Hello Everyone!
I’m sure I had fun and learned a lot in my third grade class a few decades back, but I really don’t remember having as much fun as our kids do. It’s great to see how they work together to understand new concepts. Read more to get a glimpse of what we did in Ms. Hahn’s class this week.
Let’s start with P.E. and Jump Rope for Heart which the kids are preparing for right now. Many have returned their envelopes and received their lanyard and animals. They all seem excited for this weeks upcoming events. Mr. Flinn had the kids prepare by teaching them step-by-step how to properly jump rope. He particularly showed them that they don’t really need to jump very high to jump rope and that they can jump longer if they just barely jump off the ground. You may want to work with your kids on jumping rope prior to the Jump Rope for Heart contest. We also had a quick assembly hosted by the American Heart Association telling the students about the importance of the Jump Rope for Heart campaign and where the money the kids raise goes. It was a great way to get amped up for the event.
Give the kids a book about a dog on an adventure with cliffhangers at the end of every chapter and you have a book that they can’t put down. That’s what has been happening with Pachelot these past couple of weeks. It’s been fun to watch their excitement in this book. Some couldn’t help themselves and have read the whole thing, others are patiently going one chapter at a time, both approaches are fine. The point is that we have 24 kids all reading the same book and all enjoying it!
We have been doing persuasive writing this week. So we started with writing about why PCCS students should have more recess. They had to all write on the same side of the debate and just keep writing without stopping for about 15 minutes. Once they were done, each student then took one of their reasons and jumped in front of my camera and we recorded them giving their reasons. I made a couple of small videos of the activity and forwarded it to Mr. Z! What started out as a simple writing assignment might just get them some extra recess, who knows!
We finished the metric system this week with some activities involving water which we took outside. We also started our fraction unit this week. We did a lot of hands on activities and games to help understanding and retention.
Do you remember the game Oregon Trail? While a lot of people played the computer game trying to make their way across the country in western expansion, our kids are doing a paper based simulation. They have been divided into 4 wagon trains. Each wagon train has 6 families traveling together. Every student in the class is a member of one of the families. They are store owners, farmers, doctors, all traveling west. The better the 3rd graders do their work the more points they will be allocated. The more points means that their wagon train travels further on our big map. The first thing we did was to look at the size of a wagon. They then had to figure out what they were going to bring along. Some kids were only going to bring one blanket, and a pound of bacon for a family of five traveling for three months. Once we convinced them that they would probably die in that scenario they went back and upped the quantity of some of their supplies. Then they had to do a diary entry as they left their home behind. The requirement was to share information about their family, what they did, what they left behind, and what they thought might happen during their travels. They are just getting started on their journey and it will be fun to see how far they get!
Next week is a short week with a Valentine’s Party and PBIS celebration thrown in, but we will make sure the kids learn a few things too. We will continue with fractions, Pachelot, and the wagon train game, so much of the week will be similar to this past week.
Have a great week!
~ Mrs. Steinbeck