We had a busy first week back to school!

Survivor Science Challenges

This week we participated in two Survivor Challenges! The first one had the tribes comparing the strength of an accordion bridge, a rectangular beam bridge and a box girder bridge using books as our weights!

The second challenge had tribes comparing the strength of an arch spanning a 15cm gap compared to an arch spanning a 25cm gap!

Mrs. C and I always get a chuckle when the students put on their buffs to start our science class and a few of the boys insist on wearing theirs like babushkas! It's especially hilarious when they are acting like tough "Fire Bandits"! The students in 3C are the CUTEST! I can't wait to introduce them to babushkas when we start studying Ukraine!

Literacy

During our Working With Words time this week, we tried out a new literacy game and the students LOVED it! They had to roll alphabet dice 36 times to fill in a 6 by 6 array (insert multiplication concepts here...haha!). Once they had all of their letters entered, they had to find as many 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 letter words as possible. The letters in each word had to be "touching" on the grid. The students learned that they wanted to place certain letters together and we brainstormed a list of combinations that we would try to put together the next time we played (eg; ed, ing, at, bl, sh, th, ch, ang, etc.). We played the game again on Friday and the students were so impressed with how much they improved thanks to some mindful letter placing!

Since the beginning of the year, I have been focusing our read alouds around teaching the students simple comprehension, accuracy, fluency and expanding vocabulary strategies. We have also used our read alouds to examine and explore different genres of books, comparing nonfiction to fiction texts and studying authors word choice. As we approach the final three months of grade three, I am excited to share a different reading experience with them. We have started to read the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio.

Wonder is a pretty serious read and it brings up THE BEST conversations! I love sharing this book with my students because it truly opens their eyes to the power of a book...how it can change the way you think, how it can make you question your beliefs, your actions and your character and how it can make you care deeply for a character that you've never met! Reading this book with the students enables them to use all of the comprehension strategies we have been working on and demands them to think a little deeper. Each year, I watch students transform as readers as they loose themselves in this story. I'm sure many of you have already heard about the main character August and the journey that he his embarking on. I encourage you to check in with your child each day and ask them what is happening in the book! They will love to share the story with you!

Numeracy

Our work with multiplication has been going well! The students are enjoying the challenge of something brand new! They are working on connecting a repeated addition sentence, multiplication sentence, picture and an array. We are also working on finding patterns within our multiplication tables and skip counting by 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s.

Zirka Performance

The students all enjoyed the Zirka performance on Friday morning! This special activity was the perfect introduction to the Ukrainian culture for the grade three students!