A "Green" Town

Designed by & excerpt written by: Charlie L.

"My town name is Bob. It is environmentally friendly. There are wind turbines and solar panels. I have fire pits along the side walk. For the pets there is a vet and a park. When you get bored in my town you can go to the ice skating rink. There is also a large forest. I chose 10 towers that are 6 floors high . I picked it because there is more room for other things in the town and it is not too high. Pick me, it's green!

Designing and Persuading

Today we spent time in math finishing up the designs of our "research towns" and also writing speeches to persuade the Governor of Alaska to choose our plan. Tomorrow students will be sharing their designs using the Elmo and giving their speeches. We spent awhile today discussing what the word persuade meant before heading off to write. Those of us who decided to watch President Obama's speech today were also able to connect our new understanding of the word persuade to what we thought his "big message" was. Some of our ideas were that Obama was persuading kids to "stay in school," "work hard even when things seem challenging," and "grow up to do something to help people in our country." It is powerful for students to be critical thinkers and realize when someone/something is trying to persuade them to think a certain way or do something. Advertisements are powerful messages of persuasion. The more the conversation went on, the more I think kids realized how much persuading they've already done (especially with their parents). Check back again tomorrow and we should have an album up with everyone's town designs and also excerpts from their speeches.

The task we are working on:

Governor of Alaska now wants your recommendation for the best possible design of the town. Remember, each building must be exactly the same height. Which building size do you think is the best? You should use the grid of the available land to map out your town. One box on the grid is the size of one multi-link cube. Don’t forget to include all the things that a town needs. Below are some suggestions from the families that will be coming to live in the town to help you do research:

Cindy Gola

“I am a mom. I have a large family and I want my children to have lots of room to play outside. They also need a school that is safe to walk to each day.”

Dwight Smith

“I want to have my own backyard where my dog can run around.”

Jessica Hardy

“I want to live next to a large forest so I can go hiking in the snow.”

After you design your town, you will need to write a speech justifying the design to the Governor of Alaska. She will want to know why you chose the size and location of the buildings. Also, she will look at how well your town will work for the families that will be moving to Alaska to investigate the ancient civilization. 

Cricket Research

This morning we went to the computer lab to do some research on CRICKETS. So many questions came up yesterday when we were sketching with Mary Lou. Before heading to the computer lab we reviwed basic note-making and note-taking strategies. Note-TAKING includes all the facts we learn while reading. Researchers take notes using bullet points and writing down only the most important parts of a sentence or paragraph. The note-MAKING section can include questions, connections, and other types of thinking that are going in our brains as we read and learn. These research skills are going to be really important once we get into our nature trail project and creating podcasts. We have listed some of our note-taking and note-making about crickets below. Do you know anything else about crickets that we could add to our list?


Note Taking

• 24 different species
• predators = spiders, wasps, ground beetles, birds, small rodents, and lizards
• sometimes they eat other dead crickets if there is nothing else available (scavenger)
• some types live in caves
• cricket fighting is a sport, especially in Asia
• usually only males chirp
• some live in dry places
• in some places people eat crickets
• 6 joints in legs
• long antennas than grasshoppers
• considered good luck in Asia
• rub wings together to make noise (chirp)
• if you count number of chirps in 15 seconds + 40 = temperature in Fahrenheit
• some live under things like rocks
• microscopic hair on body and in spiracles
• left forewing of the male has a special vein that which bears 50-300 ridges, which is how they make chirping noise to attract a mate

Note Making

• Why do they have palps? What do they do with them?
• Why do people eat crickets?
• text-to-self connection: inside of spiracle looks like a beehive
• Who has longer legs? Cricket or grasshopper?
• I wonder if bees and wasps actually sting the cricket?
  

Practicing Metacognition... Reading is Thinking

This week we have been talking about how much thinking good readers do when when they read. On the chart paper above you can see all the thinking we did after reading on Tuesday. One way we mark our thinking is using sticky notes. Take a look at Aiden's book below. On one page he marked three different types of thinking he was doing. As we continue to practice "thinking about our thinking" as readers we hope to push ourselves to do even deeper thinking about books and characters. What kind of thinking do you do when you read?

Sketching in Art

We had art this afternoon with Mary Lou. She helped us brush up on our sketching skills so that we are ready to take on whatever we may find on the nature trail. As you can see we sketched a cricket. Most of us had no idea that crickets breathe using spiracles along the side of their bodies. Also, crickets use an organ on their front legs to hear. Each of us started sketching the cricket's head first. Then we moved onto the body. A few times we had to revise our drawing to make sure that all the body parts fit just right. It was almost like a puzzle. When we were finished sketching we made a title using at least one text feature and used bullet points to jot down some notes. Enjoy looking through all our sketches.

Slideshow Version
http://picasaweb.google.com/thirdgradestonypoint/SketchingACricket#slideshow/5377379582428882210

Our Album
http://picasaweb.google.com/thirdgradestonypoint/SketchingACricket#

Finding all the possibilities... in math

Check out the problem we started working on today in math:
Building a Town

You are an explorer in Alaska. With a team of sled dogs you have been able to visit areas that no one else has seen before. One night at your campsite you find a few pieces of broken pottery that you think may be from an unknown ancient civilization. This is a major discovery! You need to get other researchers, historians, and explorers to come to the area to help you investigate. There is no where for your research team to live, so you must design a small town for them to live in. You must have space for exactly 60 families. All the buildings have to be the same size. You have been asked to find all the possible designs for the town.

Use the multi-link cubes to help you find all the possible ways to create housing for the 60 research families that will be exploring this new ancient civilization. Only one family can fit in each cube. You may stack cubes on top of each other to make tall buildings. Remember, for each possible town design each building must be the same height. The design must hold exactly 60 families. How can you make sure that you have found all the possible ways? The Governor of Alaska wants a report of ALL the possible solutions at the next meeting. You should record each design in your notebook using words, pictures, and numbers.

Mini Classroom Model (A classroom in a classroom!)

First before we made our classroom models we made a list of items in the room and also how many of those items there were. We found out there were 24 chairs in all. After Ms.Buchholz listed things that are in the classroom we got paired up with our partners. All the partners split up to go observe the classroom.We observed the classroom. When we were done observing we went to go get the blocks we needed to build our structure.We used wooden blocks, pattern blocks, multi-link cubes, flat square tiles, and hundreds-tens-ones blocks. We started building our mini classroom models. At the end Ms.Buchholz took pictures and everyone drew a map of  their stucture. Many people in our class thought that building the model and the drawing our map were the most challenging part.
Written by: Clare & Hannah