Thursday, January 24, 2013

Special guest from the MWRA...

This week, third graders at Harrington were visited by the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA).  We learned about where our water comes from and the path it travels to get there!  Look closely at the pictures... students used "pipes" to create pathways for water to travel from the MWRA to their "buildings" (their desks!).  Be sure to ask them what they learned...it was a fantastic presentation!















Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The "Big Dinner" in math...

Our class recently completed "The Big Dinner" in math class.  This is one of two "context units" that we will complete this year.  Moving away from our Everyday Math materials for several weeks, we have been immersed in authentic problem solving and mathematical thinking, arranged around questions that are given to math partners to ponder.  The unit began with students having to figure out how much a 24 pound turkey would cost if the price was $1.25 per pound.  Partnerships explored how to figure this out and created a "poster" displaying their strategies.  As a class, we then had a "gallery walk" to see all of the work and conducted a "math congress" to discuss the different ways that the question was solved and the use of efficient strategies within the problem solving.   Specifically targeting multiplication and the use of a ratio table, this unit also incorporated time, money and other math concepts.  Here are some pictures from another day of "The Big Dinner" (towards the end) when the class was "cooking" the turkey.  They had to figure out how long to cook it, given that a turkey needs fifteen minutes per pound to cook.  Take a look at the posters and strategies!











Symphony visit...

Here are some pictures from our field trip to Cary Hall last week to see the symphony!  Enjoy...!





 

Friday, January 4, 2013

Nonfiction Book Share...


Room 131 finished their non fiction informative books. We invited some second graders to our room to share our books. Enjoy a few pictures of our proud authors!