Math Maniacs!

Hargrave Multi-Cultural Night

We love to celebrate the cultures represented by the students at Hargrave at our annual Multi-Cultural Night. Families come to experience a little of each culture through art, games, and music. Third grade represented the Asian/Pacific Islander culture.

We enjoyed seeing students and their families. Baby Fabi loved seeing the kids too! : )

Our art activity was creating an Asian mask. Students colored the mask and decorated it with colorful paper strips.

We had a blast and we look forward to next year!

Hand Clap Spelling

Hands-on learning is an important part of our classroom. One way we like to practice our spelling words is literally "hands-on"! The kids work with a partner to clap each letter to a rhythmic beat.

The Hand Clap Spelling Game is really fun and the kids don't groan when I annouce that it's time for spelling. One of my goals for this year is to teach spelling in a way that everyone can be successful - that means involving as many senses and learning techniques as possible.When students can see, hear, say, and touch the letters in a word, they are more likely to remember how it is spelled.

And the Survey Says...

What is your favorite season? What subject do you like best? Students surveyed their classmates and tallied the results. We are learning about how to report data in a variety of ways, so the kids created tally charts as well as bar graphs to display the information they gathered.

Wow! The kids impressed me with how well they grasped the concept of representing data in different ways. This activity proved to be a math favorite - - one day they asked to survey each other and make data charts as our indoor recess activity! We have since then used these survey mats to create pictographs as well. They LOVE it! Music to a teacher's ears~

Extra! Extra! Spell All About It!

We love to incorporate art and creativity into our spelling lessons. For this activity, we were inspired by the loads of old newspapers we found in the school's recycling bins and decided to put them to work in a new way!

We cut out letters from newspaper headings to form each of our spelling words. Often, recognizing each letter individually helps students to remember the spelling of the entire word. Fun AND great practice!

Mystery Planet Project

Which planet has a surface temperature of 520 degrees? Which planet shares an orbit path with another planet? Which planet has toxic clouds covering its surface? Not sure? Neither were we!

Students became an "expert" on one planet by researching online, in non-fiction articles and in books from the library. Each student compiled a list of important and interesting facts to share with their classmates.

For our culminating project, the students created a "Mystery Planet" book by writing facts about their planet on the outside cover of a book and concealing the name and picture of the planet inside. Students used what they knew about all 8 planets to make "smart guesses" about the secret identity of each mystery planet.

The "picture" of the mystery planet was actually a combination of a paint "washing" technique and marble painting. Students painted the background of their paper and then rolled marbles dipped in paint across the background. The art looked amazing! After the paper had dried, we cut each in the shape of our planet (and added rings when necessary!)
Here's an example of the final product:

Origami Cranes

For our Hargrave Multi-Cultural Night, third grade represented the Asian/Pacific Islander culture. Our class read the story of Sadako Sasaki and the Paper Cranes and we decided to share the story with our school through origami. Our wonderful student teacher, Miss Ross, spearheaded the project of teaching the students to fold origami cranes.

Considering they had no experience with origami, the kids did very well! They followed Miss Ross' directions and were very interested in the art of paper folding.

People Graph

What better way to learn about graphing than to "be the graph"?! The students participated in our people graph by standing in the place representing the number of children in their family. We created an x and y axis and labeled our graph with numbers, just like a graph on paper.

Whenever possible, I think it's important for kids to be physically involved in learning math concepts. We work hard to incorporate music, art, and movement into each subject area, especially mathematics!

Mosaic Math

We combined the art technique of mosaic with our study of area. The kids created originals works of art using 1 inch squares and then figured the area of their art piece by counting how many tiles were used.

I am continually amazed at the artistic ability and creativity of my students. Each had a unique idea and title for their art work.

The mosaic art pieces from our class and Mrs. Eldredge's class (our next-door neighbors) made our hallway beautiful!

Drawing 3-Dimensional Figures

As part of our preparation for the TAKS test, the students have been studying 3-D shapes and plane figures. In the past I have noticed that although students may be able to identify 3-D shapes using real models, they struggle to name them on the TAKS math benchmarks. In an effort to help students recognize how 3-dimensional shapes are represented on paper (with dotted lines to show depth), we decided to draw the shapes ourselves.

First, we listed the types of three-dimensional figures that are commonly seen on the math TAKS tests. We folded our paper so that each shape had a box and labeled the boxes with the names of the figures.
Then, we set out to draw each shape using colored pencils. Some were pretty easy (the kids are experts at drawing cubes!) and others proved to be a challenge even for the teacher! I needed LOTS of help and suggestions from students to get my triangular prism to look right! : )
In the end, 100% of the students were able to identify the 3-dimensional shapes when they were presented in written form. WOW!
What artists!

It's a bird, It's a plane... it's a COW?

The COW (Computers On Wheels) has invaded our classroom!

We have loved using the portable computer lab to do research and WebQuests in our own classroom. The kids feel so cool using their own laptops and their technology skills have drastically improved since we have been working with the COW. : )

Plus, it's really fun to call it a COW! : )