November 24th Update

LITERACY

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
• December 5 - Christmas Concert - Pre-K & Kindergarten- 6:30 pm
• December 5 - Last Day for Christmas Elves donations!
• December 7 - NO SCHOOL! PD DAY!
• December 10-12 - Kid's Christmas Paint Days

November 17th Update

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!

IMPORTANT REMINDERS (THERE ARE SO MANY!)

November 11th Update

What an amazing week in 3C!

With the Christmas concert coming, we have upped our music classes each week from two periods to four periods. This extra time has to come from somewhere...so depending on the day and the timing of the extra music period, some things will be dropped. This makes things tricky timing wise at times and students have to be flexible. We've been working on being flexible thinkers for the past two and half months, so this is a great opportunity to practice this new skill!

LITERACY

After finally finishing the final chapters of The Trouble With Chickens (we were missing so many students each day, I kept putting it off), we turned our attention to reading two of my favourite books for Remembrance Day. First we read, A Bear in War by Stephanie Innes and Harry Endrulat.  A Bear in War is based on a true story about the Rogers family from East Farnham, Quebec. Lieutenant Rogers, the father in the story, died in the Battle of Passchendaele as a medic trying to save the life of an injured soldier. The story follows the family in the months leading up to Lawrence Rogers joining the other soldiers fighting in WWI through to his death after four years overseas. The narrator of the story is Teddy. The students often become emotional when we read the story. I think for many of the students, it's the first time that they really grasp the sacrifice that the soldiers.

For the past 20 years, when I finish reading the story, I always have said, "One day I am going to go to Ottawa and see Teddy in real life at the Canadian War Museum." This year I was able to say something different, "I feel so lucky that this summer when I was in Ottawa, I got to see Teddy on display with Lieutenant Rogers' jacket." 

We also read the follow up to this story called Bear on the Homefront. This story catches up with the little girl in the story as an adult. She is working as a nurse serving on the homefront, welcoming children from British cities who were sent to live with Canadian families during World War II. 

 

Our library has both books if you are ever interested in reading them.

With our adjustments in our schedule and the performance on the haunted house paragraphs, I decided to stay focused on our ideas theme for writing for a couple more weeks. The students were so passionate about our discussions surround Remembrance Day, I decided to harness this energy and focus them on writing another idea web and paragraph. We did the web as a class and came up with a common topic sentence, Remembrance Day is a very important day. Students then wrote their paragraphs and did a fantastic job!

NUMERACY

With many student absences this week, I was hesitant to fly through new math concepts. We practiced comparing numbers using both base ten blocks and numerals during our math time. Students also learned a valuable lesson this week when many of them rushed through an "easy math activity" and made several careless errors. This reinforced some student work habits that we have been working on: 

• always try your best
• pay attention to the instructions
• follow the example if you are unsure of what to do
• learn from your mistakes

SOCIAL STUDIES

This week was so much fun during our Social Studies time! The students amazed themselves with their ability to take notes from the videos after a little practice! It was awesome to see their confidence in their abilities increase so quickly! The students enjoyed all of the videos and loved learning new things about the seven continents. Here are our notes on Africa and Asia:

The students have been so interested in exploring the continents that I decided to take things one step further. After completing our booklets, writing two sentences about each continent using our notes, I asked the students, "If you could pick one continent to visit, which one would it be?" Students responded and I quickly matched them up with a like minded partner. I gave them a website to use and students researched their favourite continent. We came up with three focus headings to guide their research:

1. Places I Would Go
2. Things To Do (fun and relaxing)
3. Animals or Special Landmarks That I'd See

Students enjoyed doing the research with a partner and were so excited to find new and interesting places to visit! They took notes as a team and will use their notes to help them this week with a writing project. This week, students are going to make an idea web based on their research to answer the question, "Why visit ____?" Once their idea webs are finished, they will write a paragraph about why they want to visit their chosen continent.

Here are the links to the videos that we have been watching on each continent in case your child missed one over the past week or so:

North America

Australia

Asia

Africa

Europe

South America

Antarctica

Here is the link to the research website that the students used:

https://www.kids-world-travel-guide.com/continent-facts.html

Enjoy the rest of your long weekend!

Take care!

November 2nd Update

Phew! We made it through Halloween week!

LITERACY

The students worked on a cumulative project for our IDEAS focus in writing this week. Students were asked to draw a haunted house and complete an idea web focusing on specific details. They were reminded of the 5 Ws and using their senses when brainstorming details. Students were then asked to write a paragraph, starting with a topic sentence, about their haunted house. Students enjoyed this project! One thing that I noticed in looking over the paragraphs is that several students got caught up in creating a story about their haunted house instead of writing a descriptive paragraph including details from their idea web. We will continue to work on sticking to our plan when writing throughout the year.

NUMERACY

This week we reviewed the different ways that we can write a number. Students completed a Check Up for lessons 1 to 6. Marks have been posted to PowerSchool. Next week, we will turn our attention to comparing numbers. 

SOCIAL STUDIES

This week, we looked at the provinces and territories in Canada. The size of our country is such a hard thing to grasp when you're a young student. I've been teaching students about the size of our country for years and I still don't think I really grasped it...that is until I drove across it this summer! We are trying to give them some perspective of our size and low population, relatively speaking. 

We also started looking a bit closer at the continents. We started with North and South America. We watched a quick three and a half minute video by National Geographic. Students were asked to pick out a couple of facts that they feel are important to remember and jot them down on sticky notes. We shared our notes as a group and then the students wrote two to three sentences using our jot notes in their continents booklet. At first the students were overwhelmed with gathering the important information from the fast paced video. On the second attempt, they had already shown improvement! Next week, we will complete the same activity for the last 5 continents. 

HALLOWEEN

To see all of our Halloween photos, click here!

We had a fantastic day celebrating Halloween on Wednesday! A huge thank you goes out to Decklan, Cayleigh, Abbagail, Wyett, Rebecca and Orion's parents for supplying our party snacks! The students really enjoyed the treats!

CHRISTMAS CARD FUNDRAISER

We have been working on our Christmas cards for the fundraiser and will be putting them together on Monday. They need to be pressed flat over the weekend. I will post a photo of the finished product and send home the order forms on Monday. Orders are due on Thursday. I apologize for the quick turn around on this project...things have been super busy the last few weeks and we started this project as soon as possible. 

IMPORTANT REMINDERS