TISA 3rd Grade

Lots of cool stuff has been going on in the TISA 3rd grade lately. We had Marc Space from Trout Unlimited come and visit us. We told him a thing or two about trout anatomy, and he taught us a bit about native New Mexican cutthroat trout.  Our class visited Ms. Roe's 1st grade to see their performance of Goldilocks. The 1st graders did an amazing job, inspiring us for our future performances.  For our study of seed dispersal, Esteban made an incredible slide show on the topic. Here he is explaining all the ways that seeds can be dispersed.  The class also got to make their own artificial seeds in Ms. Ali's class. They had to think about designing seeds that would easily be dispersed. In Performing Arts, we have been learning about classical music with Ms. Anandi. Here is the class waving scarves to the rhythm of the music they hear.  The folks from Explora came and visited TISA again. This time they brought reflective items for the students to study symmetry. Everyone...

 A lot of cool things have been happening lately in 3rd grade. Read on down to see what we've been doing! Our class went on a field trip to the Talpa Library and Farmers Market. There, we got a tour of the library, got to dress up as fruits & vegetables for a market parade, and we also sang our song about the 7 Continents to the community. Thanks again to Ms. Luzita from the Talpa Community Center, and to Ms. Ali for helping us assemble and paint the continents.  The class took another fun field trip, this time farther afield to Las Golondrinas in Santa Fe! Here we participated in their Heritage Days celebration. The students got hands-on experience grinding corn, combing wool, winding rope, and stamping tin. Thank you to Kathy for providing the photos, and to all the parents who came on the field trip with us.  In an integrated arts project, the students applied what they had learned about multiplication to make arrays in the style of Kandinsky.  The 3rd grade h...

The students who came to the Explora Science Night last week had a great time exploring seeds and plants using real scientific equipment, like microscopes and magnifying glasses. The team brought beans for them to dissect so that they could see the different parts of seeds, including the embryo, the seed coat, and the cotyledon.  The students also got to look at the root structures of some newly grown grass plants.  The group explored capillary action, seeing how celery stalks were dyed by means of water traveling up the stalk.  Thanks to all of you who came for this fun event. We look forward to having Explora at TISA again!

The Third Grade had a fantastic field trip to the Harwood Museum last week. The team there put together a great program. The students got to examine landscape paintings in detail, and even add sounds to them! They also painted some lovely watercolors of landscapes, inspired by the art they saw.  We have some truly talented artists in this class. Check out this watercolor by Odin, and this photography by Avyana! Our studies of life sciences are advancing marvelously! We have grown the seeds that we sprouted in recent weeks into respectable little plants. We also now have our trout eggs safely nestled in a net in the fish tank. 

In science, the 3rd grade studied the sun's movement and shadows several weeks ago. One section of that lesson included tracing shadows at different times of the day, to see how they lengthened and shortened. The students then drew and colored-in shadow portraits of themselves, which can now be seen hanging in our room. In math, while we have mainly been focusing on regrouping when doing addition and subtraction problems, the 3rd grade has just started to talk about multiplication. One method we have used to solve multiplication problems is repeated addition. The students made Repeated Addition Trees to show the answers to some simple multiplication problems.  We've finally gotten our fish tank up and running! Thanks to Ryan Stodgell, who is Odin's father, we are ready to start caring for our trout eggs, which should be arriving soon. Last year's 3rd grade had a blast doing the trout project. Check some blog posts from Spring 2022 to see photos. The plan is that we are ...

Our bake sale last week was a huge success! We had the line going all the way to the gate of the school. The students not only helped promote the bake sale, they also made their own cookies with Ms. Ali. Thanks to the generous (and delicious) contributions of all our 3rd grade families, the class managed to raise enough money for our Fall field trips.  In Science, we have been investigating seeds. Last week the students compared seeds from different fruits. Next week we will start observing what happens as seeds germinate. In Social Studies, the class has continued studying the continents of the world. In particular, we have been looking at the types of animals, land forms, and other features that one might find in some of the continents. The students tested their knowledge in a high-stakes game of Continents Jeopardy! Another fun project that we have been working on are sock puppets with Ms. Anandi. The class will incorporate the mindfulness concepts that they have been learning a...