Team 3C: December 2017

Two weeks until Christmas...ready or not, here it comes!

We have been very busy in 3C over the past two weeks and we will continue to be busy until Christmas break!

Literacy

Read alouds have focused on nonfiction selections lately. The students have enjoyed reading some of my favourite books by Brian Keating! We have moved from rivers to the poles and we've learned so much about that unique environment. The students are demonstrating many "good reader strategies" during our read alouds, often putting the hands up to ask questions, make predictions and make connections. I love witnessing this growth in my students as readers! For the next two weeks we will focus on reading Christmas stories.

Reading conferences continue daily and are proving to be very beneficial. Focused strategy instruction is critical to help readers who are struggling. We have been focusing on decoding strategies during these conferences. A few favourites have been flip the sound (if a short vowel doesn't sound right within a word, flip the vowel sound to a long vowel), read around the word (when you come across a word that you don't know, continue reading to the end of the sentence and see if you can figure out the word by asking yourself, "What would make sense that starts with the __ sound?"), take a book/page walk (Before starting to read a book/page, students can "tell themselves the story" by looking at the pictures. This way, they are more prepared for the vocabulary/words that they are going to encounter on the page.) and chunking (Break a longer word down into known "parts" like: -ing, -ed, -ly, re-, dis-, -ment, -tion). After modeling these strategies repeatedly, students begin to use them with some assistance before using them independently.

Word Wall Words are coming along. Students are starting to use their word walls more automatically to ensure proper spelling each time they write. We are going to take the next two weeks off of Word Wall Words due to shortened class time. We will be doing a lot of Christmas concert practicing over the next week and that time has to come from somewhere.

Numeracy

We have continued to work through our place value unit focusing on comparing and ordering numbers. We have a tiny bit of work left to do from last week before we start the preparation of addition with regrouping. Jump Math introduces this concept within the place value unit, which is a unique approach and it makes so much sense! While students are focused on ones, tens and hundreds, it makes sense to show them that when we have more than 9 ones in the ones column, we can bundle ten up and move them over to the tens column. I have found that in the past, this method works very well to help students understand the logic behind the process of the multi digit algorithm (stack and add).

Science

The students have thoroughly enjoyed our hearing and sound unit in science. This past two weeks have given the students many opportunities to get hands on experience with sound, sound waves, frequency, pitch and volume. They completed a tuning fork activity with Mr. Beck, where they had their first experience with "seeing" sound waves and their impact. It's one of my favourite lessons and I'm sad that I missed it. The students are able to see the tuning forks vibrate, see the effects of the sound waves on water and salt, feel the vibrations, hear and see the different pitches and volumes. The students also had an opportunity to work through a variety of centers last Monday. Many of the centers were focused on changing the pitch of the sound being created. Students talked on paper cup phones, played the box guitar, experimented with the vibrations of a ruler at different lengths, played a ruler guitar and examined the pitch of different glass bottles filled with various amounts of water. The students were very excited to show their classmates their homemade instruments! We had so much fun listening to the stories of how they were made and hearing their beautiful sounds! After all of the presentations were finished, we formed a 3C House Band and played some pretty amazing tunes! Thank you to all our families for lending your child a helping hand with this project! They were super proud of their creations! Finally, this week we learned about how we hear sounds by examining the anatomy of our ears. The students were fascinated with how many things are happening each time they hear a sound! They loved coming up with ways to remember the names of the tiniest bones in their bodies: the hammer, anvil and stirrup. We have a tiny bit to finish up with this part of the unit and then we will be doing a bit of review and having a little unit test on Friday. A study sheet will be coming home early this week.