Is the World Flat?

My students LOVE basketballs, so when a story emerged about a Basketball player believing the world was flat came up, I thought it would be a great teachable moment.

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/18710759/kyrie-irving-cleveland-cavaliers-believes-earth-flat

The students unanimously agreed that the earth was round:

"Because I just saw the google Earth and google never lies"
"Because we read the story and the pictures the world was round" 
"Well if you look, you can see mountains poking up. That means that the worlds isn't flat"
"Because if the world was flat, then if you kept walking then you would fall off and be killed but that never happens" 
"Because I can see the moon and its round and I can see the sun and its round, so the earth is also round"
"We learned about the solar system, I wonder if he learned about the solar system"

I loved their reasoning and the point that they made wondering if he had learned about the solar system. Maybe some people weren't exposed to the knowledge. Early man believed the world was flat, so its not irrational to believe that the earth is flat. In our world of over-information and mis-information, its easy to forget why we know facts.

We looked at some pictures of early maps where the earth was flat and related it back to Columbus trying to sail to India. You can't just take knowledge for granted, you have to explore & understand.

#Iditarod

Tons of cool free Iditarod resources!

http://www.nea.org/tools/lessons/Iditarod-Resources-for-Grades-K-5.html
http://iditarod.com/edu/category/teach-and-learn/

 Had to update my map because instead of the restart down in Willow, they are going to Fairbanks this year (Partly because of the conditions at Rainy Pass, which was neat because bad conditions at Rainy Pass was in our Reading Mastery Story)

Each student created their own dog sled team and we are keeping reading logs where they earn 1 mile for page read... we are keeping track of "where they are on the trail" based on their page count. Its been fun and will keep them reading over the Spring Break!

We also did a survivor game using the Alaska Native Curriculum, where students packed for surviving on the trail and picked 5 items from a list of 15. They are so clever! They all concluded that they would not want to do the Iditarod for real, but had a new appreciation for the Mushers who do!

@Skypeclassroom Guest Speaker

Author Tricia Brown who wrote: Charlie & The Blanket Toss talked to us. She lives in Anchorage. The students were excited to meet her since they read her book for Battle of the Books the previous year. 

 She told us about the inspiration that lead her to write her book.

She read her story to us

And then one of the students read their tribute story that they had written called "J & H and the Blanket Toss" 

They are really inspired to be writers and have been busy writing and illustrating on their laptops or in their notebooks. 

#BattleoftheBooks

Battle of the books has been such a fun project. The students enjoyed reading them and learning trivia questions. 

The favorite was chicken Squad, which got 3 votes. 

Marvin & James got 2. 

13 Story Tree House got 2

and Skinnybones got 2. 

We have been busy practicing all the trivia questions too. They know the titles & authors really well. We have been practicing in small groups and they even started doing their own trivia game one-on-one during center time. During reading choice, they have been re-reading all the stories on their own.

  

There will be 3 3rd Grade classes, 2 4th Grade Classes, and a 3rd Grade Class from one of the other sites competing to be the District Representative to State.

We also found it was fun to do CHALLENGES, when we disagreed with the answer. One of the Battle Questions was: In which book are characters born on the same birthday? The correct answer is supposed to be 11 birthdays by Wendy Mass, but the students pointed out that the answer could also be Volcano Blast by Marlane Kennedy since the characters are Twins... (This class has 2 sets of twins so they know all about having the same birthday!) Love this critical thinking & attention to detail! I told them when we correct work and if they think that a question that was marked wrong, should be marked right, they should CHALLENGE it.

BONUS: Its been a fun way to practice our 8 times tables. They get 5 points for a correct title and extra 3 points for correct author.

UPDATE: Just had our district level battle of the books. We had 3 teams who placed 1st & 2nd at the distirct level, so they will be going doing the STATE level competition in March!

VIrtual Field Trip to @DinosaurNPS

Through @Skypeclassroom, we were able to take  a field trip to the Dinosaur National Park in Utah.

Our tour started outside, so we could see. They said they were in the Northern part of Utah, close to Wyoming. One of my students asked if Utah was a 4 corner State. It was. 

 Here is the Museum where all the dinosaur bones are.

 Our Tour Guide was Ranger Lee. He was impressed I had a student know that this was an Ichthyasaur

 It was absolutely incredible to see all the fossil in the museum, something we would never have been able to do otherwise. He urged us to go see some of the Fossils at Denali too.

 This was an ACTUAL dinosaur skull, one of 4 in the world since most bones you see are replicas.

 A fossil that a little boy found!

What an incredible opportunity. You can see in the corner some of the students were taking pictures so that they could show the classmates who were absent that day. This was our first Virtual Field Trip and will certainly not be our last! :)

#SuperbowlSnaps

I spent Superbowl with @TaraMartinEdu & @MathDenisNJ where we used the hashtag #SuperbowlSnaps to take snaps throughout the game and figure out how to use those moments in the classroom.

I told my husband, I was cheering for the falcons, but thought that the patriots would end up winning. I HATED being right.

Tara Martin is the genius behind #Booksnaps and Denis Sheeran is the Author of #MakeitReal. It was inspiring to hang out with them and share ideas. #Superbowlsnaps needs to become a yearly thing.

To see a compilation of our #Superbowlsnaps, check them out at the padlet here:
https://padlet.com/tarammartin_real/ukaepleql8o2

#SpellingBee Time

I have never organized spelling bee before! Judges, prizes, setting up, rules, contestant practice.... There was a lot, but I think it turned out GREAT! 

We made enough cupcakes, so that each student who participated got one. 

Both of my 3rd Grade students made it multiple rounds, they had mastered all the words on our grade level spelling list. The outlasted several of the students from the other grades, so they were really proud. 

Microscope Lab

Our HS Science teacher offered a microscope lab to us when he heard we were studying cells. 

The students first learned the different parts of the Microscope & how to properly care for them. 

There were 10 main rules, the most important being: DO NOT TOUCH THE LENSES

The students got to view 3 different slides and drew what they saw such as a Paramecium: a single celled animal

Also a Hydra "I think aliens are real!" 

And we even got to see how perfectly square salt crystals are! 

Place Value Nightmare...

They are getting place value when it comes to 3 digit addition, but as soon as we went into 3 digit subtraction it became a nightmare. Even though, they know they have to regroup when 3-8, they still interpret as 8-3

We played a variety of place-value games and they understood the concept of re-grouping, but when we say down to do the equations, they were so confused.

I found online manipulatives to show them on the smart board. They got it but not when it was their turn to to it.
So we tried the second strategy: breaking the problem down into smaller problems to avoid regrouping. That strategy confused them even further.

Finally, we came to the strategy where you break the numbers down into the ones, tens, and hundreds place and then re-group from there!

500-453 becomes 500 + 0 + 0
minus                    400+ 50+3

Whatever it was about that visual, they suddenly got it.

That's why its so important to have multiple strategies! You never know which one is going to be the one that works!

#MysteryNumber & #Gmttc3

Technology is amazing. Collaborative math is possible and it makes it so much more engaging. 

We have started doing #MysteryNumber, which is like Mystery Skype except both classes pick a number which the other tries to guess. It helps reinforce: 

Place Value:  "Is the number in the tens place 5?"

Even/Odd: "Is the number in the hundreds place odd?"

We have only done numbers till 100, but you can do to 1,000 to 1,000,000. People also do decimals, fractions, or negative numbers depending on how challenging they want it. 

We started Analog with post-it notes on each others backs and guessing ranges. It was fun. The students really have to pay attention and often write down clues or eliminate on a 100s chart. 

Also using Twitter, the students participate in #GMTTC3. Each week a 3rd grade class posts questions that they wrote and we solve them. This week it was our turn to write questions. 

The students were so excited to see that other people were answering their questions. Its such a great review for them to write or answer questions. 

A CLASS IN AUSTRALIA SOLVED OUR PROBLEM!!!

And even some second graders! 

We have been practicing our spelling bee words, so some of the students wrote them in our word problems.

Lantern, massive, contract, bronze, ant-eater, umbrella... all on our 3rd grade spelling bee list!