Simple Machines

Spontaneous Problem: Write as many idioms as you can think of.
Boundary Breaker: What does a scientist do?

Today we read one of my favorite books, Ada Twist: Scientist by Andrea Beaty and competed in a Kahoot on the Scientific Method for a review of last week.  Our exploration focus was on simple machines.  We were able to use a student paced Simple Machines Nearpod to brush up on our understanding, take some good notes, and play several online quizzes and activities reinforcing the concepts.  Your student can continue to explore at home with this game and this vocabulary review.

Students then used their creativity and knowledge of simple machines to draw the internal workings and come up with the purpose of our imaginary contraption.

We had fun practicing the Habit of Mind, Thinking Flexibly with the Hidden Squares Challenge puzzle and Persisting with the Penny Balance Challenge.

We finished by introducing the Inventions and Inventors project that students will have the opportunity to work on over our upcoming break.  We also reviewed our archaeology content and expectations for the upcoming field study.

The Scientific Method

Spontaneous Problem: Name three syllable words.
Boundary Breaker:  Students were given some quick thinking math problems and then asked to think of a number between 5-12.  For the Boundary Breaker, students had to give their reasoning for why they thought most people chose 7.

We used the book My Teacher Likes to Say by Denise Brennen-Nelson to introduce idioms.  Students had a good time pointing them out in conversations throughout the day.  We also used the lesson to help us solve some picture plexers from our brain stretcher packet.

Next students worked hard on their chapter 2 check-up from our base 3 math practice.  So far, those are looking great!

We finished by introducing part 2 of our exploration unit, Exploring through Problem Solving.  We began by looking at the scientific method as a problem solving tool.  Today we went through the steps an conducted a class test to see how many random numbers a third grader could hold in their brain without forgetting.  Check out our format here.  Five was the lucky number that discredited all of our confident hypotheses.  Then student groups conducted their own memory experiments to determine if it was more common to be auditory or visual learner.

Museum Opening and Time Travel!

Spontaneous Problem: Name things that close.
Boundary Breaker: You have been given a big ALERT project to work on with a partner.  What are three characteristics you would want in the partner you choose.  Explain your choices.

Take a look at these beauties!

Today, students were called on to help me with a slight dilemma where they used their learning to come through with flying colors!  Our ancient civilization time travel mystery served as a culminating event for this unit and we look forward to starting on exploring through problem solving next week!

We used the afternoon to wrap up Chapter 2 with a look at reading and writing numbers in different bases.  They had fun calculating their Land of Treble ages.