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

Ancient Civilizations World Tour

Spontaneous Problem: Name things that shine.
Boundary Breaker: Which smells better, a rotten egg, or a sweet skunk?

Springing from the cultural universals we discovered last week, students were able to act as time travelers stopping off at Ancient Egypt for a view of the pyramids, and then on to Ancient China to see the making of the terracotta warriors.  Our next stop was Ancient Greece to walk through the columns of the Parthenon, and finally to Rome for a contest of gladiators in the Colosseum.  Students rotated through our civilization stations to get a glimpse of each culture.  They collected facts and stamped their passports as they selected the civilization that they would like to dig deeper into in their upcoming research project.  As a class we looked at the where and when of each civilization and added them to our timeline.  Students also got to explore online resources to help them make their final choice.  Here are some links if they are interested in further exploration at home.

Ancient Civilizations Maps http://www.eduplace.com/kids/socsci/ca/books/bkf3/imaps/

Ancient Egypt: http://www.ancientegypt.co.uk/menu.html

Discover Ancient Egypt: http://www.nms.ac.uk/explore/games/discover-ancient-egypt/

Discover Ancient Egypt: http://www.nms.ac.uk/explore/games/discover-ancient-egypt/

Exploring Ancient China: http://www.historyforkids.net/ancient-china.html

Ancient Greece: http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/topics/z87tn39

Guide to Ancient Greece: http://www.historyforkids.net/ancient-greece.html

Discover Ancient Rome: http://www.historyforkids.net/ancient-rome.html

Roman Empire: http://www.historyforkids.net/ancient-rome.html

Discover the Romans: http://www.nms.ac.uk/explore/games/discover-the-romans/

We also spent some time completing our Chapter 1 math Check-up and completing our first quarter self-assessments.  You will see both of those coming home soon!

Cultural Universals

Spontaneous Problem:  Name things that have an end.
Boundary Breaker: If you could change one thing about our school, what would it be?  How would it help everyone?

In math today we put a twist on our Some Sum game and turned it into Some Difference.  Students were asked to build a subtraction problem with the largest difference from four randomly chosen digit cards.  We added the terms minuend and subtrahend to our math vocabulary and used math talk to explain our strategies.  Students considered if there was more than one way to land on the biggest difference and how the place value of each digit came into play.  We were having such fun that we extended the game one step further to consider the best strategy for landing on a difference that came closest to 20.

As we head into our study of ancient civilizations, we took time today to complete our Shipwrecked game.  Students chose the necessary items for survival and considered basic needs to live and how those needs develop as a society becomes more established.  They saw the progress from finding food, water, and shelter, to creating laws, division of labor, and even recreation.  We read the book Westlandia, by Paul Fleischman to look at Wesley and his journey of creating his own civilization.  This brought to light our nine cultural universals: geography, family, economics, communication, government, recreation, beliefs, education, and resources (food. clothing, shelter).

Some Sum

Spontaneous Problem:  Your feet have become triangles!! What now??
Boundary Breaker: Which is softer- a whisper or a kitten's fur?

Today we had some fun extending our digit game from last week.  Students drew 4 numbers and considered strategies to place them in two addends and build the biggest sum to win.  We got to consider place value, the commutative property, and look at how many different ways we could build the largest sum.  Next week we'll play the game in reverse with subtraction!

Our work this far has lead us through the exploration of our own past, the exploration of South Carolina's past (that we will engage with more at our upcoming field study), and now to the exploration of ancient past- all through the lens of archaeology. We began the kick-off to our study of ancient civilizations by looking at cultural universals in our game Shipwrecked.  Students had to distinguish the most important things for survival in a new society, and how nine basic elements become evident in every culture.  Next week we will finish our game and see how well we did at building our own civilization!

Digit Dilema

Spontaneous Problem:  Animal Rhymes

Boundary Breaker:  Make a simile to complete the sentence...The Past is like _____ because ______.

In our math unit, students competed to build the largest two digit number in our game Card Capers. Students had a tens space and ones space to fill as well as a discard space. When a 0-9 card was turned, they placed the digits one at a time in the space of their choice. without being able to switch and not knowing what the next flip would reveal.  We talked about strategies and the place value of digits affecting their magnitude.  Students were tasked with finding out how many two digit numbers could be created, considering there was only one of each number and zero could not be used in the tens place without resulting in a single digit number.  There was lots of great idea sharing and discussion!  We are continuing to work on expressing our thinking and problem solving in writing that is clear and uses mathematical language.  

We got to finish our archaeology Nearpod project to learn the order of events at a dig site, how it is chosen, and the tools that are used.  We also got to identify some artifacts of our own by playing Arctic Artifacts online.

Students also had a chance to finish their "Where I'm From" poems and complete their Thrively strength assessments!