A Busy Second Week

Dear Third Grade Families,

Can you believe that we just finished our first full week of school! Before you know it, it will be June and your students will be ready for Fourth Grade. There were many activities we worked on this week. Some you will see on Monday, September 18, during “Back to School Night,”.

One such activity was writing about our academic hopes and dreams for Third Grade. As a group, we came together to talk about different aspects of ourselves we hope to strengthen. Some of the things we discussed were being able to quickly come up with ideas while writing, being able to read and spell bigger words, and learning about how people lived hundreds of years ago. The next step was to take one idea and expand that idea into two to four sentences, working on using complete sentences and punctuation. One student wrote, “in social studies, I want to learn more about people and how they lived and what their lives were like. I love history!!!” Another student wrote, “This year I hope for more time to write. I love writing my sloppy copy.” All of the Third Graders’ hopes and dreams can be seen on the bulletin board inside the classroom.

In another activity, students wrote on Bio Poems, in which they thought about different ways to describe themselves as members of the community, including our classroom community, the Hannah Senesh community, and our world community. When asked to write what they give, some students came up with ideas such as hugs, tzedakah and laughter. When asked to describe how they feel — which is hard to write or talk about  — some students mentioned they feel funny, energetic and hungry. On Monday, these “All About Me” poems will be found on the bulletin board outside our classroom.

In math, we began working on identifying place value and equivalencies. We started by using concrete materials (math manipulatives), to show the number 425. Some students mentioned that we could break this number apart using 4 hundreds-sheets, 2 tens-rods and 5 ones-cubes (400+20+5), which uses the least number of materials. Other students realized you could show this whole number by using 42 tens-rods and 5 ones-cubes (420+5), or 425 ones-cubes. When challenged to come up with another method, students enjoyed the freedom they had to try the problem using 3 hundreds-sheets, 10 tens-rods and 25 ones-cubes (300+100+25). This helped students understand the relationship between hundreds, tens and ones, and how you could use equivalent amounts to show the problem in multiple ways. For instance, we knew that 1 hundreds-sheet is equal to 10 tens-rods, and 1 tens-rod is equal to 10 ones-cubes. So we could move 1 hundreds-sheet over to the tens place, and 2 tens-rods over to the ones place, and our amount would STILL equal 425! Over the next few weeks, we will continue to explore this concept (up to 10,000) while also recalling our knowledge of comparing numbers.

We look forward to seeing everyone on Monday night! If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out through email or a phone call.

Shabbat Shalom,

Hilary and Alisa

Hebrew with Ilana

This week in 3rd grade they talk and wrote about themselves (Al Atzmi). They wrote basic information about themselves and what they want for the new year. We also review colors and what each color remind them. You can see their first written project on the buletin board.

Shabbat Shalom!

Judaic Studies with Aliza

This week, the third grade learned a song to remember the months of the Hebrew calendar (to the tune of They Might Be Giants’ Days of the Week Song). We also solved riddles using Gematriah (alphanumeric code in Hebrew) and heard a brand new Chelm story. Finally, we learned the Simanim (food symbols) of Rosh Hashanah used by Jewish communities all over the world. There’s a lot more than just apples and honey!

Shabbat Shalom!

Science with Sammi

Hi! I’m Sammi, the third grade science teacher. I am thrilled to be working with the third grade team this year! The students are off to a great start in class. It is so exciting to see them twice a week in the science lab and in the art room.

We have begun the year by looking into scientists. First, we discovered that many of us have certain stereotypes in our minds when we think of scientists. When drawing what we thought a scientist looked like, many of our people had crazy hair, were older, were doing some crazy experiment, and they were often men. Through discussion, we decided these stereotypes came from cartoons, tv shows, and Albert Einstein’s fame. We then discussed what scientists do. We decided scientists are people who discover, experiment, question the world around them, solve problems, take careful notes, observe, and help others. We will be adding to this list over the next week as we take time to learn about some current scientists working at the Smithsonian.