Another Busy Week!

This was yet another busy week for my third graders and me! I am constantly surprised at how quickly the curriculum, especially in math, moves from one skill to another. I try so hard to dedicate enough time in our day for my students to master these important concepts!

This week in math we focused on subtraction. We reviewed subtracting on a hundreds chart and discussed estimation in subtraction. Next week we'll move on to actual solving subtraction problems and the "borrowing" and "subtracting across zero" aspects of it (shudder).

 We played two "Scoot" games, which I created to reinforce the concepts. The balloons on these cards are to remind students of our "holding a balloon" method for rounding. Click the pictures to download your copies.

We did math stations every day. My kids (whenever possible) go to stations three times per day. They do ELA stations in the morning (1 station each day for 30 minutes). Then they do math stations in the afternoon (4 stations of 15 minutes each). At the end of the day, they do Enrichment stations (1 station for 30 minutes). This is when I can pull my intervention groups for reading and math.

I don't pull a group during math stations, because I keep myself available to walk around and help the people in Seat Work, who almost always need me to sit by them for a while and get them going. I also have kiddos in Games:

Fact Practice:

I have used these ice cube trays so many times already! This week, I had them throw both number cubes into the tray and estimate the difference of the two numbers using rounding. They had white boards to work on.

Other kiddos go to Computer where they do First in Math!

While I'm on the subject of stations, here are this week's enrichment stations!

The journals are a personal favorite, which my team-mate came up with. They're class journals, so the kids get to read what others have written on the prompt and respond. It's been a hit so far!

The Popsicle sticks are a game called Fiddlesticks and the kids are OBSESSED! Each stick has a subtraction problem on it. They take turns drawing a stick and answering the question. They keep it if it's right but return it if it's wrong. One stick is colored black on the tip, and it's called the Fiddlestick. If you draw that one, ALL of your sticks go back into the cup. They get very excited during this game!

In Reading this week we focused on summary. Click here to download a summary practice PowerPoint that works wonders in teaching both Fiction and Nonfiction summary skills. 

We also made this anchor chart (click the picture to get your FREE copy of the fiction side. AND click HERE to get your FREE copy of the nonfiction side (not pictured here). 

We made a summary foldable, filled out a cute summary organizer using a leveled reader, and worked in small groups on the skill. 

In Language Arts, we continued revising our personal narratives. We also made Angry Verbs!

I also made this competition tracking chart to try and promote our students to do better work on Achieve 3000, a great reading program on the computer that has proven results in increasing lexile reading levels! It will start next week between the three teachers on our side of the hall. The kids are pumped!

In Science we finished up our unit on states of matter. On Monday we made Oobleck! I SO WISH I had remembered to take a picture (at least of the lab once we were finished haha), but sadly I did not. Here's our work. 

And on Friday we practiced changing states of matter by observing a colored ice cube melt on a grid and timing the spreading of it's water. 

Well, until next week! Enjoy your weekend, I'm heading to garage sales!