Rounding to the Nearest 10 and/or 100 with "The Dot"

While studying place value in math this year, Mrs. Turgeon, our ed tech helper, and I decided that the children might benefit from making a human timeline. If we were a number moving along the number line, maybe we would be better able to round. This strategy really helped our classmates to see where our number was on a number line in relation to the nearest 10 or 100.

We used white boards to mark our intervals on our human number line. We counted in increments of one if we were rounding to the nearest 10 and increments of ten if we were rounding to the nearest 100. After numbering our white boards the student wearing "the dot" headband had to find their place in line. Based on what classmates saw we told the dot whether or not to round themselves down or up the number line. 

If you would like to continue practicing rounding with your students this year, a rhyme we have used to help us remember which way to round is "5 through 9, up the line; 4 or less, down OH YES!"

Whole Brain Teaching

As we start our school year, I am seeing that I have quite the energetic group of students. They like to talk and move around as much as possible. To better suit the needs of these students, our class has piloted a classroom management system called whole brain or power teaching. This type of teaching involves call and response between teachers and students and gestures to help students internalize learning through muscle memory. My favorite part about power teaching is that teacher talk or lecture is limited to sixty second snippets before students respond or imitate the teacher.
At this point in the school year, students are practicing the five whole brain teaching rules and the basic call and response techniques. As the year progresses we will hopefully be using the whole brain teaching techniques through out the day in all lessons. If you are interested in learning more about power teaching there are many videos online and there is a website that can be accessed as well. Also, please feel free to ask your children what type of techniques we’ve been practicing or about the five classroom rules.
Here are some good videos to start watching if you are interested in learning more:

Whole Brain Teaching: The Basics
Third Grade WBT: The Rules
WBT First Grade

September 2-6 Newsletter

First 3 Days

Well that was in interesting first few days of third grade wasn’t it?! My new third graders are very intrigued by the new ramp downstairs and got to see the new music room location this Friday. They are very curious to see if anything else has changed at Montello as well.
As of Friday we have 24 students in our classroom- 12 girls and 12 boys. Perfect! We are excited to get going but tired and getting used to our new class schedule which is a big change from our summer vacation of course. We have practiced 2 fire drills so far and done an amazing job! We were very quiet and respectful, and the sixth grade teacher in our pod, Ms. Agate even gave our class a compliment!
I have not sent home the class newsletters to those parents who did not make it to the open house yet; there was a lot of other beginning of school year paper work to be filled out and I didn’t want to overwhelm you. I will attach both newsletters here and send them home next week. Everyone have a great long weekend and see you Tuesday!

Library Field Trip

 

This past Monday we went to the Lewiston Public Library for a third grade field trip. All the third grades in the district make a yearly trip to the library to learn about how to find books in the library, how books are organized, and the summer reading program held there. We went with Mrs. Munsey's class this year. We had a scavenger hunt, played library Jeopardy, borrowed books, and were read to by one of the children's librarians. It was a very educational field trip and many of the students left excited about the new books that we had borrowed. Such smart third graders!!!

iPads and Math

Lately our students have been using the iPad a lot more in our day to day learning. Fardowsa is using the iPad to practice math skills on IXL here. We use the IXL website to practice math drills that are grouped by category. Lately we've been working in IXL fractions, geometry, and measurement.

Montello Studies Countries

 

Earlier this year teachers made a plan to study countries all around the world at the end of the school year. Each teacher chose their country in advance and my third graders will be studying Sweden! I am part Swedish and wanted to learn more about the country and am coming to find that has some things in common with Maine which makes it interesting to study with the class. For example the weather is similar, Swedish people eat a lot of potatoes while Maine has a lot of potatoes, and both Maine and Sweden think the moose is a pretty big deal. Other countries in our pod are China, France, and the Native Americans of America!! Keep looking back to find out what other interesting things we learn about the amazing northern European country!!

Writing our Pen Pal

Abdi continues to write to my sister Sammi about the Roald Dahl books she got for us this Christmas. We have read many of them during our read alouds each afternoon. We have covered Matilda, The Twits, The BFG, The Witches, and now George's Marvelous Medicine. In reading groups we have read James and the Giant Peach and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We love Roald Dahl! Abdi just wanted to make sure that Sammi loved reading as much as we did and see if she reads as fast as we do. What a thoughtful third grader!!