Don't Forget, Math OAA Tomorrow!

Tomorrow is our final OAA!  We have been preparing all year for this.  Today we did some review work as teams.

We are ready.  Don't forget to arrive to school on time, get a good breakfast, and a good night's rest.  Also, NO EARLY DISMISSAL tomorrow.

See you in the morning!

OAA Information...We are Ready!

The OAAs (Ohio Achievement Assessments) are just around the corner.  This Thursday, April 25th we will be taking the Reading portion followed by the Mathematics on Tuesday, April 30th.  Here are some important things to keep in mind:

*  Please get a good night's rest!

* Eat breakfast

* Arrive to school on time

* There will be NO EARLY DISMISSAL on Tuesday, April 30th (2:55)

* Remember to take your time on each question

There's no doubt the students in room 407 work hard.  Here's a slideshow of just a little of the hard work we've done.  We are ready!!

Monday Fun Day: Celebration and Thinking about our Thinking

Today we celebrated achieving our class goal of 2,500,000 AR words!  It's incredible how quickly we reached this goal.  Not only did we reach this, we are almost HALFWAY to our next goal of 3,000,000 words.  Room 407 cannot be stopped!  Keep reading!

Also, today we talked again about something called metacognition.  Here at Maple, we encourage students to think about their thinking and be aware of their learning.  It's important for them to take ownership of their education not only in third grade, but every year after.  After a review of metacognition, we practiced with some thinking stems and a reading article.

They did wonderfully.  Great job, third graders!  Happy Monday!

Happy Friday!

By popular request, I am adding a link to some Mad Libs games.  (We practiced words/parts of speech this week using this game)

http://www.itsamadlibsworld.com/

Have a great weekend!

Being Botanists at the Holden Arboretum

     What a beautiful day!  The weather was perfect for a field trip.  We got to be botanists and study about the life cycle of plants.  From seed, to seedling, to mature plant, to flowering plant, to plant with seeds, and back to seed again!  I couldn't be happier with the students' behavior either.  They were all very respectful examples of Maple Elementary students!

Here are some images from our trip.  Students, can you tell a grown-up at home about each picture?

Field Trip Tomorrow

We are all set and ready to go on our exciting field trip tomorrow!  We have spent some time learning about how plants grow, both with our own seeds and our terrariums.  Now it's time to see some nature in action!  The Holden Arboretum is a beautiful place, and we are very fortunate to have the opportunity to return.

Some things to keep in mind for our trip:

* Students may dress down.  This means dress for the weather and plan to be outside most of the day!
* Please arrive to school on time tomorrow.  We will be leaving right after our awards assembly in the morning.
* Remember, if you did not sign up for a lunch from school, you must bring one.  You are more than welcome to use a lunch box, but I recommend a disposable grocery or brown bag as it is less for the students to remember to bring home with them.
* Be ready to have fun and learn!

See you in the morning!

-Mrs. H

Fraction Review Song

Watching Seeds Grow: The Follow Up

Remember this?

Our seeds  have been busy.  Today we made our observations:

How Four Friends Can Share Seven Brownies

"How can four friends share seven brownies equally? How many brownies will each person get?"  

That is the problem we worked through today in math.  We started out by discussing it, drawing diagrams, and cutting paper brownies until we solved it...

I was impressed at how much effort the students put into solving this problem.  Perhaps the subject of sharing brownies is of very high interest?  :)

After some independent and partner work, the majority of the class came up with 3 answers:

1) Each friend gets 1 and 1/2 and1/4 of a brownie.

2) Each friend gets 1 and 3/4 of a brownie.

3) Each friend gets 7/4 of a brownie.

Were they all right?  Yep!  How?

Third grade... can you explain to your grown ups at home how ALL of these answers are correct?

Fraction Action!

If you were to come into room 407 for math time during the last couple of days, you would see a flurry of fractions!  We are making our own fraction models with paper.  Fractions can be a difficult concept to master, especially when they are abstract thoughts.  However, when they are concrete pieces we can manipulate, suddenly they are less intimidating!  Check out some pictures of our fractions in action:

Here are some of the questions we discussed during our fraction exploration:

What happens to the size of a fraction when the denominator increases or decreases?

How many ways can we add fractions to equal one whole?

What does it mean when the numerator changes?

How does 1/6 compare to 1/3?

Great thinking, class!