We kicked off this week with a review of addition facts. We incorporated the work into a morning message and challenged the Temescalians to come up with different ways to make 19. We encouraged them to use any operation that they wanted to, and many rose up to the challenge! As we venture into the new Bridges math program, we are building up and on past skills the Temescalians have already acquired and going more in depth with the concept to give them a deeper understanding of the idea.
We started by looking at a rekenrek to see how familiar the Temescalians are with addition facts up to 20.
One Temescalian noted that [when there were 3 red beads and 5 white beads on the top row and 2 red beads and 5 white beads on the bottom row] “I saw the red beads and saw that 3 and 2 equals to five. And I saw the whites (5 and 5) they added up to ten. So 10+5 is 15.” Another 3rd grader observed [when there were 4 red beads and 5 white beads on the top row and 4 red beads and 5 white beads on the bottom row] “I saw the 4 red and 4 red so that is 8 and I added it to the white ones, which is 10. So that is 18 altogether.” Other kids wrote this out in numbers as 9 + 9 = 18. While these addition facts should be second nature to incoming 3rd graders, the visual representation of the numbers as 9 broken into 4 + 5 and 4 + 5 is helpful to be able to quickly combine the numbers together and also see how the numbers are related to one another.
Another way that we reviewed addition numbers facts was to look at an addition table which had addition facts laid out in a table and started coloring it in, according to patterns/categories. For example, we colored in all “zero facts” red. All doubles facts yellow. All doubles plus/minus one green. This is not be the initial way one may categorize addition facts, but thinking about addition facts in this way will help them be able to add numbers quickly in the future. (A doubles fact would be 6 + 6 = 12. A doubles plus/minus one would be 6 + 7 = 13. If they knew the doubles fact for 6s, they’d see that 7 is one more than 6 and thus add one more to the doubles fact.)
We embarked on our Writing Workshop by parsing out the “Who/What/When/Where/Why/How” of our summer memento. (If your Temescalian has yet to bring one in, please do so as soon as you can! We’d love for a visual to accompany their descriptions.) This exercise is a way to ease into writing by sticking to just the facts. It is also a way for us to learn about each other and what we did over the summer!
Susan came in for Digital Citizenship and went over the Responsible Use Policy (RUP) in order for the Temescalians to have access to use the Chromebooks we have available at school. If you have yet to return a signed copy of this RUP, please do so as soon as you can! We plan on using Chromebooks later in the year to learn touch typing with Susan, and eventually type out a local plant/animal research report. For this week’s session, Temescalians who returned the forms were able to practice logging in and out of their accounts on Chromebooks.
A landmark of third grade is learning how to write in cursive. We introduced the workbooks to the Temescalians, reminded them of the necessity for a strong foundation of good posture and pencil grip, and that even if they know how to write in cursive, there are different ways to write standard cursive that we expect them to learn in the class. The Temescalians were abuzz with excitement as they tried to match the printed upper and lower case letters with their cursive counterparts.
Our study in science stemmed from the current events of Hurricane Harvey and its effects in Houston and the coming landfall of Hurricane Irma. Last week, we learned that hurricanes are the same thing as typhoons except hurricanes occur over the Atlantic and Northeast Pacific. They develop over hot ocean water. As the water rises and evaporates, cool air rushes in to fill the space of the hot air, and soon a cycle of wind has formed.
Because of the rotation of the earth, it always swirls counter clockwise. To engrain this idea in our heads, we tried to act out what happens to water molecules in a hurricane with a red fuzz ball representing the hot air molecules and a blue fuzz ball representing the cold air molecules. As the hot air molecules rose, we would switch them out for cold air molecules and move them back towards the ground. After a few practices of that motion, we stood up and started swirling counterclockwise to mimic what happens in a hurricane.
We hope to continue the discussion of what happens in the aftermath of a hurricane and how we can help! It is moments like these that we can weave in moments of civic engagement and start to understand the need of those in the greater community.
We ended the week with a trip to Lake Anza. This annual event is a wonderful way to celebrate a week in our new classroom communities while also connecting with friends from old classes and old buddies. We took a hike around the lake, and with the erosion from last season’s rains, some parts were a bit more rough than before, but as a team, and some parent help, we made it through!
We finished off our trip with a few hours in the sun, splashing in the lake, and making “hot tubs”.
A snapshot of silliness of our Temescalians singing “Pop See Ko“!
We hope you had a great weekend, and we look forward to seeing you on Thursday for Back to School Night! It is 6-8pm, but take note that there is no childcare available that evening! (For upcoming events, please refer to the sidebar on the right!)
