Introducing...JoAnne Moore!!!

It's my favourite time of year in literacy!!! It's time to completely transform the students' writing thanks to the brilliant JoAnne Moore from Calgary! JoAnne is an amazing teacher who has created a writing program. I attended a two day workshop almost ten years ago with her and I learned so much! 

We have started by focusing on sentence writing! We are targeting three main components of the sentence:

1) sentence starters

2) specific verbs

3) showing instead of telling 

Our first step is brainstorming verbs (action words - moving, eating, making noise) for a specific noun (subject of our sentences). We first chose the noun bear  and asked ourselves:

How does a bear move?

How does a bear eat?

How does a bear make noise?

We came up with a list of verbs and we wrote them in the past tense form (-ed): 

Lumbered, towered, charged, snatched, devoured, grazed, grumbled...etc

Once we had our specific verbs, we turned our focus on to the sentence starters. JoAnne Moore focuses on question word sentence starters: what, when, how (ly), how (ing), where and who.  

Here are samples of each sentence type!

(NOTE: The first sentence was teacher generated and the rest of the sentences came from the students independently.)

What Sentences - Using plural nouns we can drop the "the" at the beginning of the sentence. You can also start a what sentence using words to describe the number, shape, size or type of subject your sentence includes. 

When Sentences

How ly Sentences

How ing Sentences

The students are LOVING the change in their writing and are super eager to share their sentences with the class!

This week coming up we will focus on the last two types of sentences, where and who. Then, we will practice switching between each type of sentence. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another great week in the books!

Wow! We sure packed a lot into a week at RBES!

We started the week off with Valentine's Day excitement! Thank you to Esha and her family for supplying beautiful and yummy cookies for the class as a treat!

One of the other highlights of this week was definitely the students' instrument presentations! They had so much fun showing off their homemade instruments! We practiced giving complements after each presentation and the students really appreciated each other's kind words and sentiments!

Thank you to all of our supportive parents that helped their child with this project! They are always so excited to tell us about the process that they went through with their mom and dad's help! I hope that everyone enjoyed this experience!

We also enjoyed skating this week! A HUGE thank you to all of the parents that were able to make it out to help tie skates or join the kids on the ice! RBES would be unable to offer these extra experiences without your support!

A final highlight of this week was our hour spent with Garth Prince! He was such an amazing story teller and singer...the kids were absolutely captivated the entire time! He taught us a beautiful song and dance. The students and I will keep singing it throughout the year during times of transition. It was created by the farmers working with the maize and has a steady beat. I have a video of the kids singing with Garth and will try to find a way to share it with all of you!

We also completed the spell-a-thin test this week and our class did an amazing job! We had nine students earn 100%! We might just be in the running for a class prize! 

Please make sure to return all spell-a-thin money by Wednesday so that your child can be entered in for the prize draws. 

I think that's all for now!

I hope that everyone has a fabulous Family Day long weekend!!!
 

 

 

 

Anti Bullying Video!

The students in 3C are officially SUPERSTARS!!! They had a blast participating in the RBES Anti-bullying video shoot! Stay tuned for the fully edited video in a couple of weeks!

 

New! New! New!

We had such an awesome Monday!!! The kids were rockstars today! We tried out three new activities and they handled it so well!

During literacy time, we tried out a new activity called What Looks Right? During this activity we focus on 2 spelling patterns that make the same sound (ail & ale). I give students words one at a time and we write them down spelling them with each spelling pattern. Then I ask the students, "What looks right?" Students are usually able to pick out the one that is spelled correctly and feel that the other word "just looks weird!" Sometimes, both spelling patterns are correct and then we take the time to discuss which word means what. The students really enjoyed this activity!

This afternoon in math we took out the whiteboards and started practicing our problem solving skills! We read through the problems together, picked out the important information, decided on an operation (+ or -) and then solved the equation! The students were AMAZING with their accurate calculations!

In science we completed 7 different Hearing and Sound centres! The students had a blast playing around with sound waves and exploring what factors affect the speed of the vibrations and how the changes in vibrations affect the pitch of the sound! At one point, we pretended to be molecules in a solid, liquid or gas to illustrate the difference between how each state of matter handles sound waves! Exploring with science is so much fun!!!

 

 

 

It's already February!?!?

Skating

3C would like to say a huge THANK YOU to all of the parents that came out to tie skates and do on ice supervision! Skating week wouldn't be possible without your support! 

We have one more week of skating coming up and will again need an on ice supervisior for each day (Monday- Thursday). Drop me a quick email if you're willing and able to help us out!

Art

Our art work (11 frames worth) is on display in the foyer for the month of February! We chose a piece inspired by Jim Dine! The students really enjoyed the variety of medium that we were able to work with. We used bleeding art paper for the mosaic background, acrylic paint to paint the heart and soft pastels for the shading and highlighting! 

 

We are partnered with Mrs. Kuntz's grade one class for the foyer display and so we lent them a hand in getting their projects started! The students were super patient with the grade ones! I was super proud of them!

Math

We have been working on improving our accuracy with multi digit subtraction! Students are doing very well! This week we are going to apply our new addition and subtraction skills to some problem solving situations!

Literacy

During our daily read aloud, we are enjoying a new beginning chapter book series called The Dragon Masters. The students are really enjoying the first book in the series. During these read alouds we are focusing on comprehension skills using questioning, predicting and retelling. 

I'm super excited to start our JoAnne Moore writing program with the students! We are going to start by focusing on using specific verbs in our sentences to paint a clear picture for the reader and varying our sentence starters! The students are going to be amazed with how these two little details completely transforms their writing! I can't wait!!!

Science 

We are currently finishing up our unit on Hearing and Sound! The students have really enjoyed this hands on unit! This week we are going to work through some experiment centres to test out our new skills and understanding!

Students brought home an assignment on Friday! They are super excited about making their own instruments! The projects are due on Wednesday, February 15th!

Other important items:

- This week is Teacher's Convention in Edmonton on Thursday and Friday! There is NO school for students. 

- Students brought home media consent forms on Friday. Please sign these and return them NO LATER THAN TUESDAY. 

- Valentine's Day is pretty low key in my class. We will be making valentine holders in the morning and then distributing valentines and having a small treat (provided by Esha's family) at 2:00. I will send home a class list this week. 

- I hope that everyone enjoyed reading their child's report card last week! I really enjoy writing report cards because it allows me the opportunity to really focus and celebrate all of the successes happening in 3C! Each day is so busy and it just goes by in a flash so I really appreciate the chance to slow things down and really take a close look at how things are going for each student. If you have any questions or concerns about your child's report card, please contact me at school. 

I think that's all for now! 

Take care!