Let's Go Shopping!

Today in math we played a game called "Let's Go Shopping!" In this game, students begin with $20 and choose items that they would like to purchase. One person acts as a customer and one person acts as a cashier. The cashier's job is figure out the change and count it back correctly. For example, if someone bought something that costs $5.39 and the cashier a twenty dollar bill the cashier might say "One cent makes $5.40, sixty cents makes $6.00 and and $14.00 makes twenty. Your change is $14.61." Cashiers would get the "change" from the bank. The students really enjoyed playing this game. Towards the end of the game they were becoming very comfortable with figuring out the change in their head. The skills that the student practiced in this game are most certainly life skills that they will need to know forever!

-Miss Russell :)

Inventions (Definitely) Rock!

Tonight, our class performed the Inventions Rock! musical. The students worked very hard to memorize lines, songs, and dance movements. The students learned facts about important inventions such as the wheel, lightbulb, television, movie camera, and many more. They also learned about notable inventors such as Thomas Edison, Johann Fust, and Johann Gutenburg.

Our class definitely rocked the house tonight! Miss Young and I are so proud of you. Your hard work absolutely paid off!

Your very proud teacher,

Miss Russell :)

Creating Cool Board Games

For the past few days in math class, students have been working on inventing their own board games. Students have been relating the direction of movement (left or right, up or down) to positive and negative numbers. Students have been so creative in making their board games. Some of the game themes were: shopping, school, saving endangered animals, military, lost pets, softball and even the Swine Flu! Students have had to do everything from create the game boards, write rules, create game cards and pieces. The students did a fantastic job creating their games and had a fun time playing them today. Who knows, maybe you will see one of these games on the shelf of your local store someday!

From the desk of a very proud 3rd grade teacher,

Miss Russell :)

Math Standard Snapshot

Tomorrow, all third grade students will receive a Math Standard Snapshot. This tool is for parents to have a "snapshot" of a lesson that was taught in class. This tool also allows them to compare their child's work to a child's work that meets the standard. The parts of the Standard Snapshot include: the standards that correlate with the lesson, how the lesson was taught, and how the featured student's work meets the standard. This Standard Snapshot is unique in that, instead of choosing one student's work, we chose strategies from four different students.

For this piece of work, the students were given the following problem: "In our class we have 29 children. Each child has a pack of crayons that contain 15 individual crayons. How many individual crayons do we have in our whole class?" The four different strategies that we have chosen to showcase are the ratio table, generic rectangle, and two different multiplication clustering strategies.

Standard Snapshots are a powerful tool for parents to get an idea of what their child is expected to do. Often times, Standard Snapshots showcase a strategy or an idea that you may have thought of before. :)

-Miss Russell

Oreo Moon Phases

Last week worked used Oreos to create the moon phases. Students followed a lab sheet to draw a sun, Earth and number a paper plate. The students used their new found knowledge about moon phases to arrange them appropriately on their plate.

Funny Math Lesson

Watch the following video. Two men and one woman diagree about several math problems. Someone in the video is correct. Someone has a misconception. Who is right? Who is not right? Why? Explain your thinking clearly in your response.



Post by Monday for a special treat!
-Miss Russell :)

The Game of Many Changes

In math we have been working in the "Up and Down the Number Line" unit. This unit focuses on net change. Tomorrow students will learn a game called "The Game of Many Changes." Today two friends learned the game and allowed me to tape them for our lesson tomorrow. In class, students will watch this video to learn how to play the game. Thanks to the two friends who allowed me to video them. They did a great job explaining their thinking aloud. Enjoy!
-Miss Russell
Here is a sneak peek :)


The Game of Many Changes from Ashley Russell on Vimeo.