Room 8 Newspaper

I realized recently that I had not been keeping up with the Room 8 Blog as much as I had been at the beginning of the year!  Some of this has to do with how very busy we have been with preparing for the Greco-Roman museum, but some of it also had to do with the students' desire to communicate their learning via a newspaper.  Let me tell you about the process!

A small group of students suggested, after a conversation over lunch in the ODC cafe, that they would like to have a class newspaper.  The students approached me to ask what I thought about it.  It sounded like a great idea to me, but told them it would have to be the students' work and that it would have to be accomplished mostly during lunch, with appropriate time allowed during the writing period of language arts.  They also needed to be sure to be inclusive to all students and decided to invite anyone to submit an article to the paper.  Several classmates submitted articles about the museum and other happenings in PE and specialists.  Articles were typed at lunch time and the second edition was sent home in last week's Thursday folder.  

Next week I will include a link to the paper in our blog!

Parent-Teacher-Student Conferences

Mid Year Parent-Teacher-Student Conferences are going well!  Our fabulous guidance teacher, Mrs. McClellan, shared her Compass lessons with us to help students understand the importance of self-reflection and goal setting.  We then worked together to reflect and set goals for our class work.  We are in the process of sharing this with parents.  If you have not yet signed up for conferences you may do so by following the link below!

http://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0F4CACA72EA6FB6-midyear

Not only has this process helped the students to reflect and goal set, but it has helped me refine my teaching by understanding them better as learners.  It's going to be a great second half of the year!

 

Greco-Roman museum update

The third graders participated in a senate meeting today to discuss the structure of their Greco-Roman museum. To better understand the concept of direct and representative democracy each class sent a representative to the senate to bring the ideas their classmates voted upon. The rest of the "citizens" were able to watch the senate meeting on a closed circuit TV. 

3rd grade Senate

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.