This week: UOI - writing -reading

The read aloud for the unit this week had two books:

Miss Rumphius is a story about a girl growing up and fulfilling two of her dreams - to go to faraway places and to live by the sea. All the time she keeps in her mind her grandfather's advice, "You must do something to make the world beautiful." She will make this happen also.

The Wartville Wizard is a story about an old man who works hard to keep his village clean. When he sees that people make more trash than he can clean, he gets tired and is gifted a magical power. Can you imagine what happens when he sends the trash back and sticks it to the person who created it?

The writing for this week reached the publishing phase of the writing process. The students had a choice on how to publish their texts - either on paper (a picture book, a comic book, a pop-up book, a flap-book, a shape book) or digitally (using Scribble Press, Cute Cut or Book creator.) Majority of the class decided to Book Creator.

In addition to the book creating we spent time discussing the reasons for having this unit, and identifying what our class and school community is doing already to support sustainability and what are some issues we notice. The best part of these discussions is to see the students actively thinking what is something we could actually do, not just talk about, to make change happen.

This week: math

Decide whether you agree or disagree with these statements:

6 is the hardest number to throw on a dice.
A game is fair if you play it properly.

It's easier to get heads than tails when you flip a coin. If you buy lots of raffle tickets, you're sure to win a prize.

Discussion about these statements started our unit about probability.

Then we proceeded to test three of the situations. We learned about theoretical and experimental probability. We discovered how fractions help us to show the likelihood of something happening. We practiced recording our results with tally marks and presenting the final information on simple graphs.

 

To see whether lots of raffle tickets help you to win we put different colored cubes in a paper bag. More than half of the cubes were purple. There was one black cube. We tried several times. Black came out once even though it had the smallest chance. Purple came out only twice even though it had the largest chance. We figured that even if you buy almost all of the raffle tickets and have a big chance to win, it may not happen.

When flipping a coin there is 1/2 of a chance to get a head and 1/2 of a chance to get a tail. We tried. Above you can see the results of experiments by two different students.

When experimenting with one die the chance of getting any number is 1 out of 6. Results of two experiments are visible above.

When we started a racing game (roll two dice and the sum will move the horse) the students were sure it was a fair game and each number had the same chance to win. When they had rolled few times, several discovered that number one has no chance because it is impossible to roll one with two dice. Even when they finished they still thought that the other numbers had an equal chance to win. Only after they had looked for all the different ways to combine the dice, they discovered that there were 36 combinations and 7 came up the most, meaning that the horse number 7 had the biggest chance to win. Did it win? No.

UOI: Sustainability

Two weeks ago we started our new UOI about sustainability:

From a previous blog post:

We had our initial lesson of our new unit about sustainability.

After watching short videoclips, the students drew what the clips made them think about. One clip was about our beautiful nature. Another about plastic polluting water.

They already used many words and images that will be part of our unit: 

waste, production, pollution, reduce, reuse, recycle.

I am looking forward to our new inquiry together.

Since then the students have inquired into:

• what does sustainability mean 

• how human actions affect the sustainability of Earth's nature and resources

• sustainable practices in every day life

Here are some resources they have viewed:  

Generation Awake

Sustainability Kids Videos

Imagine water

The largest pile of trash

Where do recycled items go?

Water Wiz

Carbon Footprint

 Sea of Plastic Ted talk

 

Defining sustainability:

The term "Sustainability" is not easy to define even when you have a feeling of what it means.

We read some definitions but the language in them was not child friendly.

The term ‘sustainable development’ is defined as ‘development fulfilling the needs of current generations, without decreasing the possibilities for future generations to fulfil their needs’

http://sustainablefootprint.org/about-this-project/sustainable-footprint

"Sustainability is an economic state where the demands placed upon the environment by people and commerce can be met without reducing the capacity of the environment to provide for future generations. It can also be expressed in the simple terms of an economic golden rule for the restorative economy: leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life of the environment, make amends if you do."

From Wikipedia :  Sustainability is a characteristic of a process or state that can be maintained at a certain level indefinitely. The term, in its environmental usage, refers to the potential longevity of vital human ecological support systems, such as the planet's climatic system, systems of agriculture, industry, forestry, and fisheries, and human communities in general and the various systems on which they depend in balance with the impacts of our unsustainable or sustainable design.

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations to meet their own needs. —Brundtland (1987)

Sustainability is the "long-term, cultural, economic and environmental health and vitality" with emphasis on long-term, "together with the importance of linking our social, financial, and environmental well-being"

http://sustainableseattle.org/   

"Sustainability encompasses the simple principle of taking from the earth only what it can provide indefinitely, thus leaving future generations no less than we have access to ourselves."
http://www.foe-scotland.org.uk/  

Thomas Jefferson Sustainability Council

"Sustainability may be described as our responsibility to proceed in a way that will sustain life that will allow our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren to live comfortably in a friendly, clean, and healthy world .

http://www.tjpdc.org/

We proceeded to come up with our own definition

First the student gave individual explanations:

Sustainability it can be good things like recycling, no pollution, no carbon dioxide, healthy earth and healthy people and healthy nature.

Sustainability means that we protect environment, use reusable thing, Give your old clothes to small cousin so you don't have to throw it away, people throw trash in trash not leaving it around.

Sustainability is saving the world

Sustainability is ability to do what someone is supposed to do, if we cut down all the trees, make clothes, it will be wasting.

What we produce is ruining nature.

Sustainability means how long you can have or keep something without ruining or breaking it.

Sustainability means good side, not cutting trees but only a branch. The best is to cut only a few trees.

Perfect balance is sutainable, cut down few, plant new, we make paper but still get fresh yair

Sustainability means trying to keep the earth clean

We have done enough harm that nature can't digest.

The they worked in a groups:

Sustainability is trying to keep the nature and human community even. It is about keeping the earth clean.

The world can be a better place

Stop making plastic, throwing trash int eh ocean. Cut down less trees. Stop polluting

Lead the world to better hands, keep the world in better balance, recycle, lead your children to good lives

Here is our  current whole class working explanation:

Sustainability is about saving the planet to lead people, animals and nature to a good life. People can help by reducing how much thrash they make, by recycling and reusing, and looking for ways to make the planet cleaner, and by using materials and resources that don't harm Earth.

This week the students spent time creating texts to show what they have learned during the past two weeks. They had to choose a topic and narrow its focus. They had to figure out what they want their readers to know and feel after reading their texts. Using what they have learned about writing process and craft they had to write texts that are informing and interesting. The expectation was that their texts included some description, explanations and examples.

They had a free choice of the genre and point of view.

Next week they will choose a publishing format.

Fraction - fun or fright

For the past two weeks we have been playing with fractions.  Fractions can be a lot of fun when you get to play with materials and you feel you master them. For some fractions may look frightening. Fraction concept is probably one of the hardest ones to truly understand. Even though children see pizzas and cookies shared, and are able to find a half or a quarter of a rectangle already in reception, the full understanding of part-whole-relationship idea, and what the numbers in written form of a fraction mean, may stay hazy for years. I am a firm believer in strong foundations, therefore I'd rather spend longer time building the conceptual understanding than quickly introducing new terms and galloping through curriculum. We use lots of hands-on materials in class instead of memorizing procedures and formulas. One of the assessments showed that the pie model is the easiest to understand. The set model is the hardest. This week we spent time finding fractions of a line and a set and finding the whole when only a fraction was given.

The two important ideas to understand:
A whole can be shared in fair shares - that is the fractional part and can be named.
The parts can be counted.
 
For example:

This is a whole. It has six fair shares. We can call them sixths. We can count the sixths.

This is one sixth

This is four sixths

This is ten sixths

Or

This is a whole. It has four fair shares. We can call them fourths or quarters. We can count the fourths.

This is one fourth.

This is three fourths

This is ten fourths

Making it even trickier is to figure out the whole when fractional parts are shown.


For example:

If this is four sixths then...

..... this fractional part is a sixth and ....

...we need six sixths to make the whole

or

If this is four thirds then....

...the fractional part is called a third and...

.... we need three thirds to make the whole

It is always easier to find a fraction when the whole is known. Only when the concept of fraction is firmly in place is it possible to find the whole when the fraction is given.






As I said earlier, the more practice there is with models the stronger the concept becomes.

Poetry Gallery

Please, come and visit our poetry gallery. Last week the students chose some of their poems to illustrate, decorate and share with the community. You will see a variety of poems - poems about animals, short poems, point of view poems, slice of life poems, funny poems, small image poems, apology poem, memory poems, poetry hides poems, how to write poems. Below is a small glimpse of the display:

This poem won Ms. Naglee's poetry contest.

Right now

We finished The Tale of Desperaux some time ago, but I had promised that we would also watch the movie. I kept my promise. Oh, how different the movie is from the book. 

A surprise poetry contest

This Tuesday Ms. Sirje and I had 20 Estonian teachers visiting our school from13:00 to 15:00. During one of the lessons, when I was speaking about our reading programme, Ms. Naglee met with the third graders. I had invited her because, we are learning about poetry, and she is a poet. She brought the book she published and spoke with the students about her poems, why and how she writes. When the lesson ended Ms. Naglee announced a poetry contest.

Over the two days the students wrote, revised and published a poem about something from their memory. This morning we submitted the poems to Ms. Naglee. At 9 o'clock we were invited to her office. She gave her feedback, read the poems out loud, and listened to what the students had thought about this experience. Later she met with an upper school English teacher Ms. Susan, and they chose a winner.

We have to wait until Monday to hear the winner announced. Even I don't know who won. I am glad I didn't have to choose. Each poem was personal and beautiful.

Intro to fractions

First of all I am happy to see how the students who have practiced their facts daily have made noticable progress in mastering the facts. They may not enjoy the regular qizzes but the joy of doing well they certainly like. I sincerely hope that this year's third graders will enter fourth grade with a strong foundation.

Besides starting a new UOI the students shared their current understanding of fractions.

Fraction is a section of something, three out of four, part-part-whole.

I also received several pictures of pizza slices.

The next lesson we explored different materials to better understand what fractions are and how we can model them.

We also talked what do we mean when we speak about the "whole."

The whole can mean different things:

Whole circle

Whole pizza

Whole box of chocolate

Whole bag of cookies

Whole class

Fraction represents the whole part relationship.

The key is that the parts have to be fair shares to be considered fractions.

We found four different models to show fractions:

A set model, a pie model, an area model and a line model.

Below are examples of fourths.

Transition from one UOI to another

We started the UOI about inventions and technology with some drawing and writing. We will finish it with the same assignment to see wheteher our knowledge and understanding of the topic has grown and improved.

Even though our unit is technically over, we still will continue learning about technology and inventions when possible. For example, Mr. John B. Returned this Thursday and students experimented to understand how a lever (a simple machine) works. 

We had our initial lesson of our new unit about sustainability.

After watching short videoclips, the students drew what the clips made them think about. One clip was about our beautiful nature. Another about plastic polluting water.

They already used many words and images that will be part of our unit: 

waste, production, pollution, reduce, reuse, recycle.

I am looking forward to our new inquiry together.

Love That Dog

Every day this week we read and discuss this novel in verse - a whole story in a poem form. 

I read a section, the students reread and write noticings, questions and thoughts, and then we practice with partners and as a whole class how to have a discussion.

A boy Jack doesn't understand nor likes to write poems. At school he stll has to do it. He uses other poets as mentors to write poems, but is not willing to write his name when the poem is published. 

We discussed that may be he is embarrased to write because when you write poetry  you have to use poetic language and poetic words, maybe he is scared that others might make fun of him. We disagreed with Jack that poems are for girls only, because we know several male poems. We thought that one reason he doesn't want to write poems is because the teacher asked to write about a pet, but he doesn't have one. He used to have a dog, but not any more. We wondered what happened.

We also wondered why the author keeps mentioning a blue car.

We continued reading and discovered that Jack used to have a dog that he had got from an animal shelter. We also see Jack finding some poems he likes and slowly getting more brave to share his poems. Now he has a favorite poet and he hopes he will come to visit the school.

Collective poetry

On Tuesday we read a beautiful poem "Valentine for Ernest Mann" by Naomi  Shihab Nye.  I was a bit worried it might pose a challenge for students to understand the poem, and some of it was confusing for them, but through a discusdion they were able to see the big idea.

The poem includes lines:

...poems hide. In the bottom of our shoes,

they are sleeping. ....

The students talked about how sometimes the beauty isn't visible outside, but inside; or how some people can speak poetically about everyday odjects and places; and sometimes you just have to have an open mind and look at a different perspective to find poetry.

On Wednesday we took some time to review what we had learned about writing poetry. Each student used post-its to give advice "If you want to write a poem.." and organized the lines in the order that made most sense to them.

As a result they had some poem drafts. Then we worked together to choose some lines from each poem to create a collective poem.

If you want to write a poem

Keep your eyes open

Open your heart

Wonder

Carry your notebook with you

Think what to write about

Don't try to write a poem

Just write

Write interesting words

Words that flow

Like a piece of music.  

Look at the beauty in words

Make an image in the reader's mind

Make it easy to read

Feel the emotion

Revise, revise, revise

A guest teacher

Big thank you to Mr. John B, ISE middle school science teacher, who came to teach about simple machines. Together with students he tested out one of the earliest clever inventions - an inclined plane.

I was happy to see how the students were thinking along and working cooperatively.

Measuring excitement

Math is exciting! The students had a blast using different scales to measure objects in classroom. With each lesson they got a bit better at estimating and then accurately measuring mass of objects.