We have been busy prepping and completing our SLAs in literacy and numeracy. Students enjoyed the digital sections that were completed on their Chromebooks. The written literacy component asked students to imagine their ideal school. They watched a presentation where a variety of examples were given, had time to chat in small groups about their ideas, had time to plan independently and then finally, had time to write their ideas down in paragraph form. During the written numeracy component, students were asked to figure out how many bikes (2 wheels), scooters (3 wheels) and skateboards (4 wheels) were at the skate park if there were 25 wheels in total. This problem was quite challenging for most students. Students were also asked to check a fictitious characters work and figure out where they went wrong. This problem was extra challenging for most students. Overall, I was happy with the results of both written components. There weren't any surprises as far as student performance goes. I think I speak for all of us when I say, that I'm glad that they are finished and I am looking forward to getting into some new routines for spelling, writing and word work.
LITERACY
We have been hard at work during our literacy periods. We have started a new book during read alouds, The Trouble With Chickens. I enjoy reading this book to my students each year because it introduces to the concept of multiple narrators. This forces them to pay attention to the narrator and the voice that they are writing in.
We have continued to work on paragraph writing during our writing periods. Many of you have already had the opportunity to read our Hero paragraphs. The class book of hero paragraphs is making it's way through all of the 3C homes. We ask that you give us some feedback on the back sheets...the students love reading your comments! We are also focusing on the proper mechanics of writing. Students are expected to use proper capitalization and punctuation while writing complete sentences.
After noticing that many students are struggling with sounding out the phonetic spelling of words, I decided to give Making Words a try. Making Words is a hands on spelling activity where students are given a selection of letter cards to use to spell a variety of words. We start with small 3 letter words to get the students warmed up and then move on to longer and longer words. In the end, the students are expected to use all of their letter cards to spell the "mystery word". While giving the words for the students to spell, I encourage them to stretch the word sounds out to ensure that they are putting the letters in the correct order and I model this stretching out of the words (bake: b-a (long)- k). I was a little surprised how much our students struggled with this task. As we worked through our word list, I noticed that many students missed blends (st, tr, bl, br, cr, etc) and vowel sounds. I have rearranged my literacy schedule to allow for this activity twice a week to assist students in these skills as they are critical to encourage an improvement in their written work.
Our Words Their Way spelling program is underway this week. Your child will be bringing home a note explaining the program tomorrow. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask at any time. Our Word Wall Words spelling program will start next week. I didn't want to overwhelm everyone with both programs at once.
The students have continued to enjoy handwriting each week. We have covered more than half of the alphabet already! We are currently working on the loop letters!
NUMERACY
In math, we are just finishing up our patterns unit. Students have been practicing creating, extending and naming the pattern rule with increasing and decreasing number patterns. We have used t-tables to assist us in discovering the pattern in figure drawings. We will be having our unit test this week and then heading into our place value unit.
SOCIAL STUDIES
Students have enjoyed learning about the different components of a map including the compass rose, the title, the key, symbols and the scale. We have also practiced reading maps. A mapping project will be coming home tomorrow with students and will be due on Monday. We are going to now start investigating our globe, the continents and oceans.
SCIENCE
Our students are crazy about rocks! We have been looking at investigating the different properties of rocks. Using our own rock collections, we are paying close attention to shapes, light, lustre, smell, streak test, feel, hardness and magnetism. We are going to study each of these properties in greater depth over the next couple of weeks.
Important Reminders
- fieldtrip forms are due ASAP for our fieldtrip on Thursday
- fruit orders are due on Friday (to support the grade 4 Drumheller trip)
* the fruit is delicious if you've never ordered it before
- hot lunch orders are due on Thursday for November lunches
- our art is on display in the foyer this month
We enjoyed getting to know Miss R during her Star Student week!
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