December 10th Update

Two weeks until Christmas...ready or not, here it comes!

We have been very busy in 3C over the past two weeks and we will continue to be busy until Christmas break!

Literacy

Read alouds have focused on nonfiction selections lately. The students have enjoyed reading some of my favourite books by Brian Keating! We have moved from rivers to the poles and we've learned so much about that unique environment. The students are demonstrating many "good reader strategies" during our read alouds, often putting the hands up to ask questions, make predictions and make connections. I love witnessing this growth in my students as readers! For the next two weeks we will focus on reading Christmas stories.

Reading conferences continue daily and are proving to be very beneficial. Focused strategy instruction is critical to help readers who are struggling. We have been focusing on decoding strategies during these conferences. A few favourites have been flip the sound (if a short vowel doesn't sound right within a word, flip the vowel sound to a long vowel), read around the word (when you come across a word that you don't know, continue reading to the end of the sentence and see if you can figure out the word by asking yourself, "What would make sense that starts with the __ sound?"), take a book/page walk (Before starting to read a book/page, students can "tell themselves the story" by looking at the pictures. This way, they are more prepared for the vocabulary/words that they are going to encounter on the page.) and chunking (Break a longer word down into known "parts" like: -ing, -ed, -ly, re-, dis-, -ment, -tion). After modeling these strategies repeatedly, students begin to use them with some assistance before using them independently.

Word Wall Words are coming along. Students are starting to use their word walls more automatically to ensure proper spelling each time they write. We are going to take the next two weeks off of Word Wall Words due to shortened class time. We will be doing a lot of Christmas concert practicing over the next week and that time has to come from somewhere. 

Numeracy

We have continued to work through our place value unit focusing on comparing and ordering numbers. We have a tiny bit of work left to do from last week before we start the preparation of addition with regrouping. Jump Math introduces this concept within the place value unit, which is a unique approach and it makes so much sense! While students are focused on ones, tens and hundreds, it makes sense to show them that when we have more than 9 ones in the ones column, we can bundle ten up and move them over to the tens column. I have found that in the past, this method works very well to help students understand the logic behind the process of the multi digit algorithm (stack and add).

Science

The students have thoroughly enjoyed our hearing and sound unit in science. This past two weeks have given the students many opportunities to get hands on experience with sound, sound waves, frequency, pitch and volume. They completed a tuning fork activity with Mr. Beck, where they had their first experience with "seeing" sound waves and their impact. It's one of my favourite lessons and I'm sad that I missed it. The students are able to see the tuning forks vibrate, see the effects of the sound waves on water and salt, feel the vibrations, hear and see the different pitches and volumes. The students also had an opportunity to work through a variety of centers last Monday. Many of the centers were focused on changing the pitch of the sound being created. Students talked on paper cup phones, played the box guitar, experimented with the vibrations of a ruler at different lengths, played a ruler guitar and examined the pitch of different glass bottles filled with various amounts of water. The students were very excited to show their classmates their homemade instruments! We had so much fun listening to the stories of how they were made and hearing their beautiful sounds! After all of the presentations were finished, we formed a 3C House Band and played some pretty amazing tunes! Thank you to all our families for lending your child a helping hand with this project! They were super proud of their creations! Finally, this week we learned about how we hear sounds by examining the anatomy of our ears. The students were fascinated with how many things are happening each time they hear a sound! They loved coming up with ways to remember the names of the tiniest bones in their bodies: the hammer, anvil and stirrup. We have a tiny bit to finish up with this part of the unit and then we will be doing a bit of review and having a little unit test on Friday. A study sheet will be coming home early this week.

See more photos of the science centers by clicking here!

See all of the musical instrument photos by clicking here!

Student of the Week

Mr. R is super dependable, responsible, hard working and sensitive! We are all so lucky to share our days with him in 3C!

Important Reminders

Christmas Concert - next Monday, December 18th at 1:10 and 6:30

November 26th Update Take Two!

Art

The students really enjoyed learning about Mark Rothko during Art class! We had a discussion about how certain colours evoke specific emotions in us and those emotions differ from person to person. Rothko expressed his emotions through his paint colour choice. The students used oil pastels to create their own Rothko pieces!

Star Student

We enjoyed getting to know Mr D a little better this week! We already loved him to bits...now we just adore him even more! We love his sweet and sensitive personality along with his fantastic sense of humour!

Student of the Week

Congratulations goes out to Mr. T and Mr. N! You make me so proud every day! Keep up the awesome work!

November 26th Update

We've had a busy and productive couple of weeks in 3C!

Literacy

We've started a couple of new activities during our Working with Words blocks over the past two weeks! 

Using Words You Know is a fantastic word study activity where students are given four heading words that follow a particular spelling/phonetic rule. We discuss these four words at the beginning of the lesson. Students are then given words visually, to start, and need to determine which heading they belong under. I have students volunteer to tell me how to read the word and where it belongs. After 10-12 of these visual words, I start giving the students words orally. They need to determine which column it belongs in and how to spell it. Here is a picture of a completed Using Words You Know lesson:

The Using Words You Know strategy is very useful in both writing and reading. When a student is trying to write a word that they aren't sure of, they can think if they know how to spell any words that are similar/that rhyme. In reading, if a student is stuck on a tricky word, they can look at it and ask themselves if they know any words that look like the tricky word. 

During the Using Words You Know lessons, we also review the difference between blends and digraphs. A blend is when you put two or more consonants together and you blend their sound. A digraph is when two consonants come together to create a new sound and you can't hear their original sounds. 

We have also started our Word Wall Words this past week. Each week, students will be given ten frequently misspelled words to learn. They will be written in your child's agenda on the lines in the bottom right hand corner. The number one priority is that your child can read the words. If they can't, please focus on practicing reading them for the week. The students have personal word walls at their desks that they can use to look up the word to copy it down. If they can read the word, they can find it on the wall and then they can practice writing it properly. If your child can read the words, their job for the week is to make sure that they can spell them independently. Again, they will have their word walls to double check their work if they are unsure.

I spoke to the students about the old saying, "Practice makes perfect." I told them that I don't necessarily agree with that statement. I personally believe that "Perfect practice makes perfect." Students very quickly get used to spelling words the wrong way. They write them down every day without hesitation thinking that it's right because it's how they've always written it. Cuz, wuz, peepl, sed...I see it all the time. I'm encouraging the students to make sure that they are writing their word wall words perfectly every time by checking their word walls. Perfect practice makes perfect.

During the week, we practice the word wall words daily in a kinesthetic (movement), visual and oral way. On Fridays, we will have our spelling test. I will give the students their ten words to spell. I do allow students to have their word walls out at this time. Students do not have to use their word walls if they don't want to when originally spelling their words but I do encourage them to double check their word walls to make sure that they spelled the words correctly. I know that this isn't the "traditional" way to give a spelling test but many studies show that traditional spelling tests do little to nothing to improve student spelling accuracy within writing. I am really trying to encourage good habits that will cross over into improving student spelling within writing. Some students wanted me to know whether or not they looked at their word walls so I told them that they could write a little note beside the word if they wanted to. The last portion of the test on Friday is the dictation sentences. This is an excellent activity to improve the students' working memories. Working memory is a cognitive system with limited capacity that is responsible for temporarily holding information available for processing. It's like a mental sticky note that we use to keep track of information until we need to use it. Working memory is important for reasoning and the guidance of decision making and behaviour. Hearing a sentence repeated a few times and then holding it in their memory, while writing the words down is a very active process for the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Dictation sentences are also a great way for us to keep track of student use of conventions like punctuation, capitalization and proper spelling within writing. Students are given a mark for the following:

• capital letter to start the sentence
• proper punctuation to end the sentence
• each word wall word spelled correctly
• sentence makes sense (written down properly and completely)

In writing, we have continued to work on organization within writing. This past week, we focused on using order words to help organize our writing. Using words like first, then, next and finally helped student keep things in the proper order. 

Our read alouds this week focused on non-fiction books. We were reading out of Brian Keating's Going Wild series. We focused on text features, using a glossary, asking questions and overall comprehension during our reading. The students loved hearing about Brian's adventures and were thrilled when we received a reply to a message that I sent Brian. I was lucky enough to spend an entire day with Brian Keating last year as we traveled from Calgary to Churchill to spend the day on the tundra with the Polar Bears. I have been fortunate enough to hear Brian speak many times at Teacher's Convention and he has become one of my favourite people. The students really like him now too! Little do they know, that I have another message from Brian to share with them tomorrow morning. You can hear Brian share his adventures on The Homestretch on CBC Radio.

Numeracy

We have continued our study of numbers over the past couple of weeks. We have been working on writing numbers in words with proper spelling and have started looking at comparing numbers. The students are all doing a fantastic job with the concepts introduced so far. Your child should have brought home a mini quiz on the first six lessons on Friday.

Science

We have continued our exploration of hearing and sound. We have been studying the science behind sound waves, frequency, pitch, volume and echos. The students are starting to understand how the shape of the sound wave indicates the pitch and volume of  the sound. 

This week, we will be doing an experiment where students will have an opportunity to see sound waves in action!

Global Citizenship - Social Studies

On Friday at the assembly, we kicked off our food drive for the Devon Christmas Elves. We told the school about the contest that we are starting. The class that collects the most items for the food drive will win an ice cream float party! Students are encouraged to bring in donations until December 7th. At the assembly on December 8th, we will be presenting our donations to the Devon Christmas Elves. After the assembly, we will be packing up the groceries and taking a bus over to the depot to deliver and help sort our donations. A permission slip will be popping up soon on PowerSchool for this field trip. We will write it in the agendas when it is live. 

While reading Brian Keating's book about his animal adventures in rivers, we learned a lot about elephants and hippos. The topics brought up in the book are especially relevant right now with conservation of elephants and the ivory trade along with President Trumps decision to lift the ban on importing elephant parts into the USA (which is thankfully on hold at this time). The timing seemed perfect, as the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust is celebrating their 40th anniversary and just release a special video this week. We watched the video together and had a very thoughtful discussion. We talked about our own elephant Malkia and how I will be renewing my adoption of her in the next week or two. The students asked about adopting their own elephant and I shared with them that I have had students in the past that have asked for an elephant for Christmas! They all became very excited by this possibility! They had many questions so I answered them and showed them how to pick their own elephant, rhino or even giraffe on the DSWT website. Don't be surprised if your child has an elephant on their Christmas list!

Here is the 40th anniversary video that I shared with the students:

40th Anniversary Video

For information on fostering with the DSWT, see the link below:

http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/asp/fostering.asp

We spent Friday afternoon focusing on some citizenship work closer to home. One of Devon's RCMP officers, Cst. Garnier, was involved in a serious head on collision early in the morning on Thursday. He is recovering from serious, but thankfully not life threatening, injuries in the hospital. We decided to make Cst. Garnier get well cards to lift his spirits while he recovers from this horrible accident. The students were incredibly focused and hardworking with their cards. I was super proud of them! I took the cards over to the RCMP station. One of Cst. Garnier's colleagues was excited to take the cards to him. Mr A did an amazing job writing inside his card. Mrs. Horrocks loved it so much that she videoed it and posted it on the school's Facebook page! I included the link to the video under the picture.

Aiden's message for Cst. Garnier

I'm going to have to stop things there for tonight. I will finish the Star Student, Student of the Week and Art updates tomorrow!

Take care and have a great week!

November 13th Update

I hope this update finds everyone warm and rested after a chilly long weekend!

Remembrance Day

We had a few special read alouds this week to help introduce the topic of Remembrance Day. Each year, I enjoy sharing two of my very favourite books with my class. A Bear in War is based on a true story about the Rogers family from East Farnham, Quebec. Lieutenant Rogers, the father in the story, died in the Battle of Passchendaele as a medic trying to save the life of an injured soldier. The story follows the family in the months leading up to Lawrence Rogers joining the other soldiers fighting in WWI through to his death after four years overseas. The students often become emotional when we read the story and always express interest in visiting Teddy at the Canadian War Museum one day. I think for many of the students, it's the first time that they really grasp the sacrifice that the soldiers and their families made for our country. 

We also read the follow up to this story called Bear on the Homefront. This story catches up with the little girl in the story as an adult. She is working as a nurse serving on the homefront, welcoming children from British cities who were sent to live with Canadian families during World War II. 

 

Our library has both books if you are ever interested in reading them.

Mrs. Kloschinsky mentioned the Rogers family in her speech during our Remembrance Day ceremony. The kids eyes lit up as they realized that they knew what family she was speaking of. The ceremony was quite emotional for many of our students as they let the discussions of the past week run through their minds during the moment of silence.

We also completed a beautiful Remembrance Day art project that hung in the gym during the ceremony. The students enjoyed creating their crosses with painters tape and were thrilled to see their white lines appear as the peeled the tape off after painting the background with watercolour paint.

Literacy

When we weren't reading our Remembrance Day books, we continued to read through The Trouble with Chickens. The students have now heard from our second narrator Vince the Funnel and they don't like him one bit! We will be finishing up this chapter book this week.

Our writing lessons this week focused on organization. We learned about starting a story/writing project in a way that makes the reader excited to read more. We also talked about how the middle of your story needs to include details in a logical order. Lastly, we discussed how your ending needs to be complete and not just state "the end". The students used these tips during our journal writing this week.

Numeracy

We have started our Place Value unit and the students are enjoying it. The visual nature of this unit assists students in grasping the new concepts. We have been looking at the variety of ways that we can show a number:

1) numerals  

364

2) base ten blocks

3) expanded form using numerals

300 + 60 + 4

4) expanded form using words and numerals

3 hundreds + 6 tens + 4 ones

We've practiced reading numbers properly without the use of "and". Using the word "and" when saying a number signifies the use of a decimal place. We do not focus on decimal numbers in grade three so we should not be using the word and when we are saying our numbers.

Science

We have started our unit on Hearing and Sound. We read the book The Listening Walk and went for our own listening walk. We recorded what we could hear indoors and outdoors. Over the next few weeks we will be exploring how sound is created, how it travels and how we hear it physically. We will explore the science behind pitch, frequency and volume. 

Star Student

We all enjoyed getting to know Miss W this week! She is a real animal lover with so much enthusiasm! We all enjoyed meeting her Manx cat Bastet! She was a real sweetheart!

November 5th Update

The week flew by last week with the excitement of Halloween and the PD day on Wednesday!

Literacy

The students have continued to enjoy reading The Trouble With Chickens during read alouds. We have been tuning into some pretty interesting words in recent chapters: behoove, rendezvous, twilight. We have just met the villain of the story, Vince the Funnel, and the students are excited to learn more about him and his connection to the missing chicks!

On Halloween, I read one of my favourite books to the students! I should apologize in advance if you start to notice dirty, smelly socks being left on the floor near your child's bed. It was suggested in the book that the "Bogeyman" is allergic to smelly socks and is therefore very effective Bogeyman repellant! LOL!



Also on Halloween, the students completed a spooky Mad Libs activity where they were asked to give examples of certain parts of speech (noun, verb, adjective, etc). In the end, the story is read aloud and always gets a few giggles!

Math

We continued to explore patterns this past week and will be wrapping up the unit on Monday and starting our new unit on Place Value. Many students have been struggling with the skill of counting backwards, making continuing decreasing patterns very challenging without the use of a hundreds chart. Any practice with this skill at home would be very beneficial. 

Social Studies

We are currently finishing up our unit on mapping and the world. Last week the students were amazed when we were comparing the population of Canada with the population of different countries and the state of California. 

Canada's population 36 million

California's population 39 million

USA population 323 million

India's population 1.3 billion 

We talked about how the amount of land you have and the amount of people that you have in a country affect many aspects of life in the country. For example, in Canada it is common for people to own houses with yards. In other countries, only the richest people have the luxury of owning a house on a lot. The students were amazed by the fact that we live in the second largest country in the world and we have such a small population, relatively speaking. 

We also discussed our government leaders in Canada. We talked about how we have a Prime Minister in Canada, not a president. I showed the students a picture of Justin Trudeau and explained, in grade three language, what he is in charge of as our country's leader. We talked about how our province has it's own leader, the Premier. I showed them a picture of Rachel Notley and explained, in grade three language, what she is in charge of as our provincial leader (education, health, etc). Most of the students knew that our new mayor in Devon is Ray Ralph. I showed them a picture of him and talked about what he is in charge of for our town. 

I enjoy taking the time at the beginning of the year to discuss these things with the students. It's amazing to see the wheels start turning and their eyes widen as they take their first steps into becoming a Global Citizen.

Halloween Fun!

Thank you to the parents who sent in party snack items for the students! They were delicious!

The students enjoyed a fun day with Halloween themed activities...especially our Minute to Win It challenges!

Student of the Week

Big shout out to Mr. D! Keep up the awesome work! I'm super proud of you!

A Long Overdue Update

My apologies for the delay in this posting. Here's an update on the happenings of 3C!

Literacy

Over the past couple of weeks we have enjoyed some new read alouds. One class favourite was Dinosaur Cove! This series follows the adventures of two boys, Jamie and Tom, as they explore the shoreline of Dinosaur Cove and discover a secret cave that leads them back in time. They meet up with a friendly herbivore, Wanna, that helps guide them and protect them through the land of real dinosaurs. This series has a nice mix of fiction and nonfiction with a variety of interesting text features like a glossary, a map and dinosaur facts. There are many books in this series if students are interested in exploring it further, either independently or as a shared reading book with a parent. They are a mid grade three level book (level N).

  

After finishing Dinosaur Cove, we dove right into another one of my favourite chapter books, The Trouble with Chickens. This book is a fabulous introduction to writing with voice. There are two narrators in this book, one being retired rescue dog, JJ, and the other being the villain, Vince "The Funnel". JJ has an incredible wit about him that makes his chapters so much fun to read. His voice is simply hilarious!

During our read alouds, we have been focusing on comprehension strategies. We have continued to practice predicting and questioning while reading in addition to using visualization. I'm encouraging students to try and picture the story happening like a movie in their minds. As with the Skippyjon Jones books, I model backing up and rereading and checking for understanding to ensure that the students are understanding what is being read and that they aren't missing out on any of the funny parts!

The guided writing program that I am using is working through the writing traits: ideas, organization, word choice, sentence fluency, voice. We have just completed the first trait, ideas.

Ideas

Week 1: Choosing a Strong Idea
Week 2: Writing a Topic Sentence
Week 3: Using the 5 Ws to Add Details
Week 4: Choosing Strong Details
Week 5: Sticking to Your Topic

Numeracy

We have continued to work through our unit on patterning. Students should now be able to identify a pattern rule (how the numbers are changing) and extend the pattern. We are working on both increasing and decreasing patterns. As I mentioned during parent teacher meetings, this is a very tough unit and we go through it slowly. Students require a certain level of number sense to recognize and extend patterns with ease. We are continuing to focus on increasing individual and independent number sense throughout this unit.

Social Studies

Students have been exploring the world of maps in Social Studies over the past couple of weeks. We have investigated the different elements of a map: title, compass rose, key, bird's eye view. We have also been learning about the seven continents of the world, the world's oceans and  the provinces, territories and oceans of Canada. The mapping project is a fun way for students to demonstrate their new knowledge and get a little creative. I am looking forward to seeing them tomorrow!

Seven Continents of The World Video 

We used this cute video to help us remember the names of the seven continents.

Art

We always enjoy art in 3C! We have completed three art projects this month. Our first was inspired by our lessons in preparation of Orange Shirt Day. The students really seemed to like the Haidi art that I shared with them from a holiday in Alert Bay. We learned about the symbolic meaning behind each animal/symbol, chose our favourite, painted a blue sky background on cardstock and then mounted our coloured Haida animals/symbols on top. They look beautiful!

I also introduced the students to my favourite artist, Romero Britto. I love how his art makes me feel! He is a Brazilian artist who currently resides in Miami. He grew up very poor and painted on anything he could get his hands on, often pizza boxes and newspapers. Colouring on top of existing print influenced his art. The students loved looking at samples of his art online! We completed a guided drawing of a cat, practiced creating patterns with markers and then coloured in our cats.

  

Finally, on Friday we painted our Rock Monsters! The students used acrylic paint and googly eyes to create their own monster. We will be putting our finishing touches on the monsters tomorrow.

Star Student

We all enjoyed getting to know Mr R better this week! We especially loved when Gabby came for a visit!

Student of the Week

Congratulations to Miss E and Mr L for being such amazing students and role models in 3C! I am super proud of you!

Happy Thanksgiving wishes to all of our 3C families!

I hope that everyone was able to enjoy some well deserved rest and relaxation this Thanksgiving weekend!

Literacy

We continued our study of Skippyjon Jones books during Read Alouds this week. Reading conferences and read to self continue to be important parts of our literacy time each week. Writing this week focused on using the 5 Ws to add detail to our writing: who, what, where, when and why. We also examined contractions this week. In addition to our Daily 6-Trait Writing lessons, we write in our journals. Students have free choice in what they write about at this time and it's purpose is to encourage writing fluency...getting your ideas and thoughts down on paper. At this time, I am working closely with a small group of five students to encourage their writing development. We are focusing on composing a sentence in our head, making sure that it makes sense, counting the words that we need to write down and then stretching out the words to try and get all of the sounds down. After we write down sentence, we reread it to make sure that it makes sense and that we aren't missing any words,  letters or sounds.

Numeracy

After a couple days of practice with Touch Math using subtraction, the students were ready to dive into our first lesson in our patterning unit. Jump Math breaks down the steps to perform a task into small manageable steps. In order to be able to continue an ascending or descending pattern, students need to be able to do the following steps:

• determine "the gap" between the first two numbers
• continue the pattern by adding or subtracting the gap from the last number in the pattern

Students are currently practicing finding the gap between two numbers. If they can't do the calculation in their heads, they can use a trick with their hand (see below).

Science

We wrapped up our science unit on Rocks and Minerals by exploring the properties of our rocks like real geologists do! The students loved testing the rocks hardness using Moh's Hardness Scale! They enjoyed testing to see if their rock would react to vinegar, if it would float, measuring it's length and looking at it under a microscope!

Meet the 3C Geologists! (more photos)

Physical Education

Our focus in gym has been to teach the students a variety of low organization games (little to no equipment required) that can be used as warm ups throughout the year. We have been focusing on learning and following the rules, active participation, teamwork and good sportsmanship. The students have been having a blast!

 

Star Student

We really enjoyed getting to know Miss E this week! The students loved that she brought in her cat Kitty to see us!

Student of the Week

Way to go Miss C!!! I'm super proud of your awesome effort every day!

Grade One Buddies

The students in 3C were very excited to meet their grade one buddies in Miss Starostecki's class! We did a quick little interview to get to know our buddies better and then we had a little bit of time to colour together. 

More buddy photos!