Team 3C: January 19th Update

It was a great week in 3C! We accomplished so much!

LITERACY

One of my favourite parts about teaching is when something comes up organically that inspires the students to learn more and do more with their knowledge! We had a little spark of this last week, when I shared the book The Elephant by Jenni Desmond. The students LOVED it! We learned so much and they were so excited to discuss all of the interesting facts that they absorbed from the read aloud. During our writing time, we have been focusing on ORGANIZATION and how writers organize their ideas before and during writing to help the reader receive a clear message. This week, our writing also focused on comparing two things using a venn diagram and how to organize comparative writing using signal vocabulary: both, unlike, however, like. Taking all of this learning into account, we created, as a group, a graphic organizer to sort out all of our new elephant knowledge. The students chose the headings of the topics that they wanted to focus on and I created a graphic organizer using Google Draw.

Together, using the book to look back to, we filled in some point form notes about each of these topics. When we were completing the African and Asian boxes, we made sure to include similar information on both sides so that it would be easier to organize our writing (they had not yet been introduced to a venn diagram at this point...or this organizer may have looked a bit different).

Once we completed filling in the graphic organizer, it was time to start writing. After some discussion, we agreed that we would like to start by talking about the two different types of elephants. This brought up another discussion...do you give each type their own paragraph or write a comparative paragraph? We decided to write one large paragraph focusing on African elephants first and then switch to discuss Asian elephants...rather than constantly switching between the two. We all agreed that it seemed simpler and easier to do it this way. I was super impressed by the discussions that we had prior to writing. The students were able to openingly and honestly discuss their ideas on organization in writing! This means that these little mini writing lessons each week are working!! Woohoo!

Going from a point form list to a written paragraph can be challenging for young writers. They know they need a topic sentences but then they often just "list" the details instead of putting them into proper, complete sentences. I made sure to guide them carefully through this process for the African elephant portion by saying, "How can we explain the size and shape of their ears in a sentence?" This seemed to work well. The next day, when we came back to write the Asian elephant portion, the students did a fantastic job! They referred back to the African elephant sentences to assist them in creating the Asian elephant ones! It was a pretty quick and smooth process! Here is what they came up with:

Next week, the students will write the other two paragraphs more independently to see if they can transfer all of these new skills and lessons. I can't wait to see how they do!

During read alouds, the students have been enjoying Elephant Secret. They have been doing some amazing questioning and predicting during reading! They are also making some self to text connections with our main character Samantha.

NUMERACY

This week, we continued our work with multi-digit subtraction. We ventured into the triple digit questions and for the most part, it went well. Some students started to struggle a bit with being sure of when to borrow or not...because they started skipping the step of asking themselves, "Where is there more?" in the ones and tens columns. Due to this little hiccup, I didn't add the task of subtracting from zeros yet. I will add that task on Tuesday. To see how your child is doing, check PowerSchool. I uploaded an assignment last week with specific feedback if your child is struggling. Here's a video of the language that I would like to see the students using when they are working their way through the problems:

SOCIAL STUDIES

The students are LOVING Social Studies right now and that makes me super happy! As a student, I always dreaded Social class...I found it so boring and it just seemed pointless at times! Such a negative attitude for someone who was going to grow up and end up teaching it! LOL! But I honestly think that it works out as a benefit for my students...I want to make it fun, interesting and relevant to them! The textbook has its place, and the students were actually super excited to read a few pages, but I like to use other resources to help bring it more to life and make it more relatable.

This week, we focused on life in the city versus life in the country in India. The students really enjoyed looking at the different housing options in different areas of India. We did an in depth look at housing in Mumbai and the kids were absolutely enthralled! We had a very committed focus to speaking respectfully as we compared and contrasted our lives in Devon compared to life in a busy city in India. We also had a strong focus on the quality of life experienced in different parts of the city and the country. We mapped out the size of the homes on our floor tiles and the students were amazed by the humble accommodations. We explored some more advanced concepts, such as population density and the use of available resources versus importing resources.

Next week, we will continue our research into life in India. We will focus on: Culture and Traditions, Land and Resources, Services People Need. We also will be celebrating India Day on Friday afternoon! Let me know if you want to volunteer to do some henna designs on the kids! It's fun and easy!

ART

In art, we did the watercolour wax resist portion of our elephant projects! We only have to do the sharpie outline and then we are done! The kids were so proud of the results so far!

An Exciting Development from the Fish Tank!

Our largest shrimp just keeps getting bigger! It was time for a new exoskeleton! Tialla found his old exoskeleton laying at the bottom of the tank behind a rock... so we fished it out and took a closer look at it!

LOST AND FOUND ITEMS

These items have been hanging out in our class Lost and Found box for a while now. Please let me know if any of these items belong to your child and I will make sure that they make their way home to you! Thanks!