Summer is here!

A few last things...

I can't believe that the year is over! It was so hard saying goodbye to the students on Thursday! Teaching these 23 amazing kids was such a blessing! They were a kind, caring, thoughtful, curious, enthusiastic and energetic bunch! We learned a lot together and I will cherish the memories of this year for a long time.

A few last things:

• Having to stick to the template for report card comments is very hard for me. There is so much more that I wanted to say about your children. Please make sure that you go into the assignments on PowerSchool and read through my comments. I am not really limited on assignment comments so I am able to give you so much more information. I spent hours entering in assignments and adding comments before I completed the report cards to ensure that you each have a clear picture of your child as a learner. In particular, please make sure to read the Reading Conference comment.

• I am going camping for six weeks with my family and I was wondering if any student would like to take the fish tank for the summer. It isn't a lot of work...just feed them every second day and add water to the tank when it starts to get low. I'm not desperate for a fish sitter. I have someone coming to live in our house to take care of our dog and crested gecko...I just thought there might be a student that would enjoy the experience. Email me if you are interested.

• I am going to give you a link to all of the photos from the year. I didn't get a chance to post the Ukrainian Village photos or the Triathlon photos. They are in the June folder. You can copy the photos that you are interested in. 2018-2019 photos - click here!

• I wanted to thank you all for the beautiful cards and gifts at the end of the year. I always tell the students that all I ever want is a simple note or card. The sentiments that I receive always mean so much to me! I know this might sound silly but they also mean the world to my parents. I always show them to my mom and dad and it fills them with so much pride to know that I've done a good job and that the families were happy with my work. At 42, I still like making my parents proud. This year was special because they were able to meet all of the students on the last day because they came to see my youngest son's Grade Four Farewell assembly. I will be sending a thank you postcard from our camping trip to Oregon. I know how much students love receiving mail!

• Speaking of mail...in the book Wonder, Mr. Browne gives one last homework assignment at the end of the year and I like to do the same!

 Here is your last grade three homework assignment!

.

1) Write your own precept, it can be an original idea or a quote that means something to you.

2) In a few sentences, tell me why you chose this precept and why it is important to you.

3) Mail me your precept on a postcard or in a little letter. My address is:

831 Oakland Place

Devon, Alberta

T9G 2H8  

If you include your return address, I’ll send my precept to you!

Wishing you all a fabulous and relaxing summer! See you in September!

June 9th Update!

So much to do...such little time! This week's blog post needs to be short and sweet because I have so many other things to do for school!

LITERACY

We've planned our Stuck Story as a class and the students did a fantastic job! 

Next, we have to brainstorm a setting dictionary by thinking of all of the nouns that we are going to encounter and list a few specific verbs for each one. Then, we will start writing our story, one paragraph at a time. Each component of our plan has its own paragraph, with the exception of our character and motive...we will put those together into one paragraph. Each paragraph will take us one day to write and edit. By editing the paragraphs right after we finish writing them, we avoid that colossal task of editing the whole story at the end! Do you remember being so exhausted from all of the writing, you had no energy to put into editing? It was brutal! While writing, we will be paying attention to our sentence starters by tracking them for each paragraph, exactly the way we did with our animal paragraphs. I can't wait for the kids to see how awesome of writers they have become! Students will each be given a copy of our story to illustrate, just like their very own picture book!

NUMERACY

I wanted to take a minute to explain how we are progressing through math these days. The first four units in math (Patterns, Place Value, Addition & Subtraction, Multiplication & Division) are massive and have so many specific learning objectives for the students. These units require a lot of review of past concepts before proceeding into new content. The last four units (Measurement, Geometry, Data Analysis and Fractions) have very few learning objectives and are much more concrete concepts, which are easier for students to learn. We have finished our Measurement unit and all of the students did very well. We are going to do our Geometry Unit this week and will start into our Fractions unit as well. Our Data Analysis objectives are easily covered by a Year End Party Planning survey activity, where students are asked to collect data, create a bar graph and then interpret the results. It sounds chaotic and rushed but I want to assure you that the hands on, concrete nature of these units are perfect for this time of year when attention spans are a bit on the short side. If you have any questions or concerns about any of this, please feel free to contact me.

SCIENCE

We are finished our last unit and the students enjoyed completing a Butterfly Life Cycle slide show. If you are interested in seeing it, the students can access their google or google classroom accounts from home and share it with you. 

We released our butterflies on Thursday before the wet weather hit us on Friday. I have to say that these were the most hesitant butterflies we've ever had! They didn't want to leave us! I had to physically remove them from the enclosure and place them on a near by flowering shrub. To see photos of our release, click on the link below.

Butterfly Photos!

ART

The students enjoyed painting these butterfly masks on Friday! I bought these masks for the first time a couple of years ago when I was on Vancouver Island at the Coombs Old Country Market. My students LOVED painting them using pointillism last year but I didn't have any left. My mom was recently on the island, taking care of things after my aunt passed away. She brought me home enough masks to last me two years! The students really appreciated this special project!

SOCIAL STUDIES

We finished up our unit on Ukraine by creating a knowledge web or list based on everything that we've learned. The students focused on finding important details about ten different topics from their notes:

1. quick facts
2. food
3. geography
4. education and language
5. religion
6. farming
7. manufacturing
8. celebrations and traditions
9. climate
10. life in Ukraine

The students did a fantastic job with this project! Finding the key facts amongst a large amount of information is such an important student skill. The students have really developed these skills as more mature learners.

We are going to move onto our final country of study, Peru. For this unit, we are going to do research online using a National Geographic Kids webpage and a variety of videos. Peru is a great country to end with! The students are going to love it!

Reminders...

ALL LIBRARY BOOKS ARE DUE BACK IMMEDIATELY

June 11 - DQ Blizzard Hot Lunch Order

June 11 - Bike Rodeo (bring your bike to school)

June 17 - Grade 3 Ukrainian Village

June 18 - School Council & Fundraising AGMs 6:00/6:30 pm

June 20 - Cultural Showcase - Gr. 1 - 4 @ EIA

June 21 - Indigenous Peoples Day - Elder Florence Visit

June 24 - School Triathlon

(bring your bike to school)

June 25 - Fun Day (afternoon)

June 26 & 27 - FREE Swim in the morning

June 27 - Last Day of School - Grade 1 - 4

June 2nd Update!

Nineteen days left of Grade Three! How does it happen so quickly!?!? There is so much going on in the last weeks of school, it is going to fly by!

LITERACY

This past week we had a few bonus read alouds! I was introducing the students to Stuck Stories. Stuck stories follow a predictable "recipe" and many of our favourite stories follow this plan (Finding Nemo, The Giant and The Wizard, Hit the Ball Duck). 

A stuck story has:

• setting
• characters
• motive (what the character wants or doesn't want)
• stuck (something that holds the character back from their motive)
• failed attempts to get unstuck
• successful attempt 
• motive carried out

After reading a story, we took it apart into these pieces. Students grasped this concept very quickly and were easily able to identify each component.

This coming week, we are going to plan and start writing our own class stuck story!

NUMERACY

Students have been enjoying our focus on linear measurement. 

They have learned:

• the difference between cm, m and km and when you would use each
• how to correctly measure a length with a ruler (starting at the zero NOT the end of the ruler)
• how to draw a line of a predetermined length
• how to convert m to cm
• how to compare lengths with different units
• how to calculate the perimeter of a shape

We will finish up the unit by focusing on measuring mass and passage of time.

SCIENCE

Students have been eagerly watching their chrysalis in our flight cage. We are watching for changes in colour. As the chrysalis darken, we get closer to the time when the butterflies will emerge. It's such an exciting part of grade three science! We have nine chrysalis hanging and one that has fallen. The advice from the distributer was to leave the fallen chrysalis and that the butterfly should still emerge. We'll have to see! I've explained to the students that in nature, not every baby turns out. Not every egg hatches. Not every individual completes their life cycle.

SOCIAL STUDIES

We are just finishing up our study of Ukraine and will be enjoying a Ukrainian mini lunch on Thursday. We will be providing students with a few perogies and some sausage, along with some cake for dessert. Please still provide a few other items for your child to eat at lunch to ensure that they have enough to eat. 

PE

The students enjoyed a week of DrumFit! They had such great attitudes during these classes! We had a lot of fun! On the final day, students took turns leading the group if they felt up to it! Here's a sample of their hard work!

A FEW REMINDERS

• June 5 - Early Dismissal
• June 7 - BGRS Track Meet
• June 11 - Bike Rodeo
• June 12 - BOKS Wrap Up Party
• June 17 - Ukrainian Village Field Trip
• June 20 - Cultural Showcase @ EIA 
• June 24 - Triathlon Day!
• June 27 - Free Swim Day & LAST DAY OF SCHOOL!