April already!

With less than three months to go, we are working hard in 3FM!

Language Arts

As I mentioned in a previous email, we have started reading the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio. 

Over the past seven months, I have been working on teaching and reinforcing a variety of reading strategies focusing on fluency, accuracy, comprehension and expanding vocabulary. I will continue to reinforce these strategies in small group or one on one reading conferences. While we read Wonder, we are going to dig a bit deeper and look at some higher level comprehension strategies. Our students are maturing as readers and their reading experiences and strategies need to mature too. Reading comprehension involves the ability to not only read the lines but also the abstract step of "reading between the lines." Good readers have the ability to read beyond the lines and take away a deeper meaning and connection from a book.

I can't imagine a better book to introduce these new concepts and skills to my students. From past experience, students immediately connect with the main character, August Pullman. They become very protective of him and passionate about how he is treated. Just today, as I was reading to the students, they instantly fell silent after a few gasps, when another character in the book, Julian, was being rude to August. I asked them why they were upset and suddenly so quiet. The response was unanimous...they were upset that someone would be so mean to August. We are only on page 32 and they already have connected so deeply with the ten year old main character. Many discussions come from reading this story. We have already discussed white lies, bullying, how to stand up against a bully, how to handle seeing someone who has a physical abnormality and how our reactions affect them. We have and will continue to put ourselves in other characters' shoes and discuss how we would feel in various parts of the story. 

In addition to reading an amazing book, we also finished up some pretty amazing stories of our own! At student led conferences you had an opportunity to read your child's first stuck story. The feedback I received from parents was positive, which is always great to hear! We had one final paragraph left to write and we finished that up last week. We will start planning our next story in the next week and start writing it shortly after. We are also going to take some time to write some poetry during poetry month. 

Our new WTW groups are working hard through their newest sorts. I hope you found my email on Monday helpful when working with your child on their sort. Due to the increased challenge this week with their WTW words, we will not have WWW this week. I want the students to give all of their time and attention to WTW this week. 

Math

Wow! Our students are super excited about multiplication!!! We have started our multiplication unit by discussing how you need equal groups to multiply. 

We discussed how you can't make a multiplication sentence to count up a bunch of apples if there were 5 in one group, 3 in another group and 4 in the last group. All groups need to be equal with multiplication. 

We have also discussed how multiplication is a short cut for repeated addition. 

Today, I introduced the concept of arrays and their use with multiplication. An array is a set of rows with the same number in each row. 

We will continue to work through this concept tomorrow. The students were very excited to look for arrays in their world! You should have seen their faces when they realized that not only is our tile floor an array, our ceiling tiles make an array, and better yet, their structures in Minecraft form arrays!!! They were blown away! 

We have also started working on a few tricks to help them master their basic multiplication facts. In grade three, they need to master up to 5 x 5. So far we have learned that:

Anything times zero is zero.

Anything times one is the other number.

Multiplying by two gives you two choices. Either double the other number or count by twos while you touch the spots on the other number (Touch Math) or your fingers. 

Multiply by five by counting by fives while you touch the spots on the other number (Touch Math) or your fingers. 

Once they have mastered these facts, the only facts that are left are:

3 x 3 = 9

3 x 4 = 12

4 x 4 = 16

Your child should have brought home a math package with feedback on their progress in multi-digit addition and subtraction. If you have any concerns or questions about this please do not hesitate to contact me ASAP. 

April 6 - 10

Welcome Back!!!

Welcome back to a nice short week to get us back in the swing of things. I hope everyone had a fabulous break! It`s hard to believe it but the school year is coming to an end quicker than we expect. There are less than 3 months left to go!!!

Science

This week in science we wrapped up our Testing Materials and Designs unit by looking reviewing adhesives, as well as the strengths of different shapes such as triangles, arches and squares. We also talked about how bricks are layered to make them more stable by completing a class demonstration to show how boxes stacked together in a layer are more stable than boxes stacked directly on top of each other without a interconnecting layer. As always, students love anytime we get to know things down!!!

We further discussed the strength of triangles by testing different designs of trusses built from popsicle sticks. Those trusses built using triangles were clearly stronger than ones without triangles. 

To end off our unit - I challenged the students. 
In groups, the students were given:

1 piece of paper

1 foot of tape

1 - large marshmallow

20 - mini marshmallows

20 - spaghetti sticks

The challenge was for each group to work together to build the tallest
 free-standing tower that they could using the above supplies. The one condition was that the large marshmallow had to be at the top of the tower.

Congrats to our winners at 41.5 cm tall:

A close 2nd 40 cm:

And here are the rest of the towers:


Good job using your triangles: 24 cm.

Also a good job trying to use triangles to strengthen their tower: 18.5 cm.

Good try: 10 cm

 Tough time getting it to work: 0 cm

It can be challenging to apply some of the things that the students have learned in this unit and then to be able to work in a group on the task. It was definitely a fun, yet great learning activity!


Social Studies 

This week in social studies we reviewed what makes a good leader by reviewing our Working Together brochures, and then students completed a Show What You Know. The sheets were sent home to be signed and returned so that I know that you are aware how your child is understanding the concepts. Overall, I was very impressed with how well students did - a number of the students received 100%!!!

 Have a fabulous week!!!

March 23-26

Week Before Spring Break

Wow - what a week! I think we can all say that we were looking forward to Spring Break with excitement - and it was very apparent in 3FM!

First things first - I want to send out a very big heartfelt thanks to the super volunteers who made it out to our Building Bridges Session. Thank you to Ms. Lynette Gaulton, Ms. Tammy Huber, Ms. Kendra Stewart and Ms. Sheena Rector. Your help is so appreciated by myself and the students. We couldn't do it without your continued support. 

SCIENCE UPDATE

What a super week for Science in Grade 3! We continued to test materials - looking at different adhesives as previously discussed. We were quite shocked at how strong white glue and hot glue were in comparison to tape, glue stick and plasticine in holding together popsicle sticks.

Students also completed a Show What You Know as a review of the concepts we have been studying as we test the various designs and materials.

On Thursday March 26, we had an in-school workshop, Building Bridges - and it was a great hands-on experience for our students.  I sent home the booklets that we completed during the session with some photos - but here are some in color:

SOCIAL STUDIES UPDATE

In Social Studies - we continued to work on our Brochure Assignment - Working Together. If you attended Student Led Conferences on Wednesday March 25 - I explained that this assignment was a little tricky for some students as it was an exercise in gathering and recording information from the text. At first, many students found this to be a difficult task, however after completing one section - it became easier for some students as they became familiar with what was expected. Some students really needed encouragement and support in regards to completing this assignment - but overall, I was impressed by the dedication of the students in their efforts to finish.


Whether you had a vacation or stay-cation - I hope everyone had a fabulous Spring Break!!!


We will be having our Library period on Wednesday this week as we missed it with having Monday off - so don't forget to send in your library books so you can get some new books to read! 

March 16-20

Science Update

This week in science we continued to test different materials. 

First, we looked at the idea of stability. To demonstrate this we used a variety of different sized containers - tall and narrow, short and wide, tall and wide, etc. We made a shelf and tipped it slowly - observing which containers tipped first and last. Students quickly decided that the containers with a larger base - had more stability and were less likely to tip. We further discussed the idea that the taller a structure - the wider the base must be. 

Next, we looked at choosing ways to join materials. Students were asked to test three different straw cubes - all joined with different materials: paper clips, plasticine and pipe cleaners - to see which held the most mass. Then they tested toothpick cubes joined with plasticine, marshmallows and puffed cereal. We discussed that different materials have different properties - flexibility, strength - and when engineers choose things to fasten structures together - they have to look at these properties to determine the best choice of materials. We talked about when we do crafts - we might use different types of adhesives for different reasons, duck tape versus scotch tape; white glue versus a glue stick. 

Social Studies

In social studies, we continued to explore how communities work together to make decisions by looking at the final two countries: India and Ukraine. Students discovered that India is the only country that we are studying that has a Prime Minister like Canada. We discussed that we share similar history in the fact that we were both colonies of Great Britain. 

Students began working on an assignment in which they needed to use the information that we have been reading and discussing together, by using the text books to complete a brochure on how the four communities work together. Students were paired up and I tried to have them work a little more independently to see if they could gather the required information to complete their assignment. It was definitely a learning experience - as some of the students just want to be told the answer if they cannot remember it. We are working on their gathering information skills.

Healthy Hearts

In healthy hearts we have been starting to go outside and have been enjoying the nice weather with the melting of the snow. It's been great to get out with them and watch them enjoy running and I am happy to say we have figured out a game that they all seem to enjoy: Everyone's It Tag. Unfortunately towards the end of the week - it was a little ugly outside - but we found another great way to get moving in the classroom - and also an activity that everyone enjoys taking part in: Freeze Dance. Too much fun!!!

Have a fabulous week!

And the countdown is on!

A quick post as we start our last 4 days of school before Spring Break!

Due to our focus on completing our story writing project this week during our language arts time, we will not have WTW. 

During math periods, we will continue to practice our multi digit subtraction using the traditional algorithm. We will also spend some time learning about estimating sums and differences. 

This week is going to fly by! I hope to see all of you at our Student Led Conferences on Wednesday between 3:30-7:00. 

Personification, onomatopoeia, sensory imagery...oh my!

Today we dove head first into writing the first paragraph of our stories! I took this time to introduce and model the use of personification (using human traits/verbs with non living nouns), onomatopoeia (imitation of a sound) and sensory imagery (using our senses to help paint a picture for the reader) while writing our setting introductions. After I completed the write aloud (performing the writing process out loud, modelling my thinking) students were asked to write their own setting introductions. The students were excited to get started on their stories!

These two above photos show my demonstration of personification. I asked the girls to get together in the corner of the room and to squeeze in tight, like the hay bales. We then brainstormed verbs that would be used to describe this action: crowded, stacked, piled. 

Here are a few examples of our setting introductions! Check to see if the writer painted a clear picture for you!

* When you see my writing in pen, this indicates that I was working with the student and they were dictating their sentences to me. 

First paragraph down, six to go!

St. Paddy's Day

Happy St. Paddy's Day from 3FM!!!

Nobody was getting pinched in 3FM - everyone had some green on them...somewhere. Some chose to be a little safer than others by wearing some pretty cool green accessories.

March 9-13

Great Things Happen in 3FM

SCIENCE UPDATE

Here is just a little opening buddy reading activity that we did to start the week off - reading books about building and structures with the purpose of sharing what that they learned with the rest of the class. 

As always science class is a super fun place to be. Our engineering company has been busy testing a number of designs and students have been putting the scientific method to the test. They are starting to see that it doesn't matter if their hypothesis is different than their conclusion - and that the test and what they learn is the important step.

This past week the students were engaged in two separate tasks: first students tested how different shapes of pillars compared in strength. Students quickly learned that cylindrical pillars were the strongest as they do not have corners - so they resist buckling. Also - they were able to tie in previous knowledge in that the circular shape would spread the force of the mass equally - allowing it to support more mass. 

Here are some of our Engineers at work:

The next concept we looked at was how engineers choose the materials that they use in projects. 
To do this - we did a group experiment to test the strength of different papers: 
tissue paper, kleenex, computer paper, construction paper and loose leaf. 

Students learned that when engineers are choosing a material - it is important to know what the purpose of the material will be. For example - we wouldn't want to blow our nose with construction paper as it would be too rough, however - you wouldn't use a kleenex to make a poster because it would rip or tear too easily. Engineers must choose the best materials for the construction task at hand.

SOCIAL STUDIES UPDATE

I have to tell you that I am absolutely loving our social studies class discussions. Students are so eager to hear about how decisions are made in our country as well as 

in the countries that we are studying. The inquisitive nature of our lessons is so 

great to see in a grade 3 classroom. 

We spent this week looking at how decisions are made in Peru and in Tunisia. We discussed the importance of having the freedom of choice in who runs our country - and the importance of voting in elections. Students learned about how decisions are made in communities in Peru and Tunisia - and that the people of both of these countries elect their leaders - who are called Presidents. We also discussed the differences in how decisions may be made in a small community versus a bigger city - the whole idea of elected representation. 

We compared these countries with Canada - as we also elect our leaders of government, however, we call our leader Prime Minister. I really emphasized the importance in having a choice in our leadership - and explained that there are countries in the world where this is not the case. We talked about our leaders having to be somewhat accountable if they want to remain in the position of a leader, otherwise the people may choose someone new in the next election.

Have a super fabulous week - enjoy the sunshine!

Reader's Theatre

A group of our students are focusing on reading with expression. What better way to practice than performing a reader's theatre play! We all enjoyed their animated story telling! Look at the smiles on the faces of the audience!

Practicing!

Show time!

Great job 3FM Reader's Theatre crew!

Healthy Hearts!

My last PD day was spent in a classroom as a student...sitting all day listening to the speaker talk about teaching math! Mrs. Rothfos and I were so restless! We needed to move! This was a great reminder of what it's like for my students every day! We all enjoy our movement breaks throughout the day! 

Math team work!

Students worked well together while practicing some new math strategies!

Robert Munsch Puppet Theatre!

Our class really enjoyed the puppet show presentation of six Robert Munsch stories! What a treat!

Language Arts and Math Update!

Wow! Time flies when the sun is shining and you're up to your eyebrows with addition and subtraction strategies! We have been so busy in 3FM! You might want to grab a coffee or glass of water, this is a bit of a long post! You will be able to tell by the end that I love teaching story writing!

MATH

We have finished up our multi digit adding practice with the stack and add algorithm. The students did a great job trying the three strategies and choosing a favourite! We have now moved on to multi digit subtraction. We have been working with the number line method. Most students are grasping this concept with ease!

Here is a quick tutorial on this method: http://youtu.be/BepTP0VUxik

Please note: We start our number lines at the lowest number in the subtraction question, not at zero. 

There are many advantages to this method! It helps develop number sense, is easily used while subtracting using mental math and, for many students, is more reliable than the stack and subtract method!

We will be moving on to the stack and subtract method on Wednesday. 

LANGUAGE ARTS

During read aloud time, we finished up the book Frindle by Andrew Clements. This is one of my favourite books to read to my students each year! 

While reading to the students, I focus on a variety of comprehension strategies. We frequently stop and make predictions, ask questions and make connections with the story and it's characters. Building our vocabulary of specific words and common phrases is also a focus when we reading together. We discussed topics like freedom of speech/the press, the phrase "Extra! Extra! Read all about it!", copyrights, trust funds, etc. It's amazing how many times we, as adults, assume that our children understand "common" expressions...and they actually have no clue what we're talking about! This book always brings up some interesting topics to discuss and always makes me tear up in the final pages! 

In writing, we have been preparing to write our first story. An important thing to point out before I launch into a description of our story planning/writing process, is my expectations of student writing. On my first day of a two day writing workshop with JoAnne Moore, JoAnne asked us (a group of about 200 teachers) a series of interesting questions:

She asked us, with a show of hands, who felt comfortable writing a story for a group of kindergarten students? 

Everyone raised their hands. 

She asked us who felt comfortable writing a story for a grade two class?

Most people put up their hands. 

She asked us who thought they could write a simple novel for a grade three or four class?

Less than a quarter of the teachers put up their hands!

She kept the questioning going for a few more higher grades and fewer and fewer hands were raised. By the time she got to grade 12, only one brave soul out of 200 felt confident. 

Her point was critical. Although our reading levels were higher than a grade twelve level, only one of us felt confident that our writing skills were at the same level. The majority of us had very little confidence in our writing abilities and were well aware that we would have to gear our story writing to a younger audience. 

How does this influence my expectations of my students? 

I explain to them from day one that I don't expect them to write the type of story that they would choose to read during read to self time because I can't even expect that of myself as their teacher. I explain to them, that I want them to focus on writing a simple story that would be perfect for a grade one student. This seems to take the pressure off and allows them the opportunity to focus on what is really important with writing, planning and word choice. 

My writing program is quite different from what the students are used to. Instead of quickly planning out our characters, setting and "problem" before sitting down to write, we go much deeper into the specifics of our upcoming story. When we plan a stuck story, we focus on each of the following story elements:

Characters

Setting (where and when the story takes place)

Motive (what does the character want)

Stuck (how the character gets stuck that doesn't let them get what they want)

Attempt #1 that doesn't work

Attempt #2 that doesn't work 

Successful attempt

Motive carried out (the character getting what they want)

Last week we planned a stuck story that takes place on a farm in the spring time. This is our story plan:

Reading through our plan, you can clearly see the story and we haven't even written it yet! The support provided to the students using such a thorough plan ensures their success. 

Our next step is to brainstorm a setting dictionary. During this step, we think of all of the nouns that we will encounter in our story (cow, horse, donkey, 9 year old boy, chicken coop, fence, sun, wind, farmhouse, etc) and brainstorm specific verbs to go with them. This process gets the ball rolling for the students when it comes to word choice. 

Once our setting dictionary is good to go, we will start writing the story one paragraph at a time. Each story component will have its own paragraph (except character and motive goes together in one paragraph). Each paragraph will contain between 4-7 sentences. We will edit each paragraph right after we write it. This editing piece is critical! 

Do you remember when you were in school and you had just poured your heart into a long story? Do you remember how painful it was to edit your work from beginning to end? Catching a mistake you made at the very beginning, that you continued to repeat throughout your story? Let's face it, by the time you finally finished writing your rough copy, you were past the point of caring! You just wanted to be done!

We eliminate this painful process by writing and editing one paragraph each day! This way, when we finish our last paragraph and edit it, we are DONE! Ready to publish!

You will all have a chance to read your child's story in progress at our Student Led Conferences next week!

Phew! I think that's all for now! I warned you that I was pretty passionate about story writing!

A few quick important reminders:

Spell-a-thon pledge forms due ASAP

Spell-a-thon test on Thursday

Yoga on Wednesday

Parent Council meeting on Wednesday 

Beach Day on Friday

March 2-5

Springing Ahead into March

Science Update

Our unit on testing materials and designs is continuing at a nice pace. Students are enthusiastic and excited to be engineers in charge of testing various concepts.

This past week we revisited the pillar experiment and I demonstrated the test to the whole class as in our previous attempt - the experiment did not go quite as planned. The demonstration clearly allowed students to come to the conclusion that four small pillars on the corners of a structure are stronger and more stable than one central pillar in the middle of the structure. 

Students are also quite eager to work on their structure slideshows in google Classroom - in which they are investigating different structures around the world.

Social Update

This week in social studies we started off the week discussing how communities work together and how as a community we make decisions. The topic of leaders was addressed which led us into quite the discussion on how decisions are made in Canada - and the importance of our freedom to vote for our leaders in elections. We will continue to investigate this topic and how decisions are made in each of the four countries we have been studying: Peru, India, Ukraine and Tunisia.

On Thursday, our class celebrated the culture of Tunisia. Students were excited to try Tunisian cuisine - which included dates, pomegranates, couscous, flat bread, a Tunisian vegetable stew, as well as mint tea. I am so impressed by the students willingness to try new things - as a child I was not quite as adventurous!

Here are some of the pictures I managed to take - unfortunately there are not too many as I was quite involved in helping the students with their straw weaving. 

 One of the activities that the students were introduced to is an ancient game called Mancala.

The students created some great art making mosaics out of beans. Mosaics are popular in Tunisian culture.

And of course, students love to colour! What better to colour than the important symbols and animals found in Tunisia.

Students also enjoyed the translation activity in which they used Google translate to explore the Arabic language, and listened to some Arabic music on youtube.com. 

I absolutely love sharing in these types of activities with the students - their eagerness to learn and excitement to 

see new things is so contagious and 

such a pleasure to see. 

I can't wait for our next culture day coming up in the beginning of April to celebrate the Ukraine!

Hope you all have a fabulous week!

Feb 23-27

Time Flies When You're Having Fun in 3FM!!!

I can't believe that the end of February has come! This week was a busy one as we were working around the skating schedule and I only have three half days to work with to begin! But never fear - this class is almost always ready to get to whatever task I have prepared for them!

Big thank you to all of the parents who have so graciously come out and helped out with tying skates and going on the ice. Both Jolene and I are so appreciative of the help and support.

Science Update

This week in science we continued working as engineers. Students were investigating the strength of different arch spans - and compared the strength of an arch that spanned 15 cm versus and arch that spanned 25 cm. Ask your students which arch held the most weight?

Students also started an investigation into whether one large central support pillar or four smaller support pillars (one in each corner) would be stronger/more stable. Unfortunately, students were given a little lesson on what happens when things do not go quite as we planned...as our small pillars didn't quite work. So - we discussed what we thought should happen - and they started a google Classroom slideshow assignment reviewing what they have learned so far as well as researching structures around the world. I will demo the four pillar vs one pillar test next week.

Social Studies Update

Students finally wrapped up the chapter on services and how they contribute to quality of life by looking at access to services in India. As we looked at the services in India - students became more aware of the many people who lack even the basic necessities such as clean water, food and healthcare. They also saw that even though some areas do have services such as electricity - they do not always work due to the huge population of people trying to use the service at one time.

We reviewed what we have learned and discussed that many of the services we take for granted are not readily available in some of the countries - and that in some cases this may lower the quality of life of the people living there. It also showed us that Canada has a higher quality of life based on things such as education, health care, water, and electricity. Next week we will begin looking at how communities work together and make decisions. We will also have our second culture day - Tunisia Day - on Thursday March 5.

Hope everyone has a fabulous week - don't forget the Family Dance

 is being held on Thursday March 5.

Also - thank you for the items that have been brought in for the building unit. Please keep sending in any building supplies as listed on the email that I sent - we will definitely need various boxes, egg cartons, paper towel rolls etc.

Feb 17-20

2 Days of Science and Social Studies 

Although it was another short week at school - we sure made the most of the two days that we had together! It was great to hear that the students all seemed to have enjoyed their Family Day weekend.

Science

Our new unit is in full force and 3FM Engineering has really taken off!!! Students have been becoming more accustomed to using the scientific method in the process of their testing. This week students were introduced to beams and were given the task of testing different styles of beams to see which was the strongest. After building the beams from paper, they tested an accordion beam, rectangular beam and the box girder beam. Ask your students which beam was the strongest... and they should tell you that the box girder held the most weight!

Here are some fun pictures of the engineers of 3FM:

Such a wonderful group of engineers - always ready for any task that they are given!

Social Studies

In social studies - we continued to look at access to services. This week we investigated Ukraine`s access to services and students compared what they learned about Ukraine with Peru, Tunisia and our community. Students learned that in Ukraine - access to services can be limited by cost, as well as by the fact that Ukraine is becoming accustomed to provided services on its own. Students learned that some of the services we have are not as readily available in Ukraine - such as newer technology and medicine. This week we will wrap up Ukraine and begin looking at services in India.

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! 

Don`t forget to bring your skates, helmets and snow pants this week!!!