April 8th Update

Welcome to Spring?!?! It sure doesn't feel like April but the calendar says it's so! LOL! We got right down to business in 3C this week after a great Spring Break!

LITERACY

I'm super excited to start focusing on story writing with the students! It's my favourite time of year! Our timing is perfect with having an extra set of hands around with Miss Strawson! In preparation for our big story writing project, we have started by writing a showing not telling, action packed paragraph about an animal photo by my favourite wildlife photographer, Jason Leo Bantle.

Students were asked to choose a photo from his website. They needed to come up with five things that took place in the moments surrounding the image. The action in the photo would be #3 on their list. They would then have to turn back the clock to the two things that happened right before the photo and then turn the clock forward to the two things that happened right after.

Here's the example that we created together as a class:

• owl felt hungry
• spotted the mouse
• swoops down to get the mouse
• missed the mouse
• flew away still hungry

From here, the students are going to write a paragraph using our sentence starters. They are only allowed to use each sentence starter once. Students will also be focusing on using specific verbs for their particular animal. Here is the paragraph that we constructed as a group:

The great grey owl felt outrageously hungry. Luckily, he quickly spotted a mouse. In a flash the owl swooped down to snatch his prey! Clawing at the furry creature, he missed! Up in to the sky, the owl flew off still hungry.

Students will be typing their good copies into a google doc that has their picture at the top. If you want to check out Jason's website, you can find the link here: http://bantlephoto.com/Home

Once we complete our animal paragraphs, we will be going on to plan and start writing our stuck story projects! Due to this focus on writing, we will be minimizing our time spent on Working with Words and Word Wall Words for the next couple of weeks.

During our read aloud of Wonder, the students are enjoying hearing from our second narrator, Via. Via is August's older sister. Like August, Via starts at the beginning when August was born. The students have been amazed by how understanding she is of her little brother's needs and how independent she is because she's had to take care of herself a lot of the time. Via is also starting at a new school and is experiencing a few bumps along the way. In the last chapter we read, Via came home after a disappointing first day of school. She was stressed and cranky. August was pretty worn out from his first day of school and he was a little stressed and cranky too. As we can imagine, their mom had been worried about both of them all day and she was a little stressed and cranky. What we witnessed after school in their kitchen was very relatable. They were snippy with each other, which isn't how they usually are, children went storming off to their rooms wanting to be left alone, parents tiptoed in to see how their day went and if they were ready to talk yet. After reading this chapter we had a great discussion about why they were acting the way they were and what they could have done differently to make the evening go a little bit smoother. The students had so many great suggestions! We all agreed that if you're having a grumpy moment/day, it's best to tell the people that are around you so that they understand and they give you some space. That way there will be less friction and you can settle down a bit quicker.

NUMERACY

The students are very excited because we have started our multiplication unit! The students are learning about equal groups and how we can do repeated addition or multiplication to find out our total.

SOCIAL STUDIES

Miss Strawson is teaching our new Social Studies unit on Tunisia. She is doing an amazing job and the students have been very engaged in her first two lessons. In the first lesson, they learned when Tunisia is and what it's geography is like. They learned about the three main geographical regions: the coastal plains, the desert and the mountains. They learned about the climate, the population and wildlife. The second lesson took a closer look at the geographical regions and the main cities. Through graphs, photos, videos and discussion, Miss Strawson is reaching all of the students in 3C. We are so lucky to have her with us this month!

ART

Miss Strawson is also leading our latest art project...with a focus on Van Gogh. The students are creating their own The Starry Night piece using plasticine! First, Miss Strawson read the students a book about Van Gogh. Then, they got to work warming up their plasticine. The pieces are still a work in progress and will be done and on display on Thursday evening during our Art Gala!

Hope to see you all on Thursday evening between 5-7pm for our Art Gala!

Have a fantastic week!

March 18th Update

What a fantastic week in 3C!

LITERACY

Our read aloud time with Wonder is going very well! The students are participating in some great conversations, making thoughtful predictions and making several connections to the book! There are so many times in reading this book each year that students engage in some higher level thinking...it really pushes them. One of the occasions that offers this opportunity is when Mr. Browne's precepts are introduced. Mr. Browne is the fifth grade English teacher and he introduces a new precept each month to his students. A precept is a quote or saying that is important in shaping who we are. The September precept was:

When given the choice between being right or being kind, choose kind.

The students and I discussed examples of when we are put in the situation to make this choice and how we can or should handle it. One example that came up that is relevant for student life was a student claiming to be the fastest runner in the school. We talked about how if that person is not the fastest runner, you could tell them that they are wrong and maybe engage in an argument with them. That would be choosing being right. On the other hand, you could ask yourself, "Does it really matter that they think that they are the fastest, even though I know that they aren't?" Asking yourself this question might lead you to reply with, "You sure are a fast runner!" and letting it go. That would be choosing to be kind.

The October precept was:

Your deeds are your monuments.

This was a tricky one...we had to take apart the words first to figure out what it meant. I asked the students was a deed was. Many of them mentioned the phrase, "doing a good deed," and from this we figured out that a deed was an action/thing that someone does. Then we started discussing monuments. We talked about the monument for the four RCMP in Mayerthorpe and a Terry Fox monument in Thunder Bay. We figured out that a monument was something that people remember you by. From this discussion we decided that Your deeds are your monuments means that people remember you by your actions towards them. This lead to an amazing discussion about how you want people to remember you. What actions do you want to be remembered for?

These mindful discussions are EXACTLY why I feel the need to share this book with my class each year! They are at the perfect age to start thinking more deeply about what they read. We are at the time in their literacy development that they can start reading to learn instead of just focusing on learning to read. 

The students are also making some strong connections to the different characters in the book. They have strong feelings about Jack, Summer, Julian, Charlotte and August. I ask them to consider who they would want to be more like? What character traits do you value in each character?

Writing time is also very exciting right now! We are diving into the wonderful world of JoAnne Moore's sentence writing! I love this time of year! The students really start seeing the power of word choice and how they can be the authors of the most amazing sentences! JoAnne Moore focuses on two main components with sentence writing:

1) Specific Verbs - using the perfect verb to describe an action

• Instead of just plunking in went into a sentence, students have brainstormed specific verbs for how a specific noun moves. For example, a bear may have trudged, charged or lumbered, while a mouse may have zipped, pitter pattered or scrambled.

2) Question Word Sentence Starters - what, where, when, how (ly), how (ing), who

• (What) The young mouse zoomed behind the fridge to get away from the cat!
• (Where) Behind the fridge the mouse zoomed to get away from the cat!
• (When) In a flash the mouse zoomed behind the fridge to get away from the cat!
• (How - ly) Quickly the mouse zoomed behind the fridge to get away from the cat!
• (How - ing) Sprinting, the mouse zoomed behind the fridge to get away from the cat!
• (Who) Benjamin the mouse zoomed behind the fridge to get away from the cat!

The students have been super eager to share their sentences each day! Here are a few samples of the fantastic writing that has been happening in 3C this week!

During our Working with Words time this week, we tried out a new activity called What Looks Right?  During this activity, I offer two spelling patterns to make the same sound. When spelling a word, we try both spelling patterns and circle the one that looks right. Sometimes, both of them end up being right so we end up discussing the definitions behind each spelling of the word. The students really have enjoyed this activity! It's a great spelling strategy to use during their writing! Try spelling it one way...if it doesn't look right, try a different spelling pattern.

NUMERACY

This week we focused on two main concepts in math. First, we examined the tricky world of problem solving. Problem solving is quite challenging for most students. They struggle to figure out what the question is asking of them. What do they need to do to find the answer? We discussed certain key words that pop up in most problem solving questions and how if you find the key word, you will know what to do to answer the question.

Addition: in all, all together

Subtraction: difference, how many more

We will continue to revisit this topic until the end of the year to build students' confidence with this concept.

After problem solving, I introduced the concept of rounding to the students. Jump Math does a fantastic job introducing this concept to students. We first examine numbers on the number line and determine which multiple of ten (0, 10, 20, 30, 40...) comes right before and right after the number.

Once the students understand that concept, I introduce the rounding rule that we learned when we were kids. Five and up, round up. One to four, round down. Students then practice rounding numbers to the nearest ten. 

This week coming up, we are going to apply our new rounding skills to the concept of estimating. Students will learn how to round two addends to the nearest ten and then add them up to get an estimate of the original sum.

Thank you to all of the families that came out for Student Led Conferences! If you missed it and would like the package sent home, just email me and I'll send it home with your child.

IMPORTANT REMINDERS FOR THIS WEEK

• Spell-A-Thon pledge money is due on Tuesday
• Library - Tuesday
• Crazy Sock Day - Wednesday
• Family Dance and Cake Walk - Thursday
• PD Day - Friday

March 11th Update

Bridge Building Workshop

Building Bridges with Mr. Caron was a HUGE hit with the students! A big thank you goes out to the parents and grandparents that were able to join us! Students learned about the different shapes and structures within bridges that make them strong.

Building Bridges Photos - All Classes

Strengths and Stretches

A couple of weeks ago, the students and I worked through an activity inspired by my time with Shelley Moore. Shelley Moore is a well known speaker that advocates for inclusive education. One of the topics that she discussed at my first session with her was the idea of having students identifying strengths and stretches of themselves individually or of their class team. Strengths are things that they see that the class does well together and stretches are things that they feel that the class needs to improve on. We discussed these concepts over a couple of days and then I had students complete a worksheet that allowed them to voice their ideas for our strengths and stretches as a class. On the back of the worksheet, I had the students write down the things that they need to learn. I compiled the lists that were thoughtfully completed by all of the students and inputted them into a Google Sheets document so that I could create graphs to share with the students. The students were amazed with the results! Shelley Moore had discussed the ownership that the students take over the results of this activity and she was right! The discussion that followed me presenting the results was amazingly thoughtful and mindful! I was so proud of the students! The discussion was focused around problem solving as a team and taking ownership for the growth that we all wanted to see for our class family.  If you'd like to see the data and charts, click on the link below.

Our Strengths and Stretches

To sum it up, the students all agreed that our class is too chatty...something I've been trying to deal with all year. They were quick to make the connection between the fact that they feel that they are too chatty but that they also all agree that they need quiet to learn...and that this is a big problem. It was amazing how much ownership they took over this issue considering the number of times that I have mentioned the same issue to them in the past. 

We discussed different ideas for solving this problem. They broke into small groups to brainstorm a few ideas. We came back into a large group and discussed each groups' ideas. I gave the students some more time to process the discussions and we came back together to fine tune our ideas after a couple of days. We came up with a new checkmark system...students were supposed to tell you about it last week. This is how it works:

If a student is being disruptive during quiet class time, they get a verbal warning and their name is written on the board. If they are disruptive again, they get a checkmark beside their name. Each checkmark counts as one minute of time that they owe me, from recess, gym or some other fun activity. They will also be writing the number of checkmarks that they receive in their agendas at the end of the day so that you can see it. The students all agreed that this was a fair plan. It has already drastically reduced the amount of disruptive noise during quiet class time and the students all seem proud of this improvement. This was my first time doing an activity like this and I was super proud to share 3Cs work at the last session with Shelley Moore this past Monday. If you have any questions about this process or our checkmark plan, please let me know.

3C and 1A Assembly Performance!

The students did an amazing job performing at the assembly this morning! If you weren't able to join us, you can see the performance here! A big thank you to a 1A parent for capturing the video for us!

Kindness is a Muscle!

February 25th Update

LITERACY

As previously mentioned, this week read alouds focused on picture books. There are so many things to learn from a good picture book. In line with our current writing focus on word choice, we were able to tune into interesting words when we were reading The Troll by Julia Donaldson. We also tuned into some interesting play on words in the books Chimpansneeze and Hiccupotamus by Aaron Zenz. On Friday, we giggled through Boo Hoo Moo by Margie Palatini.

Since the beginning of the year, I have been focusing our read alouds around teaching the students simple comprehension, accuracy, fluency and expanding vocabulary strategies. We have also used our read alouds to examine and explore different genres of books, comparing nonfiction to fiction texts and studying authors word choice. As we approach the final four months of grade three, I am excited to share a different reading experience with them. We are starting to read the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio tomorrow.

Wonder is a pretty serious read and it brings up THE BEST conversations! I love sharing this book with my students because it truly opens their eyes to the power of a book...how it can change the way you think, how it can make you question your beliefs, your actions and your character and how it can make you care deeply for a character that you've never met! Reading this book with the students enables them to use all of the comprehension strategies we have been working on and demands them to think a little deeper. Each year, I watch students transform as readers as they loose themselves in this story. I'm sure many of you will soon hear about the main character August and the journey that he his embarking on. I encourage you to check in with your child each day and ask them what is happening in the book! They will love to share the story with you!

Due to a push for extra math and science time, our literacy time was a little short this week. We will continue to work on our writing theme of word choice this week.

NUMERACY

Math this week was tricky. Mastering triple digit subtraction where the borrowing options are ever changing (borrowing from the tens, borrowing from the hundreds, borrowing twice, not borrowing at all) really pushes many grade three students to their max. In order to build up their confidence, they need practice, practice and more practice. This week I am going to teach them how to handle the final borrowing option, borrowing from a zero. I have a great trick to help students with this process and have confidence that they will be proficient with it quite quickly. 

SCIENCE

Two big focus areas, other than curricular content objectives, in our Survivor Unit are the scientific method to create a fair test and team work. Before actively participating in an experiment we discuss the scientific method to ensure that we are completing a fair test. We make sure that only one element of our experiment is changing (manipulated variable) and that everything else is staying exactly the same (controlled variables). Students then divide the tasks up between their tribe mates and complete the task as a team. Sometimes, issues with team work end up affecting the scientific reliability of the experiment. It's a perfect natural consequence to deviating from the plan. This week we had two different experiences with our two experiments. On Wednesday and Thursday, we tested the different types of beams to see if one was stronger than the other. Students tested a rectangular beam, a box girder beam and an accordion beam. Our results were very conclusive...the accordion beam was the strongest by far! On Friday, things didn't go so smoothly. Some groups had a tough go and the result was inconsistent results. It was such a great lesson! I couldn't have planned it better! Tomorrow, we are going to redo our experiment as a class to see if we can come to a conclusion about which arch is stronger...the one that spans a longer or shorter gap?

To see more Survivor Science pictures, click on this link

STAR STUDENT

This week's Star Student was Mr. T! We all love sharing our days with him because he is awesome!

STUDENT OF THE WEEK

Congratulations to Miss D on her Student of the Week certificate! I'm super proud of her efforts in math lately! She has been rocking it!!!

February 19th Update

I hope that everyone enjoyed their long weekend and was able to stay warm and have some memorable family time!

LITERACY

The students were super sweet last week and asked Mrs. Cross not to finish our Key Hunters read aloud book because they didn't want me to miss out! They are the best students! The students enjoyed the ending of the book and some eagerly dove into another book from the series! For the next week, we are going to change the pace a bit and read a few of my favourite picture books.

Last week, the focus in writing was on adjectives in our Word Choice unit. The students enjoyed coming up with adjectives to describe people, places, animals and things. The students also learned that if they are using more than one adjective that they have to separate them with a comma. They also practiced writing longer sentences using colourful adjectives. This week coming up, we are going to focus on using specific/exact nouns to make writing more clear.

NUMERACY

The students have been working on two digit subtraction and will be venturing into triple digit subtraction this week. Students are working on becoming consistently accurate with their calculations. The trickiest part of this process is always learning "when to borrow" when using the traditional algorithm. Starting by drawing the base ten blocks for the questions so that the students can see that they can't take 6 away from 4. Students learned to cross out one of the tens and redraw them as ones with the other 4 ones. Then, students would cross out the 6 ones that they need to take away and then count up the remaining ones.

After practicing with this method, we starting practicing with just the algorithm (without the base ten drawing). I've taught the students the poem below to help them remember when to borrow and when you don't need to borrow. The first thing that I want the students to ask themselves when they look at a new question is, "Where is there more in the ones column?" Students will need to continue to practice this skill to become consistently accurate with their calculations. 

SCIENCE

The students enjoyed their first Survivor building challenge this past week. The students were using a fair test to see whether an arch or a rectangle is a stronger structure. Students also designed their title page for their Survivor booklets this past week. 

More Survivor Science Photos - Click Here!

INTRODUCING MISS STRAWSON

Miss Strawson came for her second observation day this past Friday. The students were super excited to see her again! She was very helpful to have in the classroom on a day where, even though I was no longer contagious with my strep infection, I was still in a substantial amount of pain and had to limit my talking at times. We decided to have her lead her first lesson, a Making Words lesson, and she did a fantastic job! Miss Strawson will be joining us for her final observation day on Wednesday and then will be joining us for her five week practicum on March 19th.

WINTER WALK PICTURES

It was a chilly day, so we didn't stop to take a proper group picture...just this quick, on-the-go selfie and a spontaneous snow angel picture!

STUDENT OF THE WEEK

Way to go Miss W! Super proud of you for having an awesome week!

February 4th Update

Students were excited to start the week with a new seating arrangement! I have put the students in groups in preparation for our upcoming Survivor Building Challenge unit in Science! The students will be placed in "tribes" to complete certain building challenges to test a variety of building materials and structures. Stay tuned for their first tribe pictures!

The boys taking a break after a Go Noodle Indoor Recess Marathon!

LITERACY

During read aloud time, we continued with our book Key Hunters. The kids are enjoying this mystery story and are making connections, predictions and asking questions independently now while we are reading! This is a huge step in their development as readers!

Our writing lessons have shifted to focus on Word Choice. We have started by looking at how we can use specific verbs to help us paint a clear picture for the reader. We discussed how with a sentence like, "The race car went around the track," we can't agree how fast the race car is driving. Is it cruising around slowly in a warm up lap? Is it zipping by at top speed in a race? The verb went doesn't tell us anymore than the fact that the race car is moving. The reader needs a more specific verb to help them see the action! Verbs like: zipped, zoomed, rocketed, raced, chugged, crept, tell the reader so much more!

NUMERACY

Due to the PD day in the middle of the week, I decided to stick with practicing our multi-digit addition instead of charging ahead into subtraction amidst the interruptions to the week. This week coming up we will venture into the world of multi-digit subtraction with and without borrowing!

COMPUTER LITERACY

As we started working on a long term chromebook project creating a digital scrapbook of the students' grade three year, it quickly became apparent that the students need to gain some basic computer skills. Up until this point, most of our computer time (which hasn't been very much due to technical issues that have recently been resolved by the addition of ten new chromebooks in our cart) has been spent on Mathletics or visiting various BGRS Engaging Students sites. I decided to use this short week to do a mini unit on computer skills. 

The students and I focused on:

• organizing our Drives
• opening a document
• adding a shared file to their Drive
• making a text box
• adding colour to the text box
• adding a border to the text box
• changing the font
• changing the size of the font
• exploring centered/right/left text alignment
• exploring bold/italics/underline text
• moving a text box
• changing the size of a text box
• adding fonts to our Drive
• inserting photos from our drive 

Hopefully now when we take on a project on the chromebooks more energy can go into the project compared to the focus being on figuring out the computer functions.

STAR STUDENT

This Friday we celebrated Mr. A for being such an amazing classmate and friend! We all love sharing our days with him! He is a super sweet, hard working little guy!

STUDENT TEACHER

This year, I have signed up to be a mentor teacher for a Practicum student from the U of A. On Friday, Miss Strawson spent the day with us. The students were super excited to meet her! Friday was the first of three observation days, in preparation for her five weeks with us that start the week before Spring Break. I am looking forward to working with Miss Strawson and think that she is going to be a fantastic addition to the 3C team!

UPCOMING EVENTS

Please read over Mrs. K's blog and the information regarding Winter Walk Day on Wednesday and a bonus Spirit Wear order that ends on the 9th!

Valentine's Day is coming up! Trey, Tavis and Sammy are in charge of our mini party food celebration. I will email those parents specifically about the food options. I will also send out an email with our class list in it for filling out Valentines. 

Jump Rope for Heart - Students can collect donations if they are interested, an envelope came home on Friday. Students will be participating in Jump Rope for Heart activities on Valentine's Day.

Early Dismissal on Wednesday

Teacher's Convention - Thursday and Friday 

That's all for now! Have a great week!

Half Way Through Grade Three!

How is it that we are half way through the year already?!? The kids were absolutely shocked when this came up today as we prepared our monthly slides for our slide show! Five months down, five more to go!

Things have been super busy in 3C!

LITERACY

Over the past two weeks we finished the book Frindle and the students LOVED IT! They became so invested in the character's journey through the book! They loved making predictions using the title for the upcoming chapter! Their comprehension skills have really developed nicely through our read alouds. I can't wait to introduce them to my favourite book in the world in the next few weeks! They are almost ready for it! 

This week we started reading a new series called Key Hunters. I like to introduce them to new series to encourage them to try new books. You never know which book or series is going to strike a chord within you until you try it. They really enjoyed the first chapter today but were very frustrated when Chapter Two was "just called Chapter Two!" LOL!

We finished up our focus on organization last week! I am so proud of their growth as writers! This is the first time that I've used this resource and I am loving it! As a final project, using the skills that they learned between the lessons on IDEAS and ORGANIZATION, students first came up with a topic that they felt they knew a lot about. Then they chose what type of paragraph they wanted to write and planned their writing accordingly:

• They used a point form list if they were writing a paragraph giving step by step instructions. 
• They used a web if they were writing a detailed paragraph on one topic. 
• They used a Venn diagram if they were writing a paragraph that was comparing two things. 

 

They were then given time to write a proper paragraph, making sure to start with a topic sentence. The students did a great job on this assignment!

This week we started our focus on WORD CHOICE! This is going to be awesome! I always spent a considerable amount of time on word choice using JoAnne Moore resources. I was lucky enough to work along side JoAnne Moore and have her personally coaching me on teaching writing. Her resources and my experience with them are going to be perfect along side the Traits resource that I've been using. Stay tuned for some amazing writing!!!

NUMERA CY

The students are super proud of their ability to add multi-digit numbers with or without regrouping using the traditional algorithm (stack and add)! They are all becoming more accurate with their calculations. By starting with the place value side of things, the students really grasped the concept of regrouping quickly...it just made sense to them! Woohoo! We are going to be moving on to multi-digit subtracting this week! Wish us luck!

SOCIAL STUDIES

The students of 3C fell in love with India over the past three weeks! We learned so much about their country, people, culture and way of life! The students were very respectful in discussing their observations in regards to the similarities and differences between our two countries. We talked about everything! I hope that our conversation about Indian style toilets didn't surface at dinner time for you! They were amazed by the conditions that people lived under in certain parts of the country. It amazed them how different India is from region to region! 

We really enjoyed our cultural celebration of India Day last Friday! A huge thank you to the handful of moms that made it in to lend me a hand with the henna! I couldn't have done it without you! Our culture days are always so much fun as we immerse ourselves in a culture that we have all come to respect and love! 

To see all of the India Day pictures, click on this link

PE

Another HUGE thank you goes out to all of the parents that were able to come to the arena to help out with tying skates and supervising on the ice! Special thanks to Marie Murray for showing up every day to tie skates and be out on the ice! The kids all enjoyed their ice time and their skills progressed very nicely! We have one more skating week coming up in February!

STAR STUDENT

We all sure enjoyed getting to know Mr. L a bit more during his Star Student week! He is such a sweet boy... we just love him!

We loved sharing in Miss P's Star Student week! 

She was super excited to introduce us to her new little puppy Lady Punk! 

STUDENT OF THE WEEK

Congratulations to our super Student of the Weeks!!! You girls make me proud every day!!!

I think that's all for now! 

Just two reminders/notes:

• If you haven't logged on to PowerSchool to pay the $8 fee for Culture Days, please do so asap. The $8 covers all four Culture Days.
• Students brought home the first two units from our writing books (Ideas and Organization). Check their backpacks for them...they should be in there.

Take care everyone!

Happy New Year!

From chatting with the students in 3C last week, it sounds like everyone had a fantastic Christmas!

We got right down to business this week and we accomplished so much!

LITERACY

In writing, we continued our focus on the trait of ORGANIZATION. This week, we focused on contrasting and comparing two things in our writing. How are they the same? How are they different? We learned that we need to organize our writing so that we don't confuse the reader about similarities and differences. The convention that we focused on was underlining our book titles when we write. This week coming up we will finish our last week focusing on organization before heading on to study word choice. The students also enjoyed telling me all about their Christmas break in their journals this week.

In reading, we started a new chapter book called Frindle by Andrew Clements. The students have enjoyed getting to know the main characters Nick and Ms. Granger. Ask your child to tell you what's happened so far! It's such a fantastic book!



Read to self has continued to go well. I enjoy the time that it provides me to conference with students about their independent reading strategies! There has been an amazing amount of growth in reading abilities over the past four months! It's one of my favourite things to witness in the classroom!

Our Working with Words block is critical to pushing students in their understanding of how words work. It is extremely important that the skills and lessons learned during this time start transferring to the areas of reading and writing. Seeing the relationship between words, finding small words within larger words, recognizing common endings (suffixes) and beginnings (prefixes), catching rhyming word patterns, understanding the difference between short and long vowel spelling patterns all lead to greater fluency in reading and writing.

NUMERACY

After completing a quick review of the first ten lessons in our place value unit, we continued on to new material. This week, we have been focusing on trading. This lesson is leading students into addition with trading. It's important that students understand that you cannot have a double digit number in a single place value spot. For example:

You can't have 16 ones in the ones place...if a student was the write down the number like they typically do from the place value chart they would come up with the number 2416. They need to recognize that there are ten too many ones in the ones place, bundle them up and move them forward to the tens place. This concept is extremely important to understand before we proceed into multi-digit addition.

The students were also brushing up on their basic facts this week in preparation for the addition lessons coming up! We played a couple of quick games using a ten sided dice. First, we played Double It. Students rolled the dice and quickly doubled the number on the die. Then, we switched to Make Ten. Students rolled the dice and quickly said the number that would make ten with the number on the die. These are both quick and easy ways to practice our math facts. We also completed a page of All The Facts You Need to Know to help improve our quick recall of our basic addition facts. 

SOCIAL STUDIES

The students really enjoyed diving into our new Social Studies unit this week! We started out by talking about basic needs, wants and quality of life. We talked about how basic needs are the things that you cannot live without: food, clothing, shelter and love. We also talked about wants and the students could easily tell the difference between needs and wants. Then, we discussed the concept of quality of life. 

Quality of life is the sense of safety, comfort, security, health and happiness that people have in their lives.

We talked about how we achieve a good quality of life in Canada and we compared it to the situation in other countries (ex; access to health care here versus the USA). The students were very thoughtful in their discussions about how lucky we are to live where we do and with the amazing families that we have. We talked about how we are going to compare and contrast the way people achieve a good quality of life in India, Peru, Tunisia and Ukraine for the remainder of the year. We are going to start our study in India.

The next lesson focused on finding shelter in India. The students were amazed by how life is different in India. We looked at houses in the city versus houses in the country. We studied life in Mumbai specifically. The students were very curious and interested in how twenty-one million people find shelter within one city. During our discussions we focused on being respectful in our observations. An important focus of the Grade Three Social Studies curriculum is becoming a respectful global citizen...being a person who appreciates our similarities and differences with people from other countries and doesn't see things that we have or do as the right way. We also discussed how in India, the different states or regions are very unique in several ways. The students are excited to continue to learn about India!

PHYSICAL EDUCATION

In PE, we have been focusing on our Gymnastics unit. Students have been learning a variety of ways to move their bodies (skip, gallop, bear walk, crab walk, etc.). Mr. Van Huis taught the students the proper way to do a forward roll. We also learned how to do a front and side scale. Students also participated in a fitness relay where they ran across the gym and either did 5 sit ups, 5 push ups or 5 burpees before heading back to their team to tag the next runner. It was a great week in the gym!

Skating is coming up! Please make sure that you read the emails in regards to skating and fill out the permission slip online. Thank you!

STAR STUDENT

We really enjoyed getting to know Miss S better this week! She brought in the most precious five special things! We also enjoyed when her mom came in to read us her letter and when she brought in their two dogs!

STUDENT OF THE WEEK

Congratulations to Mr R for earning Student of the Week this week! Way to go!

That's all for now! Have a great week!