News for March 23

News for March 23

This week the students completed a class research project, that integrated math, literacy and media studies, to determine the best Lay's potato chip product. The children tallied and graphed which was the best potato chip based on looks, crunchiness, saltiness, greasiness and taste. They also looked at which chip had the most sodium and calories. Then, the class brainstormed ideas on how to make the potato chips better and their ideas for how the company could sell more potato chips. Finally, each student wrote a letter to the Lay's Company to tell them what they learned from their research and to tell them their ideas on how to make better potato chips and how to sell more packages of chips. All the graphs and letters are now on the display board outside of our classroom. We will mail the letters and graphs to Lay's and hopefully, they will write back!

The grade 3's worked as a group to research and create a play telling the story of the invention of potato chips. They performed the play in front of the grade 4 students. A video of this play can be found at the end of this posting.

In math, the students learned about making and interpreting pictographs, creating survey questions, making and interpreting bar graphs and how to use a key (scale or legend).

The students learned about the life of Helen Keller (1880-1968), an inspirational woman who traveled all over the world to bring attention to the issues of deaf and blind people. The students also began to view the movie "The Miracle Worker", a movie based on Helen Keller's life.

The class learned and practiced how to use quotation marks in their writing.

In science, the children learned about the terms transparent (clear), translucent (some light can get through) and opaque (no light is able to get through). They did experiments to determine which of these terms applies to different materials. The class also brain-stormed different human inventions that use light and/or sound in order to function. Each child then chose an invention on which to do research for the research project poster due on Thursday, April 5th.

Books read aloud this week:

Helen Keller: A Determined Life by Elizabeth MacLeod

The Woman Who Outshone the Sun - The Legend of Lucia Zenteno by Gabriel Cruz Martinez

The Room 5 Interview Show!

This week, Haleigh and Thomas interviewed Ms. Harnick.

The Story of Potato Chips (a play by the grade 3 students)