By May Vasquez. 3rd Grade Math. Published at Saturday, October 31st, 2020 - 08:41:16 AM.
3rd grade science fair projects are a lot of fun because at this age children are eager to explore the world around them and find out how things work. They are constantly wanting to know the answer to the question "What happens if I do this..." and therefore they will likely come up with many different experiments theyd like to try. It may be difficult to decide on just one! At this age they have a short attention span though, so the projects must be simple, fun and fairly short. There are many, many different project ideas for this age group such as; do all the children in their class have the same size hands and the same size feet as each other? They can research this by tracing the other childrens hands and feet on a piece of paper and comparing them to each other.
With all of this research supporting the connection between physical fitness and brainpower, all the more reason to participate in a sport like fencing. Fencing is unique, a sport that asks its participants to make moves and calculations in an instant. In the game of chess, players must think several moves ahead in order to execute a winning strategy. Fencing, similarly, requires the fencer to carefully engage with his or her opponent in order to exploit weakness and score a point. Success in fencing is entirely dependent on the minuscule moves and split-second decisions a fencer makes when competing. So, it seems that by participating in vigorous fencing, not only is a fencer using his brain, hes increasing his intelligence.
The second major problem deals with the parents. Because the series is so different, parents quickly find that what they are seeing in their childs textbook doesnt look like anything they ever called math. They quickly discover that they are unable to help their children with questions, and they dont understand the spiraling concept of UCSMP so it seems to them that their child is weak in basic skills. They dont know that their child will have better retention and understanding of mathematics at the end of the year than the students of a traditional text. They dont know because no one explained anything to them. UCSMP requires an enormous amount of explanation and training for the parents. (Im sure you can foresee the problems of having poorly prepared teachers trying to explain UCSMP to frustrated parents. Its not a pretty sight.) With the problematic issues surrounding UCSMP, does this young teacher deserve to be fired? Absolutely! He made very poor choices based on his own arrogance. He broke his contract with the school district and, thus with the students and parents. He used the internet for his own purposes. (I suspect to garner support for his decision.) And he was setting up his students for future failure. Unforgivable.
In his article, this brand new teacher--straight out of college--was hired by a school district to teach 3rd grade math. This school district was using the elementary school version of UCSMP--Everyday Mathematics. I cant remember whether he wrote the article in September or October (one of the facts I wanted to check), but the point is that it was very early in the school year. He had already run into some problems: his students didnt understand anything they were being taught and their parents were all mad. He decided that the problem was the textbook and its approach, so he made a unilateral decision (no discussion with the department head or Principal) to stop using the district-chosen series and, instead, teach his 3rd grade students the way he thought they should be taught. And not only that, but he was so proud of his decision that he put it on the internet. No discussion with his Principal, but he writes about it on the internet. The arrogance of youth!
They could do a test to see if waterproof mascara is really waterproof. To do this you would need a couple brands of waterproof mascara, a piece of paper and some water. Simply put the mascara onto a sheet of paper and rinse it under some water to see what happens. Another fun 3rd grade science project would be to see if raw eggs and hard boiled eggs spin the same number of times. Obviously they would need an adults help with this one in order to cook the eggs, and then they simply need to spin each egg and record the results. There are lots of great 3rd grade science projects out there; its just a matter of finding one that interests them.
Most school districts are rather lenient when it comes to new teacher mistakes. However, because of a lack of experience, there are several things that can and do get new teachers fired. This article is about one specific action by one specific teacher; although Im beginning to wonder if he is one of those Urban Legends. First, some background. A couple weeks ago I was doing some research for an article about UCSMP (University of Chicago School Mathematics Project) and trends in mathematics. I taught high school math in a school district that started using UCSMP (we referred to it as the Chicago Series) in 1988. My feelings about the Chicago Series will be in another article, but overall, I considered it to be an excellent math series with tremendous potential for improving student understanding of mathematics but with a couple major flaws that always seemed to lead to its demise. For my research, I just wanted to know if it still existed. I came across an article that I thought was written this year by a 23-year-old, male, 3rd grade math, 1st year teacher. My immediate reaction to his article was that he should be fired for several reasons.
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