Griffin led his author study kahoot twice! Thank you! @NancyKrulik 🤩🤩 pic.twitter.com/ltP0WKEzI9

— Mrs.Gleason-MBGrade3 (@gleasonMB3) April 12, 2019

A Week in our Shoes

 Literacy: Poetry, Figurative Language, and more!

What an interesting week! We have been working on identifying figurative language and what the author actually means! After these poets completed a pre-assessment on Monday, I learned that many students didn't read the poem prior to completing the questions... Many completed it based on their own schema. So what would any teacher do? Write a misleading poem about a horse and see just how many students used the poem to answer the questions versus what they know about horses.

The correct answer was NONE OF THE ABOVE! 😩 We had a great talk about this and I hope it was a lesson well learned!

We used "written conversations" in order to investigate and discuss the poem, Search for My Tongue by Sujata Bhatt. This poem uses a lot of figurative language! It will also build into our next Social Studies lessons.

What type of figurative language are we discussing? Similes, metaphors, personification, common idioms, hyperboles, etc. My goal is for students to understand what the author is trying to say, and not match figurative language terms to definitions. However, we will practice simply identifying metaphors, personification, and similes on Monday.
We have worked all year at using context clues, root words, affixes, etc. to determine possible meanings and solving for unknown words. I hope these readers feel confident in their abilities as we have been practicing all year!

Math: Discovering a new Strategy to Multiply Large Numbers!

What do you think this person is trying to do?

We were shown pictures with varying uses of the "area model" or "break apart" strategy and discussed what we thought could be happening, or how the strategy worked. We ended the week practicing breaking about 3 digit numbers in order to multiply it by a one digit number! In the coming week we will learn the traditional strategy and how it relates to the break apart!

This is WAY different than I grew up learning, so here is a video to show you how it works!

Thank you for your feedback through the optional homework survey and the communication survey! As we have been given some flexibility with how we assign, or if we assign homework, I have been able to make some changes. I discussed my purposes with the students on Friday (I let them know there were a lot of adults debating homework views as well 😀). I also talked to them a bit about the research in regards to the traditional view of homework. My "homework" over the last couple weeks has been to show the work we did in math to a parent/family member and explain their understanding of it.

I have made challenge math packets available and I let students know this is a tool some families have asked for and they can use it in whatever way their family decides. Some may complete it by a date, or do a problem a night, or what have you. Again, thank you for your feedback and feel free to continue to provide it!

A Peek into This Week:

• Reading MCA Test on Wednesday the 17th!
• Multiplying larger numbers!
• Figurative Language!
• Investigating expository mentor texts in order to write our own!
• Showing and appreciating Integrity!
• Our Reading MCA test is April 17th, Math is April 24th!
• There are NO MORE LATE STARTS this year.