Project Based Learning in Room 8

Room 8 scholars have been tasked with making a museum to teach others about the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome!  The students quickly realized that they would need to know a great deal about the civilizations if they were to make a museum, so they began by generating a very comprehensive list of questions. After organizing their questions, they jumped right into researching using the IIM method. Check out the link below to learn more about project based learning and be sure to check back to see how our students decide to show what they know!

http://www.edutopia.org/project-based-learning

Math Multiplication by Nash

     Wow!  We have been doing so much math.  Here are some examples.  We have been doing CML (Continental Math League).  They are really hard.  I think some of us think it is easy.  We have found many different ways to do the problems.  We used the four operations.  We do math exemplars to who what we know and extend our work.  We have not been doing a lot of math homework, but we will soon.  So stay tuned.  One of the games we have played is Spiral Multiplication.  This game helps us with multiplication.  We have been doing a lot in math.

IIM Research by:Abby

This is what room 8 3rd graders are up to! What is IIM research? IIM research is facts put on notes. First you find facts and put it on a bigger piece of paper. What have we researched? we have researched famous Americans and Oysters. We researched 3 famous Americans, George Washington Carver, Ben Franklin, and Powhatan, Oysters! We have been researching oysters to raise their population. We researched life cycle, history, what food chain they are part of , and What if the population drops(?) What do some of our classmates like about IIM research? Jhiveon likes that we get to cut and glue. Natalia likes where somebody writs one paragraph and another person wrote another paragraph. Austin just likes researching! That's what I call research. 

Ecosystems of the Chesapeake

This group worked to show how the Chesapeake Bay as an ecosystem is a structure.  They created aquatic and terrestrial food webs which interacted and became food webs.  They also built a model of an oyster reef!  Way to go!

Chesapeake Bay Characteristics

This group worked to show how the salinity, temperature and circulation of the water in the Chesapeake Bay are all interrelated.  They learned about what makes an estuary and a watershed.  Their map also shows the producers, both terrestrial and aquatic, that make up this impressive structure!

The Oyster Story

This group worked to tell the story of the rise and fall of the oyster population.  They showed human and environmental stressors on the oyster population on their timeline.  This timeline includes charts, graphs, photographs and original artwork to tell the story of the oyster in the Lynnhaven River.

BUILD YOUR WILD SELF by John

     Today we went to the computer lab and did www.buildyourwildself.com.  It was a lot of fun, first we picked a body.  Then we picked some awesome clothes.  After that we picked a skin tone.  Then after that we picked ears, eyes, mouth, tail, arms and all that cool stuff.  We did all of this because we're learning about adaptations and camoflague, instinctive and learned adaptations too.  Like Natalia used her animal to show that she knew about mimicry by saying that her animal hibernates and by doing that it mimics the bear.  To summarize, buildyourwildself.com was a lot of fun!

Heros All by Ainsley

     We will be singing about some of our famous American Heros.  The songs that we are singing in Heros All are about Helen Keller, Susan B. Anthony, Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King, Jr.  We will be having the Heros All performance on November 21, 2013 at 6:30 pm. We rehearse in the cafeteria and practice in the music room.  Many kids in our classroom like singing and speaking in Heros All.   Other kids in room 8 say that Heros All brings back memories about all of our heros that helped us back then.  I hope everyone enjoys watching the show.

November 4-8 by Room 8 Scholars

Veterans Day by Camryn, Nash, Jocelyn, Jacob, and Abby

     Veterans Day honors people who serve or have served in the military.  My  dad honors and serves our country.  When he is working he has to make sacrifices and give up certain liberties, like spending time with family.  Sometimes my dad is not here on holidays, like Christmas, my birthday, and Thanksgiving and Halloween.  My dad went away for 6 months.  Sometimes he goes away for longer like 9 months or shorter like 5 days.  Sometimes I only see my dad on the weekends because he works far away during the week.  My dad is not always safe.  If he dies, he dies serving our country.  We all love our parents.  Whenever our parents are gone at least we know they are serving our country and protecting our liberties and freedom.

Math by Ellie

     I am writing about math.  Not like addition, subtraction, multiplication or division.  I am talking about just subtraction.  Not subtract like one-digit numbers or numbers like 37, 22, or even 10.  I am talking about 3-digit numbers.  Such as 369, 293, or 568.  Also I am talking about 2-digit numbers such as 98, 87, even 58.  Today the math problem is 

                                                                           369

                                                                           - 87  

So I just do what I always do when I am subtracting.  Since I can't subtract 8 from 6, I have to exchange.  So I cross out the 3 and make it a two  Then, I make the 6 a 16.  Now I can subtract 8 from 16.  So my answer is 282!

Special Events in Room 8 by Reeves

     We have many exiting events in room 8.  Good job with reflection everyone.  Quinn with his Ga'hoole writing and Ainsley and her "Chase the Day Away" entry and Kyle R. with his photography.  Don't forget to bring in cans for stuff the turkey!  So far Mr. Helke is winning with about 27 cans.  But theirs still time to bring in more.  I'm glad we could wear our costumes on Halloween.  I like all the cool costumes every one wore.  We also liked boo grams.  Don't forget to come to Chuck-E-Cheese Family Night to play fun games and earn cool prizes next Wednesday November 13.  I hope everyone enjoyed these special events!

* A note from Ms. Greene:  Reeves didn't mention that she also entered the Reflections contest!  I wanted to be sure she was recognized as well!

October 21-November 1

MATH:  We have introduced multiplication in math and have had fun with games to help us learn our facts.  Here's one called spiral multiplication you can play at home with a deck of cards and a die.

Spiral Multiplication

Array for Multiplication!

SCIENCE:  The students have continued their study of oysters as we try to figure out how to help the Oyster Reef Keepers of Virginia increase the oyster population in the Lynnhaven River.  First they decided they needed to know something about the oyster's life cycle and how it fit into the food chain.  From there we explored food webs, energy pyramids, population and community, and ecosystems.  Next week we will see how the oyster fits in to what we learned.

Mrs. Sorabella came in to repeat the oyster filtration
experiment.  The first time it didn't work.  We learned
that scientists often have to repeat their experiments,
especially when they get unusual or unexpected data.

Oysters filtered this water in less than an hour!

Next we were off to research!  We have our own
Share point page you can see under Sites to See on the ODC homepage.  

LANGUAGE ARTS:  In addition to all the research and nonfiction text reading we did, we enjoyed a week with Junior Great Books reading The Fisherman's Wife.  We even had a guest teacher, Kriko Michaels, from the Great Books Foundation come and teach our class for a day!  The students are doing a great job learning about different types of questioning and are really pushing themselves and each other to develop critical thinking skills!

AND OF COURSE HALLOWEEN BROUGHT LOTS OF FUN!  

Dr. Hedrick booed us!  The boo grams were a blast and really got everyone in the spirit of giving and friendship!

It was so fun to see everyone's creative costumes!

.  

 
We used pumpkins to develop our scientific inquiry skills.  The children predicted the weight of their pumpkin, the number of ribs and circumference, how many seeds it had, and whether it would float or sink.  They each wrote a hypothesis (a testable statement) about the relationship of the size or weight and the number of seeds.  They collected their data, compared their data with other groups' data, and then analyzed the data before writing up a conclusion. 

Introducing.... Student Bloggers!

Social Studies by Lucy

This week in geography we have been learning about maps.  Our first project was to create our own made up continent.  Some people chose to have a partner and others didn't.  For the past week everybody has been working nonstop.  Our map was to have a key, labeled countries, land forms and bodies of water around it.


Cartography by Kyle P.

A cartographer is someone who looks at ariel photos and makes new representations of them.  A cartographer is also a position of a larger group called mapping scientists.  A cartographer uses the help of geographic information system a.k.a GIS makes maps, charts, and photographs of large areas on the earths outer shell.  A cartographer also updates old maps when something new is built like a road, city or neighborhood.  Photogrammists look at aerial photos and create representations of them called scaled maps.  Mosiacists take and arrange ariel photos in a certain order.  Being able to look and change aerial photos is a important piece of cartography.  The final product of a cartographers work includes weather aps (as seen on TV), atlases, GPSs and tons more!  This is what I know of cartography.

Sign Up for Fall Conferences!

I promised student bloggers would be taking over this week, but with all the science and math going on in room 8, we will have to postpone the excitement until next week!

A few announcements:

Please follow the link to sign up for Fall Conferences.  It couldn't be easier!http://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0F4CACA72EA6FB6-fall

The students are becoming expert letter writers as we have had many thank you letters to write!  Thank you to the PTA for the great math assembly on Monday.  Thank you to Mrs. Rudolph for bringing in some science fun to show another way matter can change!

This demonstration proved a great deal about volume and mass.  Ask your scholar to explain!

Students have been using Edmodo to discuss their mathematical and scientific thinking!  Below is a picture of a student who submitted a Power Point presentation to show 6 digit numbers in the real world.  This led many students to revise their thinking about math in the real world!

Don't forget to plan for early dismissal this Thursday, October 3. 

Just Warming Up!

Well, things are really warming up in room 8!

It seems the students have decided that we should have Food Fridays!  Thank you to Noah for bringing in some delicious grape drink last week to highlight our discussion of measurement (real world application of volume, standard and metric measurement, cups, pints, quarts, gallons, milliliters and liters, not to mention the mathematics involved in doubling a recipe through repeated addition or multiplication).

Thank you to Liam for bringing in a snow cone maker to demonstrate observable physical properties of matter.  Already experts on the states of matter from their study in the second grade, this served nicely to introduce our essential question:  "How does matter change?"  I wonder what they will decide to do next week!

We are exploring the scientific process though an experiment involving gummy bears.  The question was posed:  "What happens if a gummy bear is submerged in water for 24 hours?"  The students formed their hypothesis, collected data, discussed our essential question, "How is measurement used to communicate data?" and formulated a conclusion to answer their original question.  We repeated the experiment to see if we achieved the same results.  In deciding who our audience should be, the students decided to report to to the other classes and compare data.  Some students even went home and took the experiment to the next level, posing their own hypothesis!

Friday also brought our first discussion of SYSTEMS!  The students were making wonderful connections to lead us into our third grade theme!

Several students have chosen to research scientists using the IIM method.  They developed some big questions, decided what sources to use to find their answers, divided their tasks, and began their research.  They will report their findings to their peers later next week. 

In math we have continued our discussion of numeration, making, comparing and rounding really large numbers and finding real world uses for large numbers and rounding.  We even got to use the iPads again to access menus from local restaurants to plan meals for eating out.  

Finally we are warming up as writers and readers.  We have some voracious readers in our class.  After collecting some data and graphing the results it has been determined that fantasy is the favorite genre.  The students have been challenged to read thirty books in third grade.  The caveat is that they must read books in many genres.  This is one way to grow as a reader.  We started with poetry and had some wonderful readings.  Next we will try our hand at writing poetry.

We had a fun writing lesson which used play dough as a metaphor for the writing process.  A very deep lesson which the children will be able to connect to as they learn to revise and edit their writing throughout the year.

I hope your children are having as much fun as I am!  Next week I shall be taking a step back from my duties as a blogger for our classroom, turning over the responsibility to the students!  Stay tuned!

Happy Friday!

     We had a wonderful week of learning in room 8.

     In math we continued to reinforce place value, reading and writing large numbers.  Can your child show you how to play math battleship at home?  It's a fun one!  Here are some math challenge questions:

• What period comes after the trillions?  When would someone need to use a number that large?  Can you think of some examples?  
• Try this link to practice reading those really large numbers: http://www.mathcats.com/explore/reallybignumbers.html
• Children can you stump your parents?  How many two-digit numbers are possible using the digits 0-9? (Remind them that they may not use the same digit in the number twice, and numbers with zeros in the tens place should not be considered since it is a mathematical convention to write them as a single digit number.)  Good luck!)

     We will be digging into rounding next as we discuss the essential understanding that patterns are structures that identify relationships.

     Our IIM research model is going well.  We have gathered all our research and are going to write to answer the children's big questions:  Why is Betsy Ross famous?  and What is her backstory that led her to become famous?

     We had a wonderful week diving into Junior Great Books.  Our first Shared Inquiry discussion went very well with children listening to each other, and addressing each other with ideas supported by evidence from the text.  Poetry will be coming up next!

     Our scientists have been making careful observations of their physical world by observing the physical properties of size, color, shape, and texture.  On Monday they will begin to conduct and design experiments using the scientific process.  A classmate brought in a special treat to show us how he uses measurement at home.  Thank you, Noah, for the delicious grape drink and the measurement lesson it prompted! (The children talked about wanting to start "Food Fridays," an idea that sounds great to me!  I already overheard several ideas of what we could eat that ties into the study of matter!)

     Finally, a thank you to all the parents who came out to Open House!  I hope you enjoy a wonderful weekend with your families!

Red, white and blue for September 11th

Remember to wear red, white, and blue tomorrow to show unity as citizens of the United States!

Homework for week of September 9th

Math:  Bring in something from home to show how you use math at home to decorate our math board.  Hints:  Check the newspaper or a magazine for ideas (National Geographic is a great place to look).  Many classmates wrote about recipes, shopping, and measurement in last week's homework assignment. 
Science:  How do you use measurement at home?  Use the language of the discipline.  We will be talking this week about measurement vocabulary and ways in which scientists use measurement to communicate.
Both assignments are due Friday.  Everyone is still in the homework club.  Keep it up, scholars!

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Welcome to Room 8

This is where we will blog about our learning journey this year.  You will all have a chance to be the authors of this blog!  You can post pictures of work and projects and tell a little about your learning.  What do you think about that?