Team 3C: 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).

Image result for Attack of the Tyrannosaurus

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!

Image result for The trouble with chickens

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.