February 24th Update!

LITERACY

Our read alouds have been super exciting these days! We are LOVING Elephant Secret! We have had some pretty amazing discussions at the carpet in the morning and the students are always sad when I close the book and return it to my shelf. You should ask your child what the big secret was in the book! They all gasped when I revealed a huge surprise!

We are just finishing up our individual paragraphs and should be publishing them this week! We will be going on to our next theme in our mini writing lessons this week focusing on word choice!

FINE MOTOR TIME WITH AN OCCUPATIONAL THERAPIST ASSISTANT

Mrs. Brenda came in for two consecutive weeks to work with the students on sizing and spacing of their letters in both printing and handwriting. We all know how to form our letters in handwriting now so it's time to get a bit picky about the proper sizing of each letter. Mrs. Brenda completed many activities with the students and they all enjoyed the experience! We will continue to reinforce these lessons until the end of the year.

NUMERACY

This week we looked at rounding two digit numbers to the nearest ten. Students learned how to: 

• determine the multiple of ten that comes before and after a given number (ie; for the number 46, 40 comes before and 50 comes after)
• determine whether a number is going to round up or down depending on the ones digit (0-4 round down, 5-9 round up)

SCIENCE

This week we tested beam designs and pillars. For the Beam VS Beam challenge, the students were comparing the strength of three different beam designs: accordion, box girder and rectangular beams. For the pillar challenge, students were comparing the strength of cylindrical pillars, rectangular pillars and triangular pillars. 

On Tuesday, we have Mr. Caron coming to spend the afternoon with us and we will be focusing on building bridges! We can't wait! Thank you to the parents who have volunteered to come and help us out!

PE

We have been focusing on kicking skills in PE! The students are working on kicking with the inside of her foot instead of with the toe. 

OIL KINGS GAME

We had so much fun at the Oil Kings game!!!

Thank you to everyone who came out!

For more photos, click here!

IMPORTANT REMINDERS

• please log on to your PowerSchool account and pay the $6 fee for the Building Bridges workshop
• Building Bridges workshop is on Tuesday from 12:45 to 2:15
• Spell-A-Thon money is due on Tuesday
• Spell-A-Thon Wrap Up Assembly is on Thursday

February 18th Update

Wow! February is flying by!

LITERACY

We are well into our read aloud book Elephant Secret and the kids are LOVING IT!!! They are really working hard on so many comprehension strategies during our read aloud time and I am very impressed with their growth in this area. They really are maturing as readers! 

Our writing time has been focusing on two things lately:

• turning titles into topic sentences
• developing our own personal graphic organizer in preparation for a free paragraph writing assignment

Several students are struggling with writing topic sentences and often generate titles instead. For example:

• Awesome Polar Bears

We have been working on changing these titles into complete topic sentences.

• Polar Bears are awesome!

The students are starting to catch on to this skill with targeted practice and I will be watching for this to transfer into their assignment and journal writing. 

NUMERACY

With attendance being sporadic over the past few weeks, we held off jumping into our multiplication and division unit and spent a lot of time focusing on problem solving. We practiced reading word problems as a class, looking for the important information. Once we identified what was important in the word problem, we looked for key words to determine whether or not we had to add or subtract. 

Key words:

• ADD - altogether, in all, sum, in total
• SUBTRACT - how many more, difference, how much _____

There is a fantastic website that has so many word problems to go through! Math Playground Word Problem Practice We used this site to practice solving problems and would read through the word problems together and each solve the question on our little whiteboards! It was fun and such great practice! Students soon moved on to two step problems and problems with extra information stuck in to trick us! They did a fantastic job with this mini unit!

SCIENCE

We are well into our Survivor Science unit focusing on Building with A Variety of Materials and Testing Materials and Designs. Students have been broken into tribes to carry out a variety of experiments to test the strength of different materials and designs. Our five tribes are:

The Red Devils

The Blue Raptor HamStars

The Ender Titans

The No Names

The Black Wolves

This unit is a great way to explore the scientific method and learn how to work as part of a team!

The students are focusing on ensuring that they are conducting a FAIR TEST when carrying out their experiments. They need to make sure that they are keeping EVERYTHING the same EXCEPT FOR ONE VARIABLE. 

To see the tribes in action, click on the link underneath this photo:

Survivor Science Photos

VALENTINE'S DAY

We had a great afternoon celebrating Valentine's Day! Click on this link to see photos from our party!

Valentine's Day Photos

HAVE YOU NOTICED THAT IT'S BEEN A BIT CHILLY LATELY?!?!

That cold snap hit 3C hard! For a few days there, we had half of our students missing! Plans went out the window because we can't cover important curriculum without half of our students. We worked hard in the mornings...reading, writing in journals, working with words, problem solving, extra read alouds...and we had fun/relaxed in the afternoon with art and movie time! We dove into Black History month, which was nice! The students enjoyed two read alouds about the Underground Railroad. We also learned about Alma Woodsey Thomas, a famous African American artist. 

IMPORTANT REMINDERS

• Oil Kings game is on Friday. Please complete the permission slip, pay for bus fare and any extra tickets that you ordered asap.
• The Spell-A-Thon is in full swing! The pledge forms are officially due tomorrow (although, I will accept them up until Thursday if you need more time). The test is on Thursday. I don't want students getting super stressed about this spelling test. For some students it can be very overwhelming. In 3C, students can use their portable word walls during the test if they want. They need to be able to find the word and copy it down correctly. The main goal is spelling the words correctly and if they need that support to be successful, I have absolutely no problem with it. 
• We have a Wellness Day on Friday afternoon.
• Elder Florence is with us during the assembly on Friday morning. 

I think that is all for now! 

Have a great week and enjoy the warmer temperatures!

February 1st Update

Phew! We made it through January! That was a crazy month both at home and at school! I'm not sure what tales make it home from our class chats but you may have heard one or more of the following: pet guinea pig passed away, vomit in an electrical socket that shorted the power to our upstairs, mice in the pantry, me being stuck in bed for three days sick as a dog, and the list goes on...I wish I was making this stuff up! LOL! Despite the hectic month, we accomplished so much learning in 3C!

Skating Week - Round One!

The students seemed to really enjoy their on ice time! Thank you so much to the parents who came out to help us tie skates during the week! A huge, special thank you to Lourne's dad, Winston Smith, who was on the ice with our students every day! We couldn't have done it without you!

India Day!

To see all of our India Day photos, click here!

The students enjoyed their afternoon celebrating the amazing culture of India! They started in our room, where we drew henna designs on paper hands, had henna applied to our skin, coloured a peacock picture and chose two bangles to keep! Students then went up to Mrs. Tewitz and Mrs. Forchuk's room, where they made paper lanterns. Their final stop for the afternoon was in Mrs. Rothfos' class! Here the students enjoyed basamati rice, butter chicken, tandoori naan bread, mango Lassis and pakoras. To end the day, each student took home a peacock feather! The peacock is the national bird of India!
A big thank you goes out to Mrs. Klaassen for helping us out for the afternoon and doing some pretty creative and beautiful henna designs on the students! We couldn't have got through everyone without you!

Literacy/Technology

Over the past week and a bit, the students have enjoyed writing their own paragraphs about elephant senses and life in a herd. Once the students were finished, they started working on a google slide presentation about elephants. The first three slides were completed for them (a title page and two slides containing our class written paragraph on African and Asian Elephants), ready for them to customize. We learned how to: change the font, font size, font colour, text box location, delete a photo, insert a photo and change the background on a slide. Once this first step was finished, students started working on the next two slides. On the first slide, they had to type in their paragraph about life in a herd and insert a picture that was appropriate. On the second slide, they had to type in their paragraph about elephant senses and insert a picture that was appropriate. If they finished early, we inserted an additional slide called "More Elephant Photos" and students created a collage with elephant photos that they found online! They have really enjoyed this project! If you would like to see the project, you can log onto your child's drive and see it there! I will try and figure out an easy way for them to email them to you when they are finished too! They would love to email you!

In addition to our writing project, we have been thoroughly enjoying our time reading Elephant Secret. We are all falling in love with this family that includes a large herd of elephants! Ask your child about the sad situation that is unfolding right now and what they predict is going to happen next! They have been very thoughtful in making personal connections to the characters in the book. We have also been talking about the "author's plan" with the characters and they are so amazed at the the author has it all figured out! They really are maturing as readers and it is so incredible to witness!

Numeracy

Last week, the students learned how to borrow from a zero. This process can often be so tricky for students. I have a little trick that I've used over the years that seems to work really well. When the students "go next door to take ten more" and they see a zero, they go one more door over and box those two numbers in. They cross that two digit number out and write the number that comes right before it above the box they drew. Then, they write the ten down that they borrowed and start subtracting. 

After finishing up our focus on multi-digit subtraction, we switched gears a little and started a mini unit on problem solving using word problems. The students brainstormed the "key words" that we look for when we are reading a word problem that give us the hints of whether we need to add or subtract. 

Add: in all, altogether and in total

Subtract: how many more, difference, how much _____

We will continue to work on these skills next week!

Assembly Performance

The students did a fantastic job with Mrs. Kuntz's grade one class during our assembly performance! Here's a video of the performance!

Science

Next week we will be starting our Survivor science unit focusing on testing materials and designs!

Have a great weekend!