Not too much to update you on this week! It was a busy week in 3C! The students are really excited to share their Christmas gift with you! They put in hours of hard work and it shows...they turned out amazing! I hope you enjoy it when you see it on Christmas morning!
The students also came home with a gift from myself and Mrs. Dewar. Each year, I have the students paint a picture frame for themselves but I don't tell them what it is for. I just tell them that it's for them and it's a surprise. Instead of buying the students some fancy pencils and erasers or a book for Christmas, each year I renew our adoption of Malkia with the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust. I print out a picture of Malkia for the students and we glue on a little sign that says, "I love Malkia!" This year, I had an extra surprise! We have been excited to get to know a little rhino that was found stuck in the mud when she was only two days old. After extensive efforts to have her mother accept her had failed, the keepers at the DSWT decided to bring her back to the orphanage to care for her. We've watched videos of this sassy little baby running around, chasing and charging the keepers, learning how to take a mud math and feed from a bottle. It didn't take long for all of us to fall in love with her! She is absolutely adorable! It was an easy decision to add her to our 3C Family so we also adopted Maarifa! The kids were over the moon! At one point someone made the connection between their Christmas concert song lyrics and the reality of the situation and exclaimed, "We ACTUALLY got a RHINO for CHRISTMAS!" Cheers filled our classroom and tears filled my eyes for how happy they all were!
They proudly took their picture frames down to music to share with Mrs. Stanski, cheering, "We got a rhino for Christmas!" Mrs. Stanski instantly shared their enthusiasm and organized them to sing a little diddy!
Our Wyett was super sweet and quick to point out that we didn't include Malkia in the song!
Maybe we should have sang, "I got a rhino....and an elephant, for a present!"
I wanted to thank you, in advance, for your generosity with the overwhelming number of Christmas gifts. I explained to the students that I will open them on Christmas morning, with my family, because I love to have a little piece of my 3C family with me on Christmas morning.
Wishing all of our 3C families the merriest of Christmas wishes! I hope that the holidays find you surrounded by friends, family, love and laughter. All the best to all of you in the New Year!
My apologies but this blog post is going to be short and sweet because I have spent hours tonight marking and uploading marks into PowerSchool.
LITERACY
read aloud - We are finishing up Frindle...just a few pages left! The kids are loving it!
writing - We worked on writing instructions on how to do something or explaining an event by putting things in the proper order. We learned how to use guide words (first, then, next, finally) to help our reader follow the steps/order of events. Students were reminded to put a comma after these words.
working with words - Our Using Words You Know lesson focused on short vowel sounds.
NUMERACY
This week we continued to work on multi-digit addition with trading. We focused on triple digit addition this week! The students practiced this skill using worksheets, writing questions into a scribbler (to practice proper spacing and alignment) and math games. Everyone is doing really well!
SCIENCE
On Monday, we had two musical instrument presentations! They were fantastic!
We discussed the parts of the ear this week. The students enjoyed an interesting video that took them inside an ear right up to the ear drum!
We also watched another video that went into detail about the parts of the ear!
I've marked the quizzes from today and uploaded the marks for you to see.
NEXT WEEK
I will be emailing parents that are signed up for party snacks on Friday to arrange the food.
On Friday, we will be having PJ, stuffy and blanket day!
One week down, two to go! The countdown to Christmas is on!
LITERACY
This week, we started a new chapter book during read aloud time. The students have enjoyed the first few chapters of Frindle by Andrew Clements. Ask your child about their first impressions of Nick and Mrs. Granger.
The students enjoyed getting back into our routine in the morning, spending time writing in journals, working with words and learning some new uppercase cursive letters. You may have noticed that I have entered a journal writing mark and comment this week.
NUMERACY
This week we practiced trading when we had too many ones or tens and then we progressed into double digit addition with trading. The students were able to see, using base ten sketches, that sometimes when you add the ones digits, you end up with more than ten ones. They learned to group up ten ones and place them with the tens. We did this with the visual support of base ten sketches and then with just the traditional algorithm (stack and add).
To avoid confusion, I explained to the students that when they come up with a two digit sum when adding the numbers in the ones place, they still write down that two digit number. They just need to sort the digits...and put the tens with the tens and the ones with the ones. They should see the sum on the paper with the tens up high and ones down low.
We will be practicing this skill this week until the students are confidently and accurately solving two and three digit addition questions.
SCIENCE
We had a busy week in Science!
The students completed an Etch-A-Sketch worksheet focusing on the main concepts/vocabulary words that we have learned. We came up with a simple definition and a sketch to illustrate the concept.
The students also completed a tuning fork activity where they got to see the vibrations made from striking the fork on an eraser and the impact of the sound waves on water and coarse salt. They also saw what happened when they stopped the vibrations by touching the tuning fork.
Lastly, the students completed a variety of sound centres to further explore vibrations, changing the pitch and volume of sound and the impact of sound waves. The centres are always a fun way to further explore the concepts that we have been learning in a hands on, interactive way!
CHRISTMAS ELVES DEPOT VOLUNTEER SHIFT
The students enjoyed helping out the volunteers at the Christmas Elves Depot on Thursday! They did a great job sorting the food and enjoyed seeing some familiar faces (Mrs. Towne and Mrs. Duperron)!
The students did a fantastic job at the afternoon and evening performances of the Christmas Concert! A HUGE thank you goes out to Mrs. Stanski for all of her hard work, time, patience and creative talent! We are so blessed to have her at RBES!
Read alouds this week focused on The Library Mouse by Daniel Kirk. The students really enjoyed them and are looking forward to us tracking down the final book!
We started up with our mini writing lessons again this week. Our new focus is ORGANIZATION. This week students worked on exciting beginnings, organized middles and satisfying endings of stories. One of our lessons included a beginning and ending of a story and the students had to come up with the middle. The story started out with a boy very afraid to walk home passed a particular house because of a scary dog..it ended with him ducking behind a bush while the intimidating dog barked. The ending showed the same boy excited to meet up with the dog to play fetch. Below is the middle that the students came up with:
NUMERACY
This week in math we focusing on trading with base ten blocks. What do you do when you have 13 ones? You trade ten of them in for a tens rod and have three ones left over. We practiced this skill using base ten sketches to give us visual support. We then took the leap to making these trades without the visual support of a base ten sketch. Students were told to circle the "red flag" (the double digit number) and then trade the tens digit of that number forward to the next place value place.
All of this work is leading us into multi-digit addition and subtraction with trading and borrowing.
SCIENCE
We didn't have a ton of time for science this week, so I incorporated in into our literacy time. We read through a package about sound and highlighted the important facts that we need to know. Students then "took notes" on strips of construction paper and added these "key learnings" to our bulletin board.
CHRISTMAS CONCERT
Our concerts are on Monday at 1:10 and 6:30pm. If your child is going to be away for the evening performance, please let me know. Students need to be at the school at 6:15. There is nothing specific that they need to wear. Students will come down to the classroom at 6:15 to get organized and lined up. Here is a photo of our arrangement on the stage so that you can choose your seats accordingly.
CHRISTMAS ELVES DONATIONS
3C families were amazingly generous over the past two days bringing in 198 items for the Christmas Elves! That has put us in first place for the classroom competition...but not by much! We are so lucky to have so many generous families at RBES! We will continue to accept donations until Wednesday if you haven't had a chance to donate yet or if you'd like to donate some more! Thank you so much for your support with our Grade Three Giving Project!
On Thursday morning, students will be heading to the Christmas Elves Depot to volunteer by sorting our food donations. There is a permission slip on PowerSchool for you to fill out so that your child can attend. We will taking the bus to the depot with the food all loaded up and working for about 45 minutes before heading back on the bus. A huge thank you goes out to Rhonda Stelter for volunteering her bus services for us!
We finished up Dinosaur Cove during our read aloud time this week and the students really enjoyed it! Many Dinosaur Cove books were checked out during our library period this week! We also read a couple picture books this week, Roxaboxen and The Story of the Little Mole That Knew It Was None Of His Business.
I love sharing laughs with my students...but I have never in twenty years, laughed to the point of tears. Well, that all changed on Friday during a surprising read aloud! Before the assembly, we had a class meeting about tattling. We talked about when you need to tell the teacher about something and when you need to ignore certain behaviours from others. We talked about the difference between bullying and someone just being rude or inconsiderate. It was a good talk. When it was time for our read aloud, I grabbed a book off my shelf that seemed to fit with our little topic of the morning (The Story of the Little Mole That Knew It Was None Of His Business). The students all settled in to listen and we started the book. Well, what happened next, had it been recorded on video...could have broke the internet! I launched into the story...having never read it before...having just judged the book by it's cover...and boy was I in for a surprise!
After the first two page spread, I had a feeling this story was going in a direction that I hadn't expected. But, we were already in it...and I had to keep going! As soon as I turned the page, I knew I was in trouble! LOL!
As you can imagine, all twenty five of us burst into laughter! This wasn't going to be a book about minding your own business...this was a book about poop! Well, we were committed by this time and so we just carried on and laughed and laughed and laughed...until there were tears! It was hilarious!
Mrs. Dewar kept saying, "I should be recording this!" as it reminded her of the Scottish grandma reading The Wonky Donkey.
For those of you who are curious, here's a video of someone else reading the book! I'm sure the students would like to hear it again...this time with some pretty funny sound effects! There's never a dull moment in 3C! LOL!
The students also did some journal writing and some working with words this week!
NUMERACY
This week we finished up comparing numbers and did a little quiz. Marks have been posted to PowerSchool. For the rest of the week we focused on strategies for adding two single digit numbers (basic facts). We brainstormed the different tricks that we each use and discussed them.
After discussing the strategies, I introduced a new strategy called Touch Math. Here's a short video of me introducing the strategy to you!
I love Touch Math for so many reasons! Many times the students that struggle with their basic facts also struggle with switching between addition strategies and knowing which strategy to use for each question. Touch Math works for EVERY QUESTION!!! No need to stress about which strategy to use! I also love how once you've mastered it for addition, you can just count backwards to use it for subtraction! The students were all super happy with the strategy and reported that it made things much quicker and less stressful for them!
SCIENCE
We've started our new Hearing and Sound unit in science this week! The students enjoyed going on a listening walk both inside and outside the school. They recorded all of the different sounds that they heard on our journey.
Later in the week, we talked about how we make sound. We learned about how our lungs, trachea, voice box, vocal cords, mouth and nose all work together to create sound. We watched the following videos:
The students also learned that the faster the vibration the higher the pitch of the sound and the slower the vibration the lower the pitch of the sound. Over the next couple of weeks we will explore more about how sound is made and heard.
3C IS HELPING OTHERS!
A couple of our students made an important announcement at the assembly:
The Grade 3 classes, as part of their Global Citizenship unit in Social Studies, will be organizing the Christmas Elves food drive - doing the collection, delivery, and sorting of the food that is donated. The food needs to be delivered to the Christmas Elves on December 8th so we are asking that all donations be brought to the school by December 5th.
This year, the students can begin bringing in donations to their classrooms on November 26th. We will have two special days, on November 29th and 30th, where students can trade in donations for tickets. These tickets will be put into a draw giving their family the chance to win the Comfy Couch for one of the Christmas Concert performances.
We have been in contact with the Christmas Elves and this is their food “wish list”. These are just some of the needed food items but any food donation is greatly appreciated.
Thank you so much for your support!
IMPORTANT REMINDERS
November 2 - Dec 5 - Christmas Elves Food Drive!
November 28 - Fruit Order Pickup
November 29 & 30 - Trade in your food donation for comfy couch tickets
November 30 - Dec. Hot Lunch Deadline
November 30 - Elder Florence will visit our assembly
December 3 - Christmas Concert - Grade 3 & 4 - 1:10 pm and 6:30 pm
December 4 - Christmas Concert - Grade 1 & 2 - 1:10 pm and 6:30 pm
This is going to have to be a quick update this week...such a busy weekend!
LITERACY
This week, we brought our Social Studies topic into our Literacy time! The students enjoyed taking their notes on their favourite continent and creating an idea map about their top reasons for wanting to visit that continent. Once they were finished their mind map, they set out to work on their paragraphs. The students did a great job! They have grown so much as writers over the past few weeks and I'm super proud of them! I had a quick writing conference with each student and we did some simple trouble shooting (capitalizing proper nouns, putting your sentences in an order that makes sense, making sure you write complete sentences, etc) with their rough drafts. Their last job was to type their paragraph into a Google Doc, add a picture and share it with me. Many of the students are finished this assignment.
During read aloud, we started a new book called Dinosaur Cove: Attack of the Tyrannosaurus! The kids are loving it so far! Ask them to retell the story to you!
NUMERACY
In math this week, we looked at comparing numbers, putting numbers in order and properly using the > and < signs. The students have all grasped these concepts with minimal support! We will finish up this topic on Monday and have a "show what you know" (aka quiz) before heading into some more place value work that sets them up nicely for trading and borrowing with addition and subtraction.
PHYSICAL EDUCATION
This week the students enjoyed Mission Impossible in the gym! The course was challenging but they loved it!
