Knowing Third Graders

A brief introduction to the third grade mind and ideas for the classroom

By: Marty Robinson

You might be asking yourself why 3rd grade? The number of reasons varies for each teacher, but here are a few prominent points:• Third graders are at that pivotal point in life where they learn and understand• Third grade kids tend to like school• And lastly, most 3rd graders are eager to get their hands on knowledge

Why Third Grade?

Whether you’re brand new to teaching or a veteran teacher who’s changing grades, you’ll find valuable information that will help make your teaching, and students learning, joyful and engaging in this interactive guide.

Things to Remember and Keep in Mind About Third Graders

Are generally easygoing Adjust well to change Willing to take risks Usually full of energy May move awkwardly Tend to play hard and tire quickly Have limited attention span but can become engrossed in an activity Increased interest in logic and how things work

Have expanded vocabulary Enjoy talking and using new words Tend to exaggerate at times Eager for approval from peers and adults Can focus visually on the near and the far Have improved hand-eye coordination

These are just a few of what makes 3rd graders who and what they are, but this will help you understand their minds as we get into different ideas.

Introduction to an Author

Math-o-

matics

Science Fun

BeTHE

Teacher

Ideas for the Third Grade Classroom

ResourcesUsed

Introduction to an Author

As kids start third grade, intellectually their starting to understand and enjoy books more then when they were younger. With this new found interest in literary works we as teachers need to be able to explain to our students some of the basics about books.

And one of those basics is the introduction to an author and what the purpose of an author is. This can actually be quite simple…

The purpose of an author is as easy as P.I.E!

Really! It is.

And what does P.I.E have to do with an author you might be asking, the answer is simple:

P – persuadeI – informE – entertain

P is for Persuade

Persuade When the author’s purpose is to persuade, it means that the author is trying to get you to do or try something.

Examples:• Commercials• Billboards• Advertisements • Opinions • Reviews• Political Ads

I stands for InformInform

When the author’s purpose is to inform, it means that the author is trying to give you information and teach you facts.

Examples:• Documentaries• Nonfiction Books• History / Science• News Articles• Recipes• Biographies

E = EntertainEntertain

When the author’s purpose is to entertain, it means that the author is trying to make you enjoy the story by keeping the readers attention.Examples:• Fiction Books• Fantasy• Mystery• Comics / Jokes• Adventure• Romance

If you put all of it together you get P.I.E.

– Persuade, Inform, & Entertain –

This is a very simple, fun, and extremely easy way to break the ice with students and to begin introducing them to the much bigger world that literature is.

A real world application for P.I.E could be something like you see here on the left.

This was designed by a third grade teacher to introduce her students to authors in a creative and informative way.

How to Use It

Math-o-matics

Math can be one of the hardest subjects for some kids to learn and understand, but with a few good ideas that can change all around.

Math Songs A great way to help kids remember numbers is to put it to music. These next few slides will be a collection of different songs that you could use to help teach your students different math. To start with we have “The Twos Stroll”:

2, 4, 6, 8, 10 / 12, 14, 16, 18, 20.2, 4, 6, 8, 10 / 12, 14, 16, 18, 20.

Here’s a little girl and her name is Sue. / Everybody watch what she can do. / Do a little dance and it’s not too big. / Everybody watch her do a jig.

2, 4, 6, 8, 10 / 12, 14, 16, 18, 20.2, 4, 6, 8, 10 / 12, 14, 16, 18, 20.

Everybody watch the gentleman, / Doing the very best job he can. / Oh, how I wish I could dance that way. / Maybe I can another day.

2, 4, 6, 8, 10 / 12, 14, 16, 18, 20.2, 4, 6, 8, 10 / 12, 14, 16, 18, 20.

Clap your hands, stomp your feet. / Everybody do the dance that’s neat. / Feels so smart when we are through / cause everybody can multiply by two.

2, 4, 6, 8, 10 / 12, 14, 16, 18, 20.2, 4, 6, 8, 10 / 12, 14, 16, 18, 20.2, 4, 6, 8, 10 / 12, 14, 16, 18, 20.2, 4, 6, 8, 10 / 12, 14, 16, 18, 20.

Math Songs (cont.) The Fours Hop 4, 8, 12, 16, 20. / 24, 28 / 32, 36 / 40, XXX, 40, XXX.

Here’s a song that will help you learn the fours. Circle up, sing-a-long, clap your hands as we go, round and round, XXX, round and round, XXX.

4, 8, 12, 16, 20. / 24, 28 / 32, 36 / 40, XXX, 40, XXX.4, 8, 12, 16, 20. / 24, 28 / 32, 36 / 40, XXX, 40, XXX.4, 8, 12, 16, 20. / 24, 28 / 32, 36 / 40, XXX, 40, XXX.4, 8, 12, 16, 20. / 24, 28 / 32, 36 / 40, XXX, 40, XXX.

Aren’t these just great? If your interested in these songs you can go to www.melodyhousemusic.com and purchase the Multiplication Motivation CD for 2nd – 4th grade and get your own students bopping to math.

Daily Multiplication Problems Do you want to stimulate your children’s minds and keep them from forgetting something vitally important to math?

Then try implementing daily multiplication facts in the beginning of math time. Get there minds going by having them write down as many multiplication equations that they can on a piece of paper. Or throw up a dozen or so problems on the board of varying difficulty and help the students work through them and explain everything to them again so that information is fresh in there mind.

Most importantly, don’t get frustrated if one or two students say that they forgot. This happens and after a little guidance from you, the teacher, then it should jog their memories and the kids should be back on track.

Give Fast Facts a try!

Most schools would like their students to commit the facts that they learn and to have recall of 3 seconds or less per fact.

Fast Facts is a daily practice drill of 25 facts (of multiplication problems) and the students have a minute and fifteen seconds to complete as many of the facts as they can.

This exercise helps stimulate the student’s minds and help them begin to learn and absorb in the proper way.

Jump right in with Mental Math To keep the kids sharp, make sure that your practicing Mental Math to them. Always explain to them why the need for mental math is so important; tell them that math is everywhere in the world and that they won’t always have access to a pencil and paper, but they will always have their brains with them and that is why mental math is so important.

Present your students with strategies for mental math and then write problems on the board so that they can visually see what their trying to figure out. Give your students a few moments to figure out the problem and then begin discussing it with them as a group.

Find Three Ways!

Another great math lesson is something called Find Three Ways and the idea behind this is to give your students a word problem that can be solved three different ways. You have them work on this problem individually for four to five minutes, then together in their small groups they can discuss and talk over the math problem in further details, and lastly you have a few students come up to the front of the class and show the rest of the class how they figured out the problem.

This is a great way to challenge the students and to teach them how to converse academically with fellow students and ultimately share their findings with the larger group.

As you can see, there is a thousand and one different ways and ideas about how you can teach math to your 3rd grade students AND keep them focused and sharp at the same time.

Taking the time to discover what works best for you and your students is vital. Math will have such a pivotal roll in the lives of your students and their basis of understanding all starts with what your teaching them in the class room.

So give your kids a head start and go the extra mile by setting up math lessons with your own ideas or some of the suggestions offered. You can’t go wrong as long as your stimulating your students minds.

MATHOMATICS

MATHOMATICS

Science FUN!!!

Why not spice up a sometimes rather boring subject with some fun and educational experiments and activities that are sure to get everyone involved!

How Old is That Tree?Every year on our birthday we have a reminder of how old we are. And if we ever forget, we can always ask our parents! How do you think you find out how old a tree is? When a tree has been cut down, you can count its "rings" in order to tell how old it is, but what about when it is alive? We can't ask a tree how old it is. But there is a way!

What You Do:1. Help your students find a tree that is at

least as tall as a grown up and have your kids wrap a measuring tape around the widest part of the trunk. (A grown up might need to help with this part!) The distance around the trunk of a tree is called the circumference. Write this measurement down on a piece of paper.

2. The measurement of the circumference in inches is also the approximate age of the tree in years!

Make Your Own Cloud!What is a cloud exactly? We look at them every day, but few of us realize what they are made of.

In a nutshell, clouds are collections of tiny water droplets, formed when the warm air that is being heated by the sun's rays meets the cold, damp air coming up off the cold ground. Little water drops form into clouds. The water drops are so small and light that they can float in the air. When enough water droplets have gathered together, they get too heavy to float and fall down as rain.

Okay, so now you know how to explain clouds in plain English. But as they say, a picture's worth a thousand words. Rather than tell your kids how clouds are formed when warm and cold air meet, show them. Here's a way for kids to see it all up close!

What You Do:1. Tape a piece of black paper around the bottom half of a jar. 2. Fill the jar to the top with hot water. Leave it for about a minute. 3. Then pour out all but an inch of the water. 4. Have an adult light a match and hold it over the jar opening for a few seconds. 5. Drop the match in the water and then quickly put the plastic bag of ice cubes over the top of the jar.

So what happened? The warm water and the match heated the air inside thejar. The warm, wet air rose up to the top of the jar andran into the cold air just below the ice cubes. When the warm, wet air met the cold wet air, they created a cloud of water droplets. Instant cloud!

Make Spider Web Art!Collecting spider webs is a fun way to preserve some of nature's greatest works of art and explore some fascinating creatures. This craft provides a way to study these amazing architects' work. Did you know that a spider uses its own body as a measuring tool when making its web? Spiders often build a new web each day.

This activity will take you and your child through the steps of collecting and preserving webs, but make sure there are no spiders present and if there are, be sure to gently nudge them away. But don't touch or harm the spiders! They are hard workers and are essential components of our ecosystem.

What You Do:1. Help your child locate an empty spider web and

place a newspapers around the area where you will be spraying paint. You want to make sure you don't spray other plants or structures.

2. Carefully spray both sides of the web with a small amount of paint (it's best for a grown up to do this part, but with a little help your child can give it a try if they like). Spray gently and quickly in short bursts so that you don't break the web.

3. When you have fully covered the web in paint press the construction paper to the web and carefully pull the web away. Allow the web to dry on the paper.

4. When you're spider web "casts" have been collected and dried, you'll be able to really take the time to explore these amazing creations. Not only that, but you'll have some beautiful and interesting art work to display in your home.

Design a Floating Cork BoatWhat You Do:1. Set up a clean workspace and line it with

newspaper. 2. Start with a basic cork. Place it in the "pond" (your

bowl of water) and observe it. Cork is a very buoyant material and should float effortlessly.

3. Have your kids start to brainstorm new designs to optimize their cork and create a cool new boat. Then get started working on a set of prototypes! They can glue multiple corks together to form a raft, attach two corks with two toothpicks to make a catamaran, make "sails" with a toothpick and small square of paper, use bottle caps to add to the fun. The sky's the limit, so encourage your kids to go crazy and take chances. They can periodically check the buoyancy of their creations in the "pond."

4. Once your kids have created a set of creative cork boats and the glue has dried, head down to the park or nearest place where you can find a pond or other calm body of water (in a pinch, a bathtub will do). Place all of the cork boats in the water and observe! Which ones did the best? The worst? Have your kids make hypotheses about the design features that helped the successful cork boats, and tell you why he thinks they worked.

Kids love experimenting to see what sinksand what floats. And aside from being fun,this kind of hands-on exploration is great practice in the scientific method, not to mention a cool introduction to physics.

Here's a great activity that uses corks and toothpicks to create a fleet of floating boats. Which design makes for the most seaworthy vessel? Your students will need to use creative thinking and experimentation to find out!

Grow Salt Crystals!Crystals are a very special structure. They grow in a pattern that is organized and three dimensional, without any help from us. Most crystals take years to form under pressure and heat, and they have strong attractions that draw them together into their patterns. In this activity, we are going to grow salt crystals!

What You Do:1. Fill a jar half full of water and add a Epsom salts.2. Stir.3. Cut a circle out of construction paper to fit inside

of the saucer.4. Pour a thin layer of the salt solution over the

paper but do not pour the un-dissolved salt onto the paper.

5. Place the saucer in a warm place and let it sit for several days.

What Happened?The results will be needle shaped crystals that form from the salts. These are the natural shape of Epsom salts. The reason they don't look like this in the box is because they have been crushed. As the water evaporates the crystals start to stack up together, and the longer it evaporates the more crystals you will have!

If you've ever been on a tropical vacation you may have gone underwater in a special kind of submarine that allows the people riding inside to see fabulous sea creatures—all kinds of bright and unusual-looking fish and plants and other things—without getting wet. If your students haven’t taken a ride in a submarine, they’ve probably read about one or seen one on television. But how does a submarine actually work? Here's a fun way to figure it out.

Homemade Submarine

What You Do:1. Use a hot-glue gun to melt three holes approximately 1 inch (2.5 cm) apart along one side of a plastic

bottle. Use the glue gun to melt a hole in the center of the cap of the bottle just big enough for some tubing to fit through.

2. Place two fishing weight lengthwise next to one of the holes, and use a small piece of the tape to attach the weights to the bottle.

3. Thread one end of the plastic tubing through the hole in the cap so that approximately 2 inches (5 cm) of the tubing extends inside the bottle. Then, making sure that the tubing stays in the position you've just put it in, use a little bit of modeling clay to seal the area between the cap an the tubing. This is your “submarine.”

4. Put your submarine into the bathwater. Push the submarine to the bottom of the tub so that its fills completely with water.

5. Blow through the plastic tubing and watch what happens to the sub.

What Happened?When you pushed the bottle under the water, it filled up with water and sank to the bottom. The side of the bottle with the holes and fishing weights was heavier, so this side faced down toward the bottom of the tub. As you blew into the plastic tubing, the air from your breath began to fill up the bottle. When enough air was inside the bottle to make it float, it began to move upward in the tub. Finally, air began to come out of the holes on the bottom side of the bottle, and bubbles started to rise.

Science CAN be FUN!!!With the right activities, and I’ve listed a few, you can have tons of fun with many different aspects of science without loosing the interest of your students.

Now you have the ideas, so get out there and make exciting and fun science happen in your classrooms. Or if you want to find your own ideas just search the Internet, there are so many ideas out there that you could do science all day for 365 days a year if you wanted.

Have fun!

Be THE TeacherSo this is what you/we have decided to do for the rest of our career…

Why not make it the best career ever and become THE teacher that strives to always be more?

In this interactive section I’m going to throw different ideas and pictures in hopes that it helps you think about your own future classrooms and what type of teacher you want to be.

InspireYou want to inspire your kids and make them feel like someone and no amount of words can convince you of this.

So, instead listen to this from TedTalks with Rita Pierson:

(Please click the image above to listen)

"I AM somebody.I WAS SOMEBODY when I came and I’ll be 

a BETTER SOMEBODY when I leave.I AM powerful and I am strong.

I DESERVE the education that I get here..."

CareNo matter what type of child ends up entering your classroom every single one of them want to feel wanted, even if they don’t act like it.

This example from Mrs. Potter is a very simple, but extremely heartfelt way in which you can show your incoming students how excited you are to have them in your class.

These could be passed out on a Meet the Teacher event before classes start or on the first day of school.

RememberKids want to be remembered and the sooner that a teacher can do that in a classroom setting the better.

I know that names can all start to run together, but a simple idea like putting all of your students names on the back of your ID card can help you in case you have a brain fart moment and can’t remember the name of a certain kid. Just casually take a peek to jog your memory and there you go.

StimulateYou want to be the teacher that is remembered for the person that they were and what you passed onto the kids. Why not do that by stimulating your students with an educational event that can be extremely fun and educational all at the same time.

The idea of a Mad Scientist event could help get your students excited about science and allow them to see you from behind the desk in a much more open atmosphere.

ShowcasePut your kids on showcase for all of the school to see, and any of their projects or creations. Cover the walls around your door with anything and everything that can help build the self-confidence of your students.

This draws attention to the good job your kids are doing and makes them strive to do better and aspire to greater heights.

The bouquet of your students is a reminder to them and yourself of how much color they truly are and how they affect your life.

PersonalYour students want/need to know that you’re a person who makes mistakes just like they are. If you never leave your desk then a divide can be created between you and your students as they look at you as unapproachable and larger than life.

Break that by creating a teacher’s stool that you can pull out and carry around with you as you move from group to group, interacting and offering help where it is needed.

This helps you understand your kids better and also helps them accept you as one of their own and personal relationships and understanding can grow from there.

Be THE TeacherYou can be THE teacher that your students will learn from and grow to

model for the rest of their lives; that is the impact that we can have on these young lives. Knowing that why wouldn’t every teacher everywhere strive to be the best they could every day? There is no clear answer to that question, but I challenge you to take the ideas and material within this interactive PowerPoint and let them help you to be more then you could be on your own.

We can all be better then we are now and we should always strive to be THE teacher and help shape the world of tomorrow through the youth that we will be teaching and guiding today.

Resources and Websites Used/Citied

• "Knowing Third Graders." Knowing Third Graders. Northeast Foundation for Children, Inc, n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2013. https://www.responsiveclassroom.org/sites/default/files/ET3intro.pdf

• Jackson, Marissa. "Author's Purpose: Easy as P.I.E.! ... | Third Grade Teaching Ideas." Pinterest. Marissa Marcy Jackson, n.d. Web. 26 Oct. 2013. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/260786634645338025/

• "Third Grade Math: A Complete Lesson." Teaching Channel. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2013. https://www.teachingchannel.org/videos/classroom-daily-routines

• "Third Grade Science Activities and Experiments." Science Activities. N.p., n.d. Web. 27 Oct. 2013. <http://www.education.com/activity/third-grade/science/>