Live and Learn: Sharks! Integrating Math, Science and Reading

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Sharks! Integrating Math, Science and Reading

With only nine days to go, I am reviewing past skills and trying to keep students engaged. I want my third graders to enter fourth with the essential math skills down pat. Students need to arrive at the next grade being able to subtract with good accuracy. I used the book, Shark Swimathon to give them math practice while also tying in language arts skills.

This book is about a swim team of sharks who have entered a swimming contest. They have to swim a total of 75 laps by the end of the week. The books shows the sharks gathering the data each day and then using it to determine how many laps they have left to swim. I created a recording sheet so my students have to solve these problems during the reading of the book. This is a popular math book written by Stuart Murphey. You can probably find a copy in your school library!

I used the reading of this book as an interactive read aloud. The kids got into the story and the math. I liked that the story plot revolved around a real world application of a math skill.

Using the recording sheet while reading forced all children to be active listeners and to pay attention to the details of the book.

After reading, I had my students fine tune their language arts skills by working on a reading response.
I created a one page booklet that gave students practice in identifying story elements to write a "Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then" summary.

Inside the booklet were some questions relating to the word work and reading skills we covered this year.

Then we read some nonfiction about sharks and then wrote about what we learned.

I've also had my students create these shark acrostics. We make the shark out of recycled newspapers.

During math time, we continued to work on problem solving. Some students used paper shark manipulatives to model the problems.

If my students were respectful, responsible and productive during their work time, they were offered one of these sour sharks! A little treat goes a long way in encouraging good behavior right now!