Grade 3 News
Newsletter #2: How the World Works
UOI 5: How The World Works
Central idea: Engineers innovate to solve problems.
Key concepts: causation, form, connection
Lines of inquiry
- The need for inventions (Causation)
- The design cycle (Form)
- The impact of design and technology on daily life (Connection)
UOI Field Trip
The students will be visiting Six Flags for Math & Science Day on May 12.
What Have We Learned So Far?
Science
Students learned about the design cycle, constraints, buoyancy, volume, center of gravity, etc. Students have designed many different structures and objects and tested them to hold weight or complete a task.
English Language Arts
Students are studying different versions of Cinderella, while learning about how the theme is impacted by the characters, traits, events, and setting. The students are going through the writing process to create their own version of Cinderella which will be published in a class book.
UOI Summative
Third-grade students will work in pairs to create a Rube Goldberg machine to solve a simple task.
Subject Specific Summatives
Students will have formatives, which will assess their understanding of the math content and help drive my instruction to better suit their needs. They will also have a mid-module and end of module math summative, the date of this summative will be announced a week prior. I send home review sheets for these assessments, the questions on the review sheet are very similar to those on the tests. Students that complete the review sheets generally do better on the summative, than those that do not do it.
STEM Week
Students extracted DNA from wheat germ.
STEM
Students used tape and index cards to build a bridge to hold 50 pennies.
Fractions
Students represented parts of a whole in different ways.