More Than One Way to Solve a Problem

There are lots of ways to solve a problem.

Problem solving is very important, but probably the most important part of problem solving is to be able to explain your thinking as to how you solved the problem. Correct answers are great, but correct answers with an explanation are even better!

The fun part is that we are all different, and we quite often look at problems in different ways. That's a good thing, because we learn so much from seeing how other people think.

Here is a problem solving activity we did. The requirements were:

1.  Correct answer.
2.  A strategy to get the correct answer.
3.  An explanation of the strategy.

 As you can see, we had a lot of different ways to think about this problem!

Some students worked with partners, others were more comfortable working on their own. Everyone worked hard.

Here is the problem:

And here are some of our strategies!

Kiersten and Ruby used multiplication to solve the problem.

Claire groups the horses and the people separately to solve the problem.

Ryan and Hope drew a picture to solve their problem. (They shared with us their strategy--we ran out of time for them to write their strategy down.)

 Andrew and Lexi used tally marks to solve the problem.

Tessa and Gavin gave us two different strategies. Tessa used groups and Gavin used a multiplication sentence with three factors.

 Finally, Kaydance used unifix cubes to stand for the people's legs and horse's legs.

What good thinkers we have! It is so great to see how everyone's mind works differently.

What do you think of our solutions to the problem?

When you looked at the problem, did you think of yet another way to solve it?

Please share in the comment section below!

Common vs. Proper

Mrs. Essenburg's students are learning about proper nouns. We read a book, The Journey of Oliver K. Woodman. This book is filled with lots of both common and proper nouns!

As we read, we listed some of the common and proper nouns on our board. When we finished we looked at our list to determine what we thought about the difference between the two different kinds of nouns.

Here are some of our thoughts:

Kaydance: They are all people, places and things!

Kiersten: The common nouns are things we see a lot of every day.

Jack: The proper nouns start with an uppercase letter, and the common nouns don't.

Ruby: The proper nouns are names of specific things.

We determined that common nouns are just regular people, places, and things, like dogs, grandfathers, trucks, and stores.

Proper nouns are the names of specific nouns, such as Mrs. Essenburg, Grand Rapids, Uncle David, and Meijer's.

For example, restaurant is a common noun, but a specific restaurant, like McDonald's, is a proper noun. When we write a sentence with a proper noun, we need to remember to capitalize the proper noun.

I like going to a restaurant for supper.
McDonald's is my favorite restaurant.

My birthday is next month!
My birthday is in October.

I like going to my uncle's house.
It is fun visiting my Uncle Richard.

Of course, it isn't enough just to learn about proper nouns in class. We need to use them in our writing! More detail makes our writing more interesting.

So it is your turn, third graders! Here are some common nouns and some proper nouns. You can use these words or come up with your own! Write one sentence with the common noun. Then write another sentence using the proper noun. Remember to capitalize it! Also remember that all sentences start with a capital letter and end with punctuation.

Common Nouns -- Proper Nouns
dog -- Rex, Skippy, Baxter
cat -- Lucy, Troy, Midnight
state -- Michigan, Florida, Ohio
man -- Mr. Brunsink
woman -- Mrs. Essenburg, Mrs. Veldink
boy -- All the boys in our class! Bradyn, Conner, Jackson, etc.
girl -- All the girls in our class! Kiersten, Kaiya, Hope, etc.
holiday -- Christmas, Halloween, Easter
country -- United States, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico

There are many more!

Here is my example.

Dear Class,

I have two crazy, silly cats in my house.

My two cats, Troy and Lucy, are crazy and silly.

I'm looking forward to seeing your sentences!

Do you have a favorite proper noun?

Do you think it is a good idea to use proper nouns in your writing? Why?

Marvelous Multipliers

In third grade, one of the most important math skills we learn is how to multiply. Before we can start memorizing our facts we need to have a very solid understanding of the concept of multiplication. That will not only help us learn our facts more quickly, it will also help us in so many different math skills we will learn through the rest of third grade and the years ahead.

We have been working hard over the past two weeks or so doing a variety of activities to make sure we have a good understanding of what multiplication means.

Here are just a few of the things we've been doing.

We read the book One Hundred Hungry Ants. In this book 100 ants are on the way to a picnic. As they march to get their supper, the littlest ant keeps telling them to divide themselves different. First all 100 are together, then they are in two rows of 50, then four rows of 25, then five rows of 20, etc.

After reading the book we got got to see how many different groupings we could find for our 100 "ants". We ended up with lots of different ways to group 100 evenly, many more than were in the book! Two groups of 50, twenty groups of 5, fifty groups of 2, ten groups of 10, four groups of 25 and on and on and on!

We also read the book Amanda Bean's Amazing Dream, about a girl who sees multiplication EVERYWHERE!

After reading that book, we started looking everywhere for multiplication as well. It didn't take long to find some multiplication problems in the classroom and around the school. We mostly found arrays, and we snapped some pictures and used the app Skitch to show what multiplication problem we found. Here are some examples!

 This calendar is an array with 5 rows and 7 in each row.

This bulletin board is an array of 3 rows and 8 in each row.

We are always looking for examples of multiplication around us so more Skitch's might be coming.

Another thing we did was to make a screencast. A screencast is both a recording and a video. We solve a math problem on the iPad and we record our thinking as we solve the problem. It is a great way to share what we are learning. We each had a multiplication equation and we first had to think of a story problem to go along with the multiplication equation. After we had that all set, we solved the problem and recorded ourselves solving it. It was a great way to review what we'd learned!

A few of us wrote addition problems at first, so it was also a good or us to stop and think about how multiplication and addition are different.

Here are some of our screencasts using the app Educreations.

Gavin did a screencast with the multiplication problem 4 x 3.




Sara Jean did a screencast with the multiplication problem 5 x 5.



Kaydance made a screencast for 3 x 2.




And Jocelyn made one for 5 x 2.




This was our first time creating screencasts. We did a GREAT job! We will be making more screencasts in the future.

What do you think of what we've been learning in multiplication?

When do you use multiplication in real life?

Do you ever notice examples of multiplication problems--either groups or arrays--around you?

International Dot Day!

Today, September 15, is International Dot Day!

International Dot Day is a day to celebrate creativity and how each of us is going to "make our mark". And WE are having fun with Dots all day today!

For a better understanding of International Dot Day, here is the story The Dot, by Peter H. Reynolds.


And here is The Dot song.



Schools all over the world are using these materials to celebrate creativity and taking a risk! It goes along perfectly with our classroom theme this year of Create Bravely.

We have already been making dots with our wonderful Art teacher. Each dot is unique and special, just like us. We also made Dots in class to share with another class that we are Mystery Skyping with!


IMG 0689 from Jane E Essenburg on Vimeo.

The third graders also wrote comments on this blog post about how they are going to make their mark. They wrote their verb in all caps to practice identifying the verb in the sentence.

So, for example, Mrs. Essenburg might write:

Dear Class,

I am going to make my mark on the world by TEACHING creative and inspiring students.

Mrs. Essenburg

Check out the comments by third graders below. We would love comments from visitors about how they will make their mark on the world!

Verbs, Verbs, Verbs

In Mrs. Essenburg's class we have been learning about verbs. What is a verb? I'll let Sara tell you.

listen to ‘Verbs’ on Audioboo

After learning what a verb is, we got together and brainstormed a whole bunch of verbs. And because verbs show action, what better way to think and learn about verbs than to act them out? We got into groups and used our acting and directing skills to film each other. Take a look at the Verb Movie we created!






However, verbs alone are not enough. We use verbs as part of sentences. In fact, it is impossible to write a complete sentence without a verb. 

Quite often, we have to add an ending, such as ed, or ing, to our verb. Sometimes we have to put helping words, like is or are, in front of our verb.

For example:

Ryan raced across the playground.

Deven waved at her friend across the street.

Jack is riding his bike in his neighborhood.

Kayla was swinging on the tire swing.

Your turn third graders! You can use a verb in our video or think of your own! Write a comment below with a sentence using a verb. Remember to think about whether or not you need to add an ending.  

Any other visitors to our blog, we would love to see an action verb sentence from you as well!

Off to a Great Start!

The first week of school is in the history books, and what a great week it was!

Here's a peek inside the classroom at some of the things we did over this busy first week.

We started out on the first day playing some get-to-know you games.

We discussed together what type of classroom we wanted and brainstormed some ideas about how we wanted it to run. Our Social Contract and rules for the classroom came from these ideas.

We did some team building activities. The marshmallow challenge was a lot of fun.

We also had fun trying to get the hula hoop all the way around the circle without letting go of our hands.

 

We decorated our Writer's Notebooks and they look great!

Of course we had time to get started on math and reading.

Then on Friday we got to do something I had been wanting to do for quite some time. We did our first Mystery Skype. A Mystery Skype is an activity where two classes Skype to each other and use clues to figure out what state (or country) we are Skyping with. What a fun way to learn about geography! It is a great problem solving activity and it fits perfectly with our upcoming Social Studies unit about the Regions of the United States.

More Mystery Skypes to come!

Finally, on Friday, at the very end of a VERY hot day. it was a good time to sit and reflect over the week that just finished. We talked together about some of the favorite things we did this week, and then we used the iPads and the technology tool Padlet to share together what we liked the best. Padlet is a digital bulletin board and a great way for all of us to see what each other's favorite activities were.

Here is the Padlet we created.

Created with Padlet

As you can see, a very busy week! What do you think of our first week of school?