along with analyzing what our favorite authors are doing to draw us into their writing will always be the underpinnings of how we improve our writing. Third grade math students have extensively explored number talks that have helped them go from understanding their multiplication facts to memorizing their facts. Besides playing games, solving riddles, and coloring hidden pictures by answering multiplication problems, we have spent a great deal of time decomposing multiplication facts. The time we’ve spent looking closely at patterns and the many different ways a multiplication problem can be solved, have better prepared our students to solve future problems with larger numbers. The time it takes to build number sense will always serve students well as they continue to move up grade levels and on to more sophisticated math concepts. Fourth grade math students have been extending their basic multiplication facts into two and three digit numbers times two digit numbers. With larger factors, students are also using place value to help them use partial products to solve these more complicated math problems. All students practiced applying their multiplication facts by solving lots of word problems, often centered around winter themed activities. Next, we will move to the inverse of multiplication and look at the patterns of division. Decimals and fractions will follow quickly behind division. Science before the Christmas break was filled with winter themed STEM activities. We took advantage of our snow day fun and brought into the school a large snowball. We all took guesses at how long the snowball would take to melt. Based on our knowledge of evaporation, many students guessed that a few hours would do the job. Surely by lunch the snowball was going to be no more. It turned out the snowball took over eight hours to melt! We also took advantage of nature on our playground and collected sticks of all sizes. Students were challenged with creating a reindeer that could stand on its own. The challenge seemed feasible until students realized they could only use duct tape and yarn. Once they discovered the stability of the triangle, many students were able to create a reindeer with a solid body that stood-- but only for a short time. Duct tape was the first choice for many; but once they experienced how difficult it was to work with several students, they finally turned to the yarn and explored ways to secure the sticks together. It was fun to see the variety of shapes and sizes of the reindeer along with how well they stood up. Sometimes failure and starting over turn out to be the best teachers! We will continue with our STEM activities as we move into landforms. Christmas was more than just a holiday to us in social studies. We dove deep into research as we discovered how Christmas is celebrated around the world. Besides hearing from parents who visited our classroom and shared with us what happens in Germany, Mexico, Spain, and Canada, we took our research and displayed it into a fun lapbook. Moving forward, we are using some of our social studies time to now learn Spanish with weekly classes from Dr. Morris. 12
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