Team 3C: 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!

Image result for psssst it's me the bogeyman

Image result for psssst it's me the bogeyman

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.