Strategy Man is Here!!

In case you haven't heard there have been some strange happenings in The Discoverers classroom! First, there was the mysterious pills that grew in the water, next we found Smarties in our desk!! (I guess because we are so smart!) Then, Ms. Musters received an email from Strategious!! We went on an interview hunt to see what we could find out. The best our team could uncover was that the guy who brought the box wore a cap! They interviewed everyone in the office including Mr. Baker. Today another box appeared in the office. It looked like it had gone through a meteorite shower!! It was another note reminding The Discoverers to use their strategies for test taking! Flat Strategy Man is with us for two days to help remind us to use those strategies. He also included a math problem for us to solve along with the strategy vitamins. Needless to say, we had no problem solving that math puzzler! Way to go, Discoverers!

Human Rights Speeches

This week The Discoverers will be preparing speeches! During our Morning Meeting, the students discovered it would be interesting to speak in the voice of a Human Rights Activist. That led to our end of unit project idea! First, the students choose an activist that they were interested in. Next, throughout the week, we will be researching and writing a speech as if we were that person. Finally, the students will be presenting at the end of the week.

Human Rights

As we near the end of our Human Rights Planner, students took an in depth look at one period of time. Our Class studied the people who made a difference in the 60's. Each cooperative group met to discuss what the most important information was and created a photo and written caption to add to the third grade Human Rights timeline. This timeline is located in the third grade hallway.

The Daily Five

The Discoverers continue to perfect their reading strategies during our Daily Five time. You may find two friends reading together to check for understanding, or a student working on their spelling words using various games on the computer. It is a very rich literacy time that the students treasure. We are always sad when there is not enough time in our day for Daily Five.

I heart the Discoverers!

Musters' Mighty Meteorites

You may have already heard that our field day name will be: Musters' Mighty Meteorites! We then had to decide what our t-shirt would look like. Since we are learning about voting from Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B. Anthony-it was decided that we needed to cast our ballots. Carlos brought in the perfect ballot box that locked!! All students were given the opportunity to create a design and we put them on display. The winning design will be unveiled soon!

Mystery???

We are not sure what is going on, but mysterious things have been appearing in our room! For a week now we have been finding these little capsules that look like pills, but when we put them in water they grow and expand into various animals. Next, we found Smarties in our desks! What is going on?

Germy Potato Experiment

In science, we are exploring the human skin. We are learning about the epidermis and why it is so important. To show how important we are conducting an experiment where we peeled potatoes and after recess we passed the potato around and everyone touched it. The next potato we washed our hands before touching it. In these photos, we are examining them to see what is happening. Come and see the difference!

What Property are we talking about?

Our new classroom photographer, Celeste, is very good at taking lots of pictures to use for the blog. Here she caught us acting out the difference between the associative property of multiplication and the commutative property of multiplication.

Countdown to TAKS!

As part of our morning routine (school begins at 7:50), we begin the day with problem solving activities. The students work together to discuss how they implemented the S. T. A. R. method and how they arrived at the answer. Then one of the students in the group presents the work using the smart board and explains their mathematical thinking.

Twenty and Ten

As part of our Human Rights Planner, we have been exploring worker's rights, woman's rights and human rights. We read the book Twenty and Ten and learned how the rights of the Jewish people were taken away. The book is about twenty French children who hid ten Jewish children during the war. We then used our reading strategies to help us comprehend and understand the story. The final assignment was to find objects, pictures or words to use in a collage to help retell the important events in the story. The collages are generating a lot of conversation as the third grade students walk in the hallways.