Strength in Numbers: Building Community

So it is a typical day in third grade with too much to do and the kids are showing the signs of stress.  Or maybe that's just me!!!  You know what I mean, nothing earth shattering, but the "feel" of the room just isn't right.  No it isn't time for a vacation, the kids just need to learn to work together.

Today I made an effort to work on our sense of community.  In the morning we always start with a community circle; I'm a Tribes trainer, believe in it and live it everyday.  I know they have a sense of inclusion (togetherness), but we haven't done enough work on how to work together in pairs and groups.  The CORE has lots of group and partner learning so it will save time in the long run to get them functioning in different situations.

tribes.com Visit their website if your haven't heard of this process!

During math we've be working on 10's and a strategy to learn 5's as half of 10.  Some of the kids understood this concept right away, but haven't internalized it.  Other kids were still exploring the concept of multiples and what it means.  I pulled the kids together into what I call "purposeful partners".  I explain that some days I pick random partners and other days I have a reason I want them to work with a certain person.  Today my purpose was to help the kids make positive connections and to have one of the kids with a solid understanding working with another who was still building their foundational understanding.  I modeled how to make an array for a ten's fact and how to fold it into a five's fact.  Their task was to build all the ten's and five's facts up to ten.  Before I sent them off to work we talked about sharing the job, deciding on colors and planning designs together so partners will learn and be satisfied.  At the end of the math time partners were encouraged to give appreciations to their partner.  All the groups finished the task successfully, had experience seeing the relationship between tens and fives and learned from each other.

After lunch, I decided to delve into discourse and polite conversation.  Up to this point, I've been monitoring who shares and who doesn't.  That is an awful lot of power to wield for one teacher.  I shared with the kids my idea about sharing our voice and ideas.  Again stressing that we are stronger together than we are by ourselves.  I set up the expectations for the kids to reflect back what the other child was saying and politely agree, add on or respectfully disagree.  I let them know that this is the way most people have conversations.  Our read aloud, Rock River by Bill Maynard piqued their interest and encouraged the conversation.  Once the first few cautious voices chimed in the floodgates opened and ideas flowed.  I'm not saying all was rosy, but the kids were empowered and they got into a variety of topics.

Since my family is needing me (it's good to be needed), I'll save the rest of the day for another entry.

Nature Art: A Summer Experience

Apparently summer has taken over and my blog has suffered...I haven't posted in quite a while.  I've been teaching a summer school class that is totally out of my normal 3rd grade teacher routine.  I have to admit it is refreshing to do something new and that helps kids learn about the natural world.

The name of the class is Nature Art.  It's designed for kids in 3rd and 4th grade, but I've had some kids "special request" to come back as 5th graders.  All the art projects in the class use natural materials or a nature theme to create the art.  The class runs for 16 days and there's a different project each day.  Some days we work outside; like when we are creating our stepping stones.  Other days we go out and collect; like on the day we make our pounded plant wall hangings.

Each day of class we start with a community circle question that helps the kids to get to know each other as well as gets their brain ready for what we'll be learning about that day.  No matter what I teach I always use community building to help bring the group together as quickly as possible.

One of my favorite projects is making pounded plant hangings.  The kids are intriqued when I pull out hammers and fabric!!!  I teach them a bit about plants and pigments before we go out to collect plants for the project.  After we come back I demonstrate how to pound plants into fabric.  I try a variety of plants so they have an idea which ones work well and which ones just leave a brown blob.
If you plan to do this project with kids test out some plants in the area.  If the weather has been REALLY dry the pigments don't come out as well.

If you are working with kids in literacy, math, science or art make sure that you are digging in!!

Measurement FUN!!

This is the non-standard method for
measuring in "feet" up the wall.  

The Measurement Stations were a hands on exploration at the end of our month long measurement unit.  Each station was designed to encourage the kids to explore and practice their skills in different areas of measurement.  There were four stations; weight/balance, length, time, and volume.  The day I was planning to run the stations our team had an "emergency" meeting during the prep time prior to math class, wouldn't you know.  If you're anything like me, you were counting on that time to get everything ready to go.  Well I ended up with 15 minutes for the entire set up...and believe it or not I was able to do it.  So it goes without saying, the set up was super easy.

Data collection on the
Measuring Stations Recording Sheet

I fudged on a few of the materials - since I forgot to get rice I used dirt instead!  I'm not even kidding, there is ALWAYS dirt around my classroom (I don't call the blog DIGGING INTO LEARNING for nothin'.)  I also couldn't find enough protector sheets, soooo I used portfolios to protect the direction sheets.

Look how this child is getting down to the right
level to see how much dirt is in the liter container
and only a tad bit is spilled on the table!!!

Each station had some interesting elements, but I figured the elapsed time station may not be all that exciting.  Boy was I wrong, for one part of the station the group timed themselves and for the other part they had to beat a minute timer.  The kiddos REALLY had fun with the time element and there was "just a bit" of noise and excitement.

We discovered in the this station that it's
tricky to stack blocks when you're being timed.

The length station could be done in either standard or metric.  It also had little measurements as well as bigger things to measure.  The kids definitely liked big measuring the best and were QUITE creative with how they got their bodies across the room.

Measuring across the classroom ...
they may have found an easier route
but I doubt it would have been as
much fun.

The volume station had many desirable elements; water, dirt and building!  I believe it helped to solidify the concepts of volume using solids and liquids as well.

Part of the volume station involved
using cubes to build to a certain
volume.

All in all the stations were a big hit.  My kids had a great experience, worked as teams and measured more in one day than in the entire unit!!  One child even said it was the BEST math class ever.  I've put together the stations for my store on Teacher's Pay Teachers if you're interested in more specific details.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Measurement-Stations-CORE-Aligned-693975