Thinkering in 3rd grade

THE THINKERING STUDIO- inside the 3rd grade classroom of Mrs. Jennifer Christians

an area for creativity, inventive thinking, investigation, risk taking, critical thinking, problem solving, reasoning, analysis, interpretation, syntheses

In the thinkering studio 3rd graders can slow down, become deeply engaged in an investigation of scientific phenomena, and make something that fully represents their ideas.

In the Thinkering Studio, students are use personalized learning and explore using curiosity, risk taking, scientific process, communication and various other 21st century skills/ We are hoping to gather a large, eclectic assortment of materials, tools, and technologies. Some of our ideas include having small machines, Spheros, Legos, circuit boards, creative materials, etc available to all students.

Students can:

· explore questions, challenges, topics or technologies of interest, at their own pace, and in directions of their choosing

· collaborate informally and formally, in person and electronically.

· plan and reflect on their creations, processes, successes, difficulties, and learning through an eportfolio

· create footsteps, examples, resources, or other artifacts for themselves & others who might follow

I also need to create a way to store all of these items in a clean and organized way. We envision this to be a shared space that is accessible to all third graders to explore.

I am wanting to do this to help promote more mathematical and scientific thinking in early grades.

Below are our Guaranteed and Viable Curriculum for third grade. This project would greatly enhance all of these GVC's

Make sense of problems and persevere in solving them Reason abstractly and quantitatively
Construct viable arguments and critique the reasoning of others Model with mathematics

Use appropriate tools strategically
Attend to precision
Look for and make use of structure
Look for and express regularity in repeated reasoning Demonstrate the process of inquiry: Create knowledge through the process of inquiry based on multiple evidence Evaluate knowledge and develop a theory through the process in inquiry

Analyze the interaction within and between two systems
Evaluate the relationship between cause and effect
Evaluate the relationship between decisions and the impact on available resources in the community

I am teaching kids to be ready for the future! I want kids to have all the skills necessary to be ready for the 21st century. Long gone are the days of wrote memorization! We need kids who can communicate, collaborate, create, and be entrepreneurial in their thinking. Kids need to be risk takers. They need to learn to fail, try it a new way and persevere!