The Land of Treble

Spontaneous Problem:  Name things that turn.
Boundary Breaker: You are being sent back in time to the ancient civilization that you chose to research.  You can only take one item with you.  What would you take with you and why?

Starting off, we practiced our questioning skills to discover the hidden item in our mystery box. We found a postcard from the Roman Colosseum from our friend Mrs. Clarkson! You can check out her recent travels to the area here! Next we looked at a project exemplar featuring Roman art and created our own Roman mosaic artifacts.

For research today, we focused on the "I" of our F.I.N.D.S. method and students investigated different online and text sources for their research. We practice correct citations and began our preliminary note taking.

For math, 3rd graders kicked off Chapter 2 on grouping. We visited the alien land of Treble where they use a base 3 number system. Students practiced making trades among their place values and played a dice game to be the first player to reach 1 Trickle!

FINDS Research

Spontaneous Problem: Come up with as many words as you can that have numbers hidden in them...Ex: Tue(2)sday, Fore(4)cast
Boundary Breaker:  Humpty Dumpty was pushed!  Who did it and why?

Today was quite the mix!  Students were challenged to build a paper illusion by only looking at a model.  As they worked on the challenging task, I  took notes on the language I heard and strategies used and we discussed my notes in our debrief about maintaining a growth mindset even while struggling.

We also learned to play the code breaking game, Mastermind, as we focused on using information to make a logical decision as critical thinkers.  They really enjoyed this and were getting pretty good at using their clues to eliminate possibilities!  We played the old fashioned way but to play at home, you can use this link!

Our ancient civilizations project focus today was looking at the FINDS model of research.  We are using the FINDS checklist to help students address the task in a step by step manor.  They were able to explore sources helpful to their topic on our Symbaloo Site and begin to use their digital notebooks for citing sources and note taking.

Research checklist: FINDS

Focus

_____ Civilization you will research ______________

_____ Topic (Cultural Universal ) you will research ________________

Investigate and choose resources

_____ Explore Symbaloo web site and choose web sites

_____ Explore books and choose books to use for research

_____ Site the sources that were used in taking notes

Notes

_____ Type notes in the digital notebook about your cultural universal from the resources  chosen

_____ Describe at least 3 artifacts that are part of your cultural universal

Develop notes into project

_____ Write a research paragraph on your topic from your notes

_____ Create an artifact, model or visual about your topic

Score work

_____ Complete check list

_____ Rubric

_____ Reflection

We wrapped up the day by taking a second look at our math check-ups to make corrections and review some of the errors and misunderstandings that we had.  In general students did very well!

Interactive Notebooks

Spontaneous Problem:  What could this be?

  

Boundary Breaker: Which is more valuable to an archaeologist-a copper coin or a gold brick?  Why?

Today we took a look at our upcoming research project which focuses on a cultural universal of one of our four ancient civilizations.  Students seemed excited to select their civilization and discover more about life inthe past.  From their study, they will be creating an artifact model that they will be able to display along with a museum style placard.  The placard will show off their research and highlight the archaeological find and what it reveals about the culture from which it came.

We also learned about primary and secondary sources and source citation as we warmed up with some research practice.  Students took a deeper look into our timeline study from last week and defined the terms chronology, era, period, century, and decade.  We got to explore our interactive notebook tool that we will use for note taking and to help us organize our research findings.  You can take a look at the project rubric here.

I am proud to share our completed Where I'm From poems for your reading pleasure!

George Ella Lyon's Where I'm From poem
Kamari's Where I'm From poem
Elijah's Where I'm From poem
McCrary's Where I'm From poem
Emerson's Where I'm From poem
Kiley's Where I'm From poem
Kate's Where I'm From poem