Over the past two weeks, the third grade classes have dug out and counted the seeds for twenty-three pumpkins.
The question investigated was whether a large, medium or small pumpkin had the most seeds.
Ask your student what we discovered. Hint: the point of the lesson was to learn that not every question has an easy answer and we don't always get what we expect in science.
In addition to the science portion of the lab, this lesson gave us the opportunity to manipulate large numbers. The most seeds found in one pumpkin this year was 901. That is a lot of counting!!!
The third grade will have on-going opportunities to work the numbers that add up to over 9,000 seeds including how to share large numbers equally. (Remember, we don't know how to do long division yet!)
Work with authentic numbers at home. Have your student decide on how to share the grapes evenly amongst family members or how to cut a cake into equal shares. This develops richer understanding of important mathematical concepts. .
Mrs. A.
ReplyDeleteThis is a wonderful resource for students, parents and teachers!
Thank you!
Tonie Finch
Mrs. A,
ReplyDeleteIt's super to see a Los Alamitos teacher engage with blogging to facilitate communications with parents. I hope you can inspire some of your colleagues to give it a try too. Thank you! This is wonderful.
Michelle Pacansky-Brock
Thank you. So glad to have you both drop by. The nature of my teaching post (120-150 children doing the same lesson each day) does make it a little easier to summarize the day's events.
ReplyDeleteAre you familiar with a tool called VoiceThread? I've used it extensively in my own teaching and I think it would be a-m-a-z-i-n-g for you to incorporate into your lessons. If you're interested, send me an email: brocansky@gmail.com
ReplyDelete(My boys are in second and fourth grade currently at Los Alamitos, by the way -- looking forward to your class!)
Michelle