Aaron Reynold's Visits Hough

We had an amazing time with Aaron Reynold yesterday as he taught us the importance of writing to express yourself and reading to enjoy yourself. His energy and enthusiasm was contagious. Ellison and Everett were part of the Nerd Game that Aaron played. What a fun morning with an amazing author! Our discussion after Aaron's visit helped us to remember that even when reading and writing can be challenging we can find ways to make it fun and exciting. Today students will  begin their first draft of their personal narrative! Perfect timing!

Using Ipads to plan and write narrative stories-Chloe demonstrates!

Our class has been working hard to plan narrative stories using a story mountain. During this students work hard to find the heart of their story. We used Padlet to make our story mountains and practiced storytelling them to our writing partners.  Chloe modeled her storytelling with her ipad. Take a look~she did an amazing job! Ask your child what their 3 story mountains are about. Maybe they can work on storytelling them to you!

Executive Functioning

Every day I wake up and read an article about education and learning. It is a goal of mine to continue as a life long learner and to grow my thinking and knowledge of how to help children grow. Here are two great articles about executive functioning. We work hard in 3rd grade to develop and strengthen executive functioning by using self awareness, strategies for improving weaker areas, and self monitoring to develop metacognition (thinking about our thinking).
Enjoy these articles and I would love to hear what you think.
Have a great weekend!

What is Executive Functioning

Strategies for Strengthening Executive Functioning

A Day on the Prairie ~ Grigsby Prairie

We had a wonderful day learning about the prairie today. Students learned about the characteristics of the prairie plants, seeds, as well as, measured many plants to compare the importance of these traits for survival on the prairie. Thank you to Mr. Dever, Mr. Matta, Mrs. Naughten, and Mrs. McDonald for joining us today! What a day on the prairie.

Safe Search Engines

Now that your child has an I-pad to use at home, here is a list of some safe search engines that I am familiar with, along with some tips that may help keep your child safe and control some of the time on the device.
AT&T wifi safety: AT&T Safety

Xfinity Wifi Safety information: parental control information

Curbi device/app- How to manage devices - Curbi information

3 Reasons to Use Mental Math

I am a huge advocate of mental math. However, there was a time when I questioned what the big deal about mental math was. I was one of those teachers who firmly believed that students should learn how to add and subtract using carrying and borrowing, and that was that! Well, was I ever wrong. When I began teaching mental math, I was astonished at the growth that students experienced. Students who were not “mathematical thinkers” suddenly “got it!” And the students who were already mathematical thinkers became even quicker with their facts! For those of you who are wondering why you should start teaching it, here are three good reasons.

1. Mental Math encourages actual understanding, not just memorization.When you teach students how to add an equation such as 19+23 using carrying, you are teaching a series of steps. For some students, this will work great, and they will catch right on. But for some, it is downright confusing. Where do I put the number? Do I carry the first one or the last one? BUT, when you teach students to break down the numbers and add 10+20 to make 30, 9+3 to make 12, and then 30+12 to make 42, students learn a deep understanding of the numbers. Suddenly that “1” in 19 is not just a 1. It’s a 10. And the “2” in 23 is not just a 2. It’s a 20. Students GET it!

2. Mental Math is logical. It just makes sense. I do think that there is a place for carrying and borrowing, but I am a huge believer that students should learn to do math mentally first. I have had grade 3 students solve an equation like 243+362 in their heads in mere seconds. For real. And that’s without pencil and paper. There is less room for error, and because students are more aware of the numbers, they are more likely to question an answer that doesn’t “look” or “sound” right. {Ever had a student answer a question like 240-150 with some crazy answer like 360 when they’re borrowing and you say to them, “Does that look like it would be the right answer? Let’s think about it…” Well with mental math, students ARE thinking about it right from the beginning, so they won’t make the kinds of mistakes that they do when simply following a series of confusing steps.}

3. Mental Math is fun! It is! I’m serious! When I began teaching this way, I really was re-energized about math. It is easier to understand, easier to do, and just all around exciting! I was actually getting better at math along with my students, which is probably why I’m a bit obsessed with it. 

Big Birthday Weekend!

I have never had so many birthdays over one weekend before!  Happy Birthday to Everett, Owen and Rihana! Hope you had an amazing weekend celebrating your special day!

Nature Lady visits 3rd grade

The nature lady came to 3rd grade last week to help prepare students for the upcoming field trip on Thursday, 9/22. Students then created a Bill of Rights that they agreed upon to make sure to treat the prairie with respect. Students will visit the prairie to learn more about seeds and plant growth. 

Mr. George the storyteller visits our room today

Today Mr. George came into our class to model his amazing storytelling skills. We are using this to help us write narrative stories using a storytellers voice. We also looked at our story mountain anchor chart to determine what the "heart" of Mr. George's story was and the rising action and falling action. Ask your child about any of their story ideas. We have spent a lot of time generating ideas and working on choosing stories that are worth telling.

"It's Monday...What are your kids reading?"

Here are a few pictures of a padlet we joined in with another school in the district to show what we are reading this week. We used our ipads to connect with other students at Lines.

Fact fluency

As we move into another chapter in Math please remember that practicing math from previous chapters and even from younger grades helps build fluency. Gregtangmath.com has the best games to play for 3rd graders. Use this chart to read about the importance of math fluency and as a resources for your child to practice. We will be doing A LOT of greg Tang math games throughout the year when ipads start to come home.

Fact Fluency Practice

Research & Articles

Automaticity vs. Memorization

Why Children Have Difficulties Mastering the Basic Number Combinations and How to Help Them

Fluency Without Fear

The Road to Fluency and the License to Think

Tech Activity	Topics	Info
Kakooma	Addition, multiplication, fact families	Students identify fact families by choosing which of three numbers does not fit in a family with the other three numbers.  This game is highly engaging and can be played against others.
Numtanga	Various representations of numbers	Students view four different representations of numbers (digits, ten frames, fingers, etc.) and need to find the two cards that match in the set.
Math Limbo	Balancing addition equations	Students are shown a game board of numbers from 1-10.  They are then shown addition problems, represented by ten frames, fingers, or digits.  They need to choose digits from the game board to represent the correct sum.  Sometimes, they can just choose the right answer but if that number has already been used during the round, they have to find a sum that equals that number.

Science and Math come together

Today we learned about mass in science. We looked at dry lima bean seeds and compared them to soaked lima bean seeds. Each group had a balance scale to use to compare seeds and weights to use to determine the weight in grams. It was fun to see the exploration and listen to the questions! Here is a little peek....