Thanksgiving Reading Challenge!

Mrs.O'Leary and Ms.Earnest have challenged their third grade readers to read 150 minutes during the Thanksgiving Break. The students can choose how they want to break the minutes up over the days of the break, as long as they reach a total of 150. This challenge is optional, but each student who meets this challenge will earn THREE reading raffle tickets. Will you be a smart turkey this thanksgiving and meet this goal?? Good Luck!!

Reflex Math

We are so excited to announce that Multiplication and Division is open and ready to use on Reflex Math. We have been working on multiplication and division in math workshop and this is a great way for your child to practice at home and reinforce what they have been learning at school! You can find a link on our blog under "Cool Math Sites". Your child has the log-in information in their planner.

Division Strategies

On Monday, students began looking at math story problems that involve division! Students quickly realized that division and multiplication story problems are related. In multiplication, you know the number of groups and how much is in each group, you are just trying to find the product.  In division problems, you know the total and you are either sharing or finding how many groups. 

In the opening lesson, students were asked to visualize the problems and model their thinking in whatever way made sense to them! The anchor charts below show a variety of different strategies for solving division problems.  The students are making incredible connections and their division work is progressing daily! Students will have a short, basic division quiz this Friday. 

Students answer the following question: 

Miss Russell has 18 pencils. She wants to share them with herself and two friends. How many pencils will each person get? 

Leave us your answer in a comment below. Don't forget to include your first name only! :) 

Patterns in Multiplication

In math class, we have been working on becoming fluent with multiplication combinations. Last week, we took a closer look at related multiplication problems and patterns that happen as a result.  Check out our two anchor charts that show what we noticed when multiplying by multiples of 10. 

During our lesson, the students recognized some very important patterns. More incredibly, they were able to explain WHY the patterns happen. Often times the "why" is the hardest part to explain. 

Students: Using what you learned in this lesson, what is 67 x 10? Leave us a comment and don't forget to write your first name only! :) 

Math Skills Block Happenings

Recently in math skills block, students have been focusing on math standards that requires them to be able to compose, decompose, analyze and classify shapes using angles and sides.  Students have been enjoying working with Tangrams.  Tangrams are a Chinese geometric puzzle consisting of a square cut into seven pieces that can be arranged to make various other shapes.  Students had to manipulate the pieces by sliding, flipping and turning them in order to get them to fit into a new arrangements.

This is an example of the Tangram puzzles with which the students have been working.

In our closing sessions, we have focused on the congruent and similar shapes, different angles (acute, obtuse, and right), parallel sides, and many other attributes! We will have a short quiz on these concepts on Friday.  Students can review these concepts by visiting the following sites:
Slides, Flips and Turns 
Congruent and Similar Practice
Angles Practice