Mayor of Third Grade

The race for Mayor of third grade was AMAZING!  In order to ensure that students understood local government, we had a real election in our classroom.  Students made "Election Folders" with several vocabulary words they needed to know.  We nominated candidates, ran campaigns, and  held an election! The race was close, with only one vote difference.  Caleb is the new Mayor of Third Grade!

  

Ben working on his "Election Word" folder.

Maddie working away!

David did an excellent job on his vocabulary folder.

Look at the finished product!

Ian, Franklin, and Caroline showing us their vocabulary folder.

Caroline brought goodie bags to all of the students that said, "You'll be fine with Caorline!"

Caleb's poster

Caleb handing out his goodies - candy wrapped in red, white, and blue ribbon.

Caroline made buttons for everyone!

Jonathan voting

Sylar voting

Abby voting

Ian voting

Caleb and Caroline shook hands when the winner was announced.  (They did this on their own, I didn't even have to ask them to do it!)

Mayor Caleb!

Probability in the Classroom

The boys loved working on this lesson.  I asked them to toss a coin 50 times and record their results.  They were learning about equally likely. 

Still tossing. . .

and recording. . .

and finally, we were done!

In the next lesson, we learned about the outcome of probability by using spinners and letter tiles.  

Math in our classroom is NEVER boring!  

Cargo Contest

As the culminating project for our "Sink or Float" unit in science class, the students had a cargo contest.  They were given a choice of materials to build a boat and a set amount of time to complete the task. Because of our study, students knew what to do in order to build a good boat.  The competition was between two teams - Caleb & Ben and Maddie & Caroline.  You can see from the photos that it was pretty intense in the classroom.  Both teams made excellent boats, but the winners were Maddie & Caroline.  Their boat held 23 grams!  

Photo Of Mr. Chase

This is a picture of one of our "adopted" soldiers. Here is the link so that you can read the description yourself. I'm so proud of my students for their continued support of this young man. Chase, we are very proud of you and pray for your safety daily.

Mean, Median, Mode, and Range. . .What?!?

Can you find the mean, median, mode, and range of a set of numbers?! My students can. After we had studied the new concepts and all passed the test with flying colors, I thought it would be a good idea to work a fun project with our new knowledge. So. . .

We stacked Oreo cookies to see who could build the tallest tower!

Once everyone had two chances to build their towers, we took all of the data and found the mean, median, mode, and range!

We all had a great time and were able to use our new math knowledge! ;)

Of course, you should have seen my floor after class!?

Community Service Day 1

This year we have set aside four days of the school year to be devoted to Community Service. Since our classroom theme is aimed towards our American Soldiers, I wanted my kiddo's to be able to carry this over into their community service. I decided that we would go clean up the Veterans Memorial in Portland. I arranged for us to meet at the memorial and make our way around the Civil War path to clean up. There wasn't a lot of clean up to be done - Portland Parks Dept. is to be commended for their upkeep on the property. We did, however, manage to fill one large trash bag with trash and sticks. I want to thank our parent volunteers that went with us!

Just another day. . .

It was just another day in third grade today! We had a jam-packed day full of learning and fun. In math class this morning, we worked on reading and creating bar graphs. Fun!! Students now know how to take data and create a vertical or horizontal bar graph. They can organize information on the graph using labels and scales. I'm so proud of them.

You understand there were a lot of important lessons happening in between, but I'm going to skip ahead to science class. We are studying buoyancy - the students can tell you all about factors that affect buoyancy. Today, we were taking a close look at surface tension. I wanted them to have plenty of time to "test" their predictions, so I thought I would go ahead and get a step ahead of them. I filled 13 buckets with water while they were completing their social studies lesson. Something went terribly wrong and I managed to flood the classroom! I was screaming, "I need a little help here!" Every student came running to my rescue! They are such a great group of kids!

Don't you wish I had a picture of this? :)