October was BUSY!

In the time that has passed since our last blog post (yikes, Ms. Beck!) we dressed up in our finest duds and had picture day!  We can’t wait to see how fancy the portraits turned out.  Dakota said these two looked like Steve Harvey and we can’t disagree with her!

We practiced what to do in the event of a tornado, an earthquake, or a fire all in one day!  We are so safe!  There’s nothing we aren’t ready for in room 36! #safety

   

We completed an entire unit on animal adaptations starting with an inquiry project where students were asked to answer the question “How does the animal survive in its habitat?” on a sticky note and then over the course of two weeks, we sorted out student answers onto charts.  This is how we learned about all sorts of physical and behavioral adaptations!  It was also a great way to discuss certain habitats, animals, and it gave Ms. Beck a good idea of who knew what about adaptations!  We camouflaged fish and hid them around the classroom from each other and had so much fun trying to find them.

          

The grossest, but COOLEST part of our science unit on animal adaptations was dissecting owl pellets!  Check out the pictures and a video of us hard at work!

              

Click here to watch the us dissecting in action!

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In math, we finished our unit on place value (comparing, rounding, expanding numbers, etc.) and dove head first into exploring addition and subtraction strategies!  Having a strong grasp of strategies of simple math problems and processes pays dividends later on when adding and subtracting larger numbers, which we have to master by the end of third grade!  The pictures below show some of the strategies we practiced and (as in the previous blog post) we created Flipgrids to demonstrate these strategies for other students!

There’s a picture of Porter on his chair in celebration as the first student in our class to master his math drills!  Way to go, Porter!  We are proud of you and we can wait to join you!

           

Click here to see Carmelo demonstrate the Greg Tang “Breakapart” or “Make 10” strategy!Untitled//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

 

Small group reading instruction is going splendidly, as well as reading stations around the room.  Check out what’s going on at the kidney table with Ms. Beck as well as the other stations around the room!

       

 

In whole group reading, we learned about nonfiction text features.  We looked through a science text book chapter on animals and labeled all the text features we could find and discussed what we learned about animals from those features in small groups.  Look at how hard we worked!

           

Click here to watch this lesson in live action!Untitled//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js

We participated in Mix It Up lunch where we were able to sit with a mixed up group of first, second, and third graders and practice our conversational skills.  While this might make us uncomfortable at first, it’s a great way to build relationships with Mallards outside of our classrooms!  #communication

 

And in the event you haven’t heard, we just finished a writing unit on cracked fairy tales!  We started by hearing a story about Goldilocks and the Three Bears that was a little different; Goldilocks runs into three ghosts instead and gets turned into a ghost herself!  We worked our way through the writing process including brainstorming, planning, writing a rough draft, peer revising and editing and then typing a first final draft into our Google Drive.  What might have been our favorite part was learning that we can collaborate with one another on the same file in real time to suggest final revisions and edits!  Once we printed our final drafts, we practiced reading them aloud and then recorded our podcasts.  To hear them, have your child log into their Google Classroom via Clever and show you how to hear their podcast and those of their classmates’!

          

What doest 21st century collaboration look like in a third-grade classroom in Henrico County when it comes to writing?  Play the video below to find out!

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It’s finally fall and we are thrilled to be ending our first quarter out strong!  Bring on second quarter!

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