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!

October Already?!?

Wow! Time is just flying in 3C!

We had a great week with much to celebrate!

Literacy

The students enjoyed many read alouds this week and were especially thrilled with the introduction of Skippyjon Jones books! I like to use these amazing books to reinforce the "check for understanding" and "back up and reread" comprehension strategies. These books are incredibly witty and hilarious IF you pay attention. If you don't check for understanding frequently, you miss half of the best parts! Students quickly learn to pay attention and think while I am reading so that they don't miss out on any of the laughs.

I have officially read with everyone in 3C and have started to make plans for reading groups and one on one conference times. We will continue to work on increasing our stamina during read to self time. It is critical that the students take this time seriously and dedicate their energy to improving their reading.

In writing this past week we focused on paragraph writing. Students learned that every paragraph needs to start with a topic sentence and needs to have supporting sentences that are all related to the topic. We also focused on making sure that we start each sentence with a capital letter. Students are just finishing up a paragraph project where they are describing Terry Fox as a Canadian hero.

We are going to start Working with Words this week! I look forward to working through some fun and hands on phonics based activities with the students. We will be starting our spelling program in the next few weeks...stay tuned!

Numeracy

In math, we continued to build our accuracy and speed in completing basic math facts addition questions. We continued to practice using Touch Math with addition. This week, we are going to learn how to use the Touch Math strategy for subtraction before we head into our Patterning unit. Students are going to be continuing increasing and decreasing number patterns in this unit, therefore a strong foundation and understanding of addition and subtraction is necessary.

Science

This week in science we learned about the layers of the earth and the difference between a rock and a mineral. Heading into our last week studying this unit, we will be investigating the properties of the rocks in our rock collection in addition to a few special samples that I have in the classroom. This is a chance to use all the new knowledge that the students have acquired and truly dive into the world of geology! It will be a fun week!

Orange Shirt Day - Every Child Matters and the Terry Fox Run

A big 3C thank you goes out to our parents Mrs. Watt, Mr. Hammer and Mrs. Murray for helping out at the Terry Fox Walk! It was great to have the extra adults on the walk and helping out at RBES in preparation for all of the students that would be coming in for a bottle of water, a granola bar and a fruit! A thank you also goes out to Jane from John Maland High School that served as the 3C caboose to ensure that all of our students stuck together! 

We couldn't have asked for a better day weather wise! It was absolutely gorgeous! 

3C raised quite a bit of money to donate to the Terry Fox Foundation! I will have a grand total tomorrow as there were a few people who were hoping to bring money in on Monday. Special recognition goes out to a special student in 3C who donated the entire contents of his piggy bank to support cancer research! Mr. R donated $74.55 of his own money to a wonderful cause! We are super proud of you!

Star Student

We all enjoyed getting to know Mr. A better this week! 

One of the perks of being the Star Student is reading on the bench during Read to Self.
I think that the bench might be a little too comfy!

Student of the Week

Congratulations Miss S! You make me super proud every day!

Important Reminders for the Week

Monday - Read for Beads

Tuesday - Library

Wednesday - Early Dismissal (2:21pm)