Time flying by seems to be the theme of this school year!

Wow! How can it be that we only have 3 more weeks of school until Christmas break?!? We all know that these next 19 days are going to fly by!

Over the past two weeks we have been working hard in all curricular areas!

LITERACY

Our read aloud lessons have been focused on non-fiction lately as we have been reading books about the provinces and territories in Canada. Bringing Social Studies into Language Arts is a great opportunity to model reading strategies in "real life" situations. Reading conferences have continued to go very well with all of our students improving their independent strategy use! Great work 3C!

Our writing instruction has continued to focus on sentence and paragraph writing. Many of our students are still inconsistently writing complete sentences. Sentences often tend to run on or end abruptly. We are working very hard every day to improve our abilities in this area. if your child is writing at home, please assist them in correcting their work if they are not writing in complete sentences. One of the questions I often ask them is, "If I walked up to you and said (-----insert their sentence here----), would it make sense? Would you be left asking me, what? Or who?" If the answer is YES, then things need to be fixed up!

This week, we are going to write our letters to Santa! Next week, we will be writing a narrative paragraph about life in a snow globe!

NUMERACY

Recently, we have been working on writing numbers in a variety of ways, comparing numbers, adding and taking away 10 or 100 from a number and skip counting by 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 25 and 100. This week we will dive into addition of multi digit numbers with and without trading.

SOCIAL STUDIES

We have come to the end of our mapping unit. I am very proud of how the students worked hard to improve their knowledge of Canada's provinces, territories and oceans and the continents and oceans of the world. I will be handing back the recent tests by Tuesday. Our next unit will take us to India! I can't wait to explore this amazing country with the students!

SCIENCE

This week we will finish up our unit on rocks and minerals. We have recently learned about the role of erosion and weathering in shaping our surroundings. The students enjoyed a Bill Nye video and were able to answer several questions on a worksheet after the video! Our previous note taking has paid off! All of the students were very attentive throughout the activity! Students will bringing home their lapbooks that we have worked on throughout the unit to organize our learning.

OTHER IMPORTANT INFORMATION

Our Christmas concert is on Monday, December 7th at 6:30pm. Our dress rehearsal will be at 1:10pm on Monday. Students can wear whatever you want them to wear. If your child is unable to attend, please let me know ASAP.

We are still collecting donations for the Devon Christmas Elves. Donations of food and new toys are desperately needed. The committee has expressed an extra need this year due to the many families facing work lay offs. The grade threes are in charge of organizing the food that is donated this year as part of our Social Studies global citizenship project.

The grade threes are fortunate enough to be having a local author visit us tomorrow. Nickie Brook will be visiting us from 10:45am - 11:45am. Parents and grandparents are welcome to attend. We will be hosting Mrs. Brook in our classroom.

Book orders will be coming home tomorrow and will be due on Friday to ensure that they will arrive in time for Christmas. Please feel free to pay by CHEQUE or CREDIT CARD through the PARENT PAY system online.

PHOTOS

We all enjoyed getting to know our Star Student Miss J! She was a super Star Student!

We had a special visitor to our room the other day! My dog Tali came by to say hi! The students loved her crazy, silly, jumpy and lovey personality!

November Update

I can't believe that we are half way through November already! It's been a very busy couple of weeks with two nights of parent teacher meetings, fundraiser art projects and Remembrance Day!

As was mentioned in emails last week, Christmas card orders were due last Tuesday. It was so rewarding to see the students create such beautiful cards! They really took their time and were proud of their work. 

Last week, we also focused on the importance of Remembrance Day. We read one of my favourite books, A Bear In War by Stephanie Innes & Harry Endrulat. I encourage you to ask your child to retell you the story. All of the students lost themselves in the story and were moved by the fact that it is based on a true story. Many of them might ask you to take them to the Canadian War Museum to see the real bear if you are ever in Ottawa.



After reading the book, we had discussions, watched a video and looked at some pictures to help us understand our blessings as Canadians and who were need to be thankful to. Our class behaviour during the assembly was nothing but respectful. I was very proud of all of our students.

CURRICULUM UPDATE

Math

We have continued to work through our Number Sense concepts focusing on representing numbers in different ways. They have practiced writing numerals in words, in expanded form with numerals only (352= 300+50+2), expanded form with numbers and words (352= 3 hundreds + 5 tens + 2 ones) and with pictures (base ten blocks). We have also focused on the value of each of the digits (352 - 3 means 300, 5 means 50 and 2 means 2).

We have also continued to work on our number sense using How Many Ways.

Literacy

Words Their Way - We took last week off from WTW because it was such a short week. We will have new sorts for this week. Your child should be bringing their sort home on Mondays. If a sort sheet doesn't make its way home, please email me and I will make sure one comes home on Tuesday. Please continue to encourage your child to practice their sorts during the week. This practice shouldn't take more than 10 minutes each night and will help your child master the spelling rules each week. Thank you for your cooperation with this.

Word Wall Words - This week will be our first time having Word Wall Words (WWW). Each week your child will write 5 sight words in their agenda on Mondays. On Monday evening, please have your child read the words to you. If your child can read all of the words, their goal for the week is to be able to spell them correctly. If your child can not read the words, their goal is to be able to read them all on sight (no sounding out). On Fridays, in addition to their WTW tests on Spelling City, students will also complete a quick dictation test. During this test, I will give them a simple sentence to write down. They are expected to use proper mechanics (punctuation and capitalization). They are also expected to spell the WWW correctly. For those students who have been working on learning how to read the words, they will be expected to find the word on their portable word wall and copy it down correctly.

Read Alouds - We have been reading a variety of books during our read aloud time. I've brought in a few of my favourite picture books and we have also been reading some nonfiction. For the next couple of weeks, we are going to focus our read alouds on Canada. I will read about a different province/territory each day to help reinforce concepts that are being taught in Social Studies.

Home Reading - Due to our busy schedule on Fridays, I would like to change our home reading rewards day to Wednesdays. It is really hard to fit everything in on Fridays and moving this one activity to Wednesdays will help lighten the load for all of us. Thank you for your understanding.

Social Studies 

We are currently finishing up our study of maps, the continents and oceans and Canada. I would like to have a unit quiz on Monday. Students will be expected to be able to label a world map with the 7 continents and 5 oceans. They will also be expected to label a map of Canada with it's provinces and territories. Spelling will count on this test.

Science

Over the next couple of weeks, we will finish our unit on Rocks and Minerals. I am excited to guide the students through a final rock testing session as a unit wrap up activity. My husband is a science teacher at a junior high school in the city and has access to an amazing collection of rocks! He is letting us borrow them along with some actual porcelain plates to do the streak test with! The kids are going to be super excited!

Star Students

We have enjoyed getting to know two of our classmates even better! Thank you to Miss M and Mr R for being our fabulous Star Students!

A few other important reminders:

Tuesday - photo retakes
Friday - Fundscript Orders Due
Friday - Twin Day!