn randomly beside each other on a piece of paper.
Lesson learned... instructions (or procedures) need to be very clear and detailed!

 

Division

This afternoon we began learning about division. Just like many of our math concepts, I teach the boys and girls a number of different strategies for them to put inside their imaginary tool belts. This way, when they are problem solving, they can dig out the strategy that they like to use best. I strongly urge the kiddies to continue to practice their multiplication songs and facts. Being able to recall multiplication facts quickly, helps make division seem that much easier!

Practice Practice!

This week we are wrapping up multiplication and are just about ready to jump into division. I strongly encourage that the boys and girls practice their songs and strategies regularly at home. It is only through lots of review and practice that multiplying (and then dividing) will become quick and easy. Yesterday we learned the 7 times table song and briefly practiced the six song today. We should have the three and four song down pat by now as well as quick strategies for multiplying by 0, 1, 2, 5 and 10!

Glogster

In Social Studies the boys and girls have been researching a different First Nation tribe with a partner. Now that all their research is collected, I wanted them to share their great learning with their peers. In the past I would have used "old fashioned" Bristol Boards to present their written information and pictures. In keeping up with the times, I realize that these type of presentations are not so popular and will probably never be used once the kiddies get to high school (which is crazy to think is in only 5 years!)I have turned to an online resource called "Glogster." This website allows users to create interactive posters (sorta like a Bristol Board). It looks like a poster, but readers can interact with the content. We can insert text, images, photos, audio, and videos into their glogs (a.k.a. posters) to generate a multimedia online creation! We began to explore the site on the Smartboard today and fiddled around with how it works. This week we will begin to create our posters with our partners... I can't wait to get "glogging!"

What's An Array?

This week in math we learned all about arrays.

An array shows objects that are arranged in equal rows.
We can use an array to multiply.

 Use an array to solve the following problem:

Mrs. Linse planted bulbs in her garden.
She planted 4 rows of 6 bulbs.
How many bulbs did Mrs. Linse plant in all?
Show your work and write the multiplication sentence.

Research

On Friday we began a mini research project in social studies. This activity will be completed only at school. I am very excited as this project is going to be one of those "hit many birds with one stone" sorta activities. We will cover curriculum expectations in the areas of:

- reading
- writing
- social studies
- media
- oral visual

I anticipate a lot of great learning to take place. I can't wait to share the finished projects with everyone!

This is what our Friday afternoon looked like:

New Novel

Our new end of the day read aloud is called "Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher." It is one of my faves and tends to captivate the attention of all the kiddies! I look forward to enjoying this book together!

Language Learning

In Writing we are still focusing on letter writing. We will hopefully wrap this up next week and move on to procedural writing (which is a fancy word for instructions).

In Reading we will jump into a mini unit in non fiction text features. These are things like table of contents, glossary, index, different types of print, diagrams and labels, headings and subheadings and photographs. Reading non fiction now and then at home and drawing attention to the different text features would be a great way to facilitate learning at home!

In Word Study we have been learning about adverbs while reviewing the other parts of speech.

We will start up some new winter themed centres to help facilitate our language learning as well!

Multiplication Learning

In just one week we have learned so many great things in math!

Here are some things we have learned about multiplication:


- to multiply you MUST have equal groups
- multiplication is repeated addition
- anything times 0 will always be 0
- anything times 1 will always  be the other factor (number)
- when you multiply by 2 you double the other factor
- when you multiply by 5 you can count by 5s
- we have really cool songs to help us with the 3 and 4 times tables

I think that this is a pretty good list for just four days into it!


Here is a problem:

Mrs. Linse bought 4 boxes of yummy gluten free cookies.
Each box had 6 cookies inside.
How many cookies did Mrs. Linse buy in all?

Multiplication Madness

It is the time in math that all kiddies have been waiting for... our unit in multiplication!
I don't know what it is or why it is, but all grade three kids LOVE when we begin this unit. The smiles on their faces is priceless. It is absolutely adorable!

We learn cutesy songs throughout the unit to help us memorize our times tables. In fact, have your chickadee sing the 0 or 3 times table song to you tonight at the dinner table! It makes for some good entertainment ;)

Throughout the unit, we learn that  multiplication really is just a quick way to add (we call multiplication and addition very close cousins), we learn other neat strategies to multiply (ask tonight about "plates and cookies") and then we jump into division.

It is a great unit with lots of opportunity for problem solving.

Here is one to try:

Mrs. Linse has 3 strips of stickers. On each strip are 5 stickers. How many stickers does Mrs. Linse have altogether?
Write both the multiplication and addition sentence to go with this question.

Happy New Year and Welcome Back!

Yesterday we got right back into the swing of things! We began our morning by sharing our favourite memory from Christmas break. It sounds like we all had a very special time off with family and friends. We spent the rest of the day working on some New Years activities, letter writing about our favourite Christmas gift and began our new math unit: multiplication and division! It was a busy and productive day!