October Already?!?

Wow! Time is just flying in 3C!

We had a great week with much to celebrate!

Literacy

The students enjoyed many read alouds this week and were especially thrilled with the introduction of Skippyjon Jones books! I like to use these amazing books to reinforce the "check for understanding" and "back up and reread" comprehension strategies. These books are incredibly witty and hilarious IF you pay attention. If you don't check for understanding frequently, you miss half of the best parts! Students quickly learn to pay attention and think while I am reading so that they don't miss out on any of the laughs.

I have officially read with everyone in 3C and have started to make plans for reading groups and one on one conference times. We will continue to work on increasing our stamina during read to self time. It is critical that the students take this time seriously and dedicate their energy to improving their reading.

In writing this past week we focused on paragraph writing. Students learned that every paragraph needs to start with a topic sentence and needs to have supporting sentences that are all related to the topic. We also focused on making sure that we start each sentence with a capital letter. Students are just finishing up a paragraph project where they are describing Terry Fox as a Canadian hero.

We are going to start Working with Words this week! I look forward to working through some fun and hands on phonics based activities with the students. We will be starting our spelling program in the next few weeks...stay tuned!

Numeracy

In math, we continued to build our accuracy and speed in completing basic math facts addition questions. We continued to practice using Touch Math with addition. This week, we are going to learn how to use the Touch Math strategy for subtraction before we head into our Patterning unit. Students are going to be continuing increasing and decreasing number patterns in this unit, therefore a strong foundation and understanding of addition and subtraction is necessary.

Science

This week in science we learned about the layers of the earth and the difference between a rock and a mineral. Heading into our last week studying this unit, we will be investigating the properties of the rocks in our rock collection in addition to a few special samples that I have in the classroom. This is a chance to use all the new knowledge that the students have acquired and truly dive into the world of geology! It will be a fun week!

Orange Shirt Day - Every Child Matters and the Terry Fox Run

A big 3C thank you goes out to our parents Mrs. Watt, Mr. Hammer and Mrs. Murray for helping out at the Terry Fox Walk! It was great to have the extra adults on the walk and helping out at RBES in preparation for all of the students that would be coming in for a bottle of water, a granola bar and a fruit! A thank you also goes out to Jane from John Maland High School that served as the 3C caboose to ensure that all of our students stuck together! 

We couldn't have asked for a better day weather wise! It was absolutely gorgeous! 

3C raised quite a bit of money to donate to the Terry Fox Foundation! I will have a grand total tomorrow as there were a few people who were hoping to bring money in on Monday. Special recognition goes out to a special student in 3C who donated the entire contents of his piggy bank to support cancer research! Mr. R donated $74.55 of his own money to a wonderful cause! We are super proud of you!

Star Student

We all enjoyed getting to know Mr. A better this week! 

One of the perks of being the Star Student is reading on the bench during Read to Self.
I think that the bench might be a little too comfy!

Student of the Week

Congratulations Miss S! You make me super proud every day!

Important Reminders for the Week

Monday - Read for Beads

Tuesday - Library

Wednesday - Early Dismissal (2:21pm)

3C is a busy bunch!

Another week is under our belts and we worked on so many different things!

Here's a summary of the curricular happenings in 3C this past week:

Numeracy

We finished up our Confidence Building Unit working with fractions and moved on to a quick review of strategies with basic addition facts to 9+9. We focused on +0, +1, +2, doubles (5+5), doubles plus/minus one with neighbour numbers (5+6...think 5+5 is 10, so 5+6 is one more than 10), partners of ten (1&9, 2&8, 3&7, 4&6, 5&5) and using Touch Math. Most of the strategies that we worked on were review for the students but Touch Math was brand new.

Touch Math is an amazing program that helps students be accurate with their calculations when they don't know all of their basic facts by memory. It's a quick and consistent strategy that avoids drawing attention to the fact that the individual doesn't know their math facts. By grade three, some students are self conscious using their fingers or a number line to do their calculations. Touch Math allows students to be quick and accurate without drawing attention to themselves.



I felt that it would be easiest to demonstrate this strategy using a video. I couldn't find a video that I liked so I made my own! This is a first for me...so I hope it makes sense to you. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me at your earliest convenience.

Touch Math Introduction by Mrs. Milson

As with any addition strategy, the preference is for students to memorize their basic addition facts to 9+9. Strategies are to be used when the student isn't able to recall the answer quickly.

All of this addition and soon to be subtraction practice is leading us into our first official unit in math, patterning. Establishing a strong foundation of number sense in these simple calculations now, will assist us in progressing through the patterning unit more smoothly and successfully.

The students were proud of their progress during our How Many Ways activity this week! Students took turns writing their favourite sentence on the board!

Literacy

We have continued to build our stamina during read to self time, with the goal of reading for 30 minutes independently, without interruption. This time is critical in allowing me to conference with students and focus on their individual reading strategies. I have had the opportunity to read with almost all of the students now and will finish up the final few at the beginning of this week. 

Our read alouds have focused on introducing a variety of comprehension, accuracy and fluency strategies and enjoying some of my favourite books! We have been talking about:

• making connections when we read 
• finger tracking 
• cross checking 
• predicting what's going to happen next in the story
• choosing good fit books
• checking for understanding
• backing up and rereading
• reading around the word
• chunking or breaking the word into known parts
• looking for small words we know within bigger words

Ask your child to describe the above strategies and encourage them to use them during their home reading time.

In writing this past week we focused on coming up with a specific idea to write about. Often students say "I don't know what to write!" This past week we looked at taking a general idea and making it more specific. For example, instead of getting stumped on what to write about the rock walk, students can narrow their focus down to specific thoughts about the rock walk. For example:

• the walk to and from the river valley
• searching for rocks with specific properties
• having a picnic at the gazebo
• playing at the park with friends
• finding their favourite rock

After working on this strategy all week, students completed a journal entry based on a specific idea that they came up with. 

This week, we also focused on using periods at the end of statements in our writing.

Science

In science, we focused our studies on the types of rocks, the rock cycle, petrified wood, weathering and erosion. We have been watching some amazing videos, having discussion, looking at some rock samples and completing our lap books.

Art

In art, we completed a watercolour name painting. They will be up on display in the hallway and in the classroom as soon as a few finishing touches are added.

Star Student

We all enjoyed getting to know our first Star Student a little bit better! Miss S did a fantastic job!

Important Reminders for this Week!

• Picture day - Wednesday
• Terry Fox Walk - Friday. 
• Please bring in a toonie for Terry if possible and fill out the permission slips online asap.

Rock Walk

Team 3C enjoyed a beautiful day exploring our river valley! They especially loved their time searching for rocks with specific properties!

To see all of our Rock Walk pictures, click here.

Welcome to 3C!

Wow! I can't believe that we are already 8 days into our new year! We have been working hard in 3C to establish new routines and new friendships for everyone.

To see all of our first day of school pictures click here.

Over the past two weeks we immersed ourselves into a regular schedule and routine filled with the following activities:

• Read Alouds (Every morning I start our day by sharing one of my favourite books. While I read I model and teach specific reading strategies.)
• Read to Self (30 minutes of uniterrupted reading - This gives me the opportunity to have one on one reading conferences with three students each day. We focus on specific reading strategies that they need to be using during their own personal reading.)
• Writing - We are working on a Grade Three Newspaper project that highlights the students' favourite memories from the summer and their hopes and goals for the new school year. We have also started journal writing.
• Science -  We have started our first unit on Rocks and Minerals.
• Math - How Many Ways, Daily Graph and a confidence building mini unit on fractions

How Many Ways?

This is one of my favourite math activities to do! Students are asked to write equations that equal the target number. Today we worked on the number 8. 

The rules are:

1) you can only have one = in each equation

2) you can use addition, subtraction, multiplication or division

3) you need to be sure that you are right

4) you can use counters if needed

As time goes on, we will add a few more rules about how long you can follow a particular pattern before you need to switch things up.

Here's an example from our first attempt this year! The students were so proud of themselves filling the whiteboard with their number sentences making 8!

Supplies

All of our school supplies have now been sorted and labelled. I have placed each child's extra supplies in a ziploc bag with their name on it.

Team 3C students are already participating in a Pencil and Eraser Challenge. Each month students start the month with a pencil and eraser with their name on it. If they manage to keep the same pencil and eraser for the entire month, they will receive two stickers on our chart. If they need a new pencil mid month because theirs is too short, I simply give them a new pencil from their supplies and write their name on it. As long as they show me their old pencil, they are not penalized in the challenge. At the end of the year, I will count up everyone's stickers and reward our most responsible students with a few prizes. Last year, each student was able to take home an entire box of pencils that they didn't get around to using! The purpose of this challenge is to teach the students to be responsible for and respect their supplies. 

Water Bottles

Students are encouraged to bring a water bottle to school each day. Trips to the water fountain are very disruptive. I will be encouraging students to bring home bottles each day to be washed and refilled for the following day. 

Parent Homework

The students loved the fact that you received the first homework assignment of the year! Please complete the In A Million Words or Less sheet and return it to school ASAP.

Library

Team 3C has library every Tuesday. 

Please remind your child to return their library books each Tuesday to prevent overdues.
Our new librarian, Mrs. Caudron, was excited to meet all of our 3C students! 

I think that is all for now...I hope I haven't overloaded you with information!

My door is always open to our 3C families. If you have any questions or concerns at any time, please bring them to my attention at your earliest convenience.

Grade three photos

Grade Three Photos 2016-2017

Bugs and Life Cycle Study at the U of A Botanical Gardens

We had a great day catching bugs, frogs, tadpoles and pond creatures!

See all of our pictures here!

Ukrainian Village

We were blessed with beautiful weather and a fantastic day at Ukrainian Village! Thank you to our parent volunteers for spending the day with us!

Mrs. Cross and I took so many photos and it has taken me 45 minutes to share these three scrapbook pages of a handful of them. I'm trying something new in hopes that you can easily view all of the photos. Please let me know if it works or not. Click on the link below.

View All of the Ukrainian Village Photos Here

An Overdue Update

April came and went in a flash but we accomplished a lot in 3C!

Math

We have finished our multiplication objectives and taken some time to practice mastering our facts to 5x5. We have practiced a variety of methods to figure out the product in a multiplication question:

• skip counting
• repeated addition
• using pictures
• using arrays
• memorization
• Multiplication in a Flash

Multiplication in a Flash is a unique and fun way to master tricky multiplication facts! I first discovered it back when I was teaching a combined grade 3 & 4 class. I was desperate to have all of my students master their basic facts! This unique method uses pictures and "creative" stories along with number/word pairings to help students remember tricky facts. For example:

I know that this sounds ridiculous but it works like a charm! And the best part is that when the students starting attempting division, they use the stories in reverse! They will say, "Sick queen, door...DOOR!" and know that the answer is 4! 

We only learn the stories for the facts that we find extra challenging. We have learned the stories for 3x3, 3x4 and 4x4.

**If in the future your child is struggling to master their facts to 9x9, just pop in my classroom and I'll hook you up with the master set! It worked like a charm on my son this year when he had less than a week to master his facts to 12x12! 

Now that we have a solid grasp on multiplication, we will quickly work through our division objectives over the next week!

Literacy

We continue to enjoy reading Wonder as a class each day! The students are so invested in the characters. We have had so many important discussions as different topics come up during read alouds. The students are really enjoying the multiple narrator style of the book! They are always excited to hear the voice of the newest narrator and eager to find out who we will be meeting next. There is a lot of emotion and opinion while we read each day. Some days jaws drop in shock, tears roll down cheeks, and giggles errupt! I truly can't say enough about the experience of sharing this book with my students! It's a definite highlight of grade three!

In writing, we have been studying "story recipies." We are focusing on stuck stories and learning the pattern that these stories follow by reading a variety of examples. Students have been introduced to the concept of motive. Every story needs a character with a motive...something that they want or don't want. When something interupts the character from getting what they want, we have a "problem" that the character needs to solve in order to get to their motive. We call that problem the "stuck". We've analyzed several well known books and movies according to the following stuck story structure:

1. Setting
2. Characters
3. Motive
4. Stuck
5. Attempt #1 
6. Attempt #2
7. Success
8. Motive Carried Out

We then practiced thinking of motives for a variety of characters. 

We asked ourselves:

•  What would a prince on a flying carpet want? 
• He would want to go for a ride! 
• What could interrupt him from going for a ride?
• The magic carpet kept tipping him off!

Now that the students have a grasp of coming up with a character's motive, we are turning our attention to creating a setting at the beginning of our stories. We are trying to use sensory imagery to SHOW our reader the setting instead of TELLING them where and when the story is taking place. We are continuing to focus on our sentence starters and using specific verbs. I also introduced the concept of GLUE WORDS to help students effectively join short sentences together to create longer sentences. 

Here is a couple of  examples of setting introductions that we came up with as a class:

Waves licked the shoreline as the sun baked the sand. Gently the wind whispered through the palm trees. Under the rocks the crabs scuttled while the seagulls circled overhead.

Around the mountain evergreens gathered. Gleaming, the sun climbed into the clear blue sky as a gentle breeze whispered through the trees. Slowly the river twisted and turned into the valley.

Soon we will plan our class story using the stuck story format and begin the two to three week story writing process.

Science and Social Studies

We have finished our Survivor Building unit and have moved on to our study of Ukraine. So far, we have looked at life in Kyiv and compared and contrasted life in city versus life in the country in Ukraine. We are using graphic organizers to show our learning. After reading a selection from the textbook together, we are determining the main point and then coming up with three important details to support the main idea. We will continue our study of Ukraine, focusing on the services available that add to the quality of life of the citizens, their cultural traditions and celebrations and exploring the different areas of Ukraine through a travel scrapbook study.

Our Ukraine unit will wrap up with our trip to Ukrainian Village on May 23rd! We are going to have an amazing day travelling back in time and walking down the streets of a rural village in historic Alberta.

We had a busy first week back to school!

Survivor Science Challenges

This week we participated in two Survivor Challenges! The first one had the tribes comparing the strength of an accordion bridge, a rectangular beam bridge and a box girder bridge using books as our weights!

The second challenge had tribes comparing the strength of an arch spanning a 15cm gap compared to an arch spanning a 25cm gap!

Mrs. C and I always get a chuckle when the students put on their buffs to start our science class and a few of the boys insist on wearing theirs like babushkas! It's especially hilarious when they are acting like tough "Fire Bandits"! The students in 3C are the CUTEST! I can't wait to introduce them to babushkas when we start studying Ukraine!

Literacy

During our Working With Words time this week, we tried out a new literacy game and the students LOVED it! They had to roll alphabet dice 36 times to fill in a 6 by 6 array (insert multiplication concepts here...haha!). Once they had all of their letters entered, they had to find as many 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 letter words as possible. The letters in each word had to be "touching" on the grid. The students learned that they wanted to place certain letters together and we brainstormed a list of combinations that we would try to put together the next time we played (eg; ed, ing, at, bl, sh, th, ch, ang, etc.). We played the game again on Friday and the students were so impressed with how much they improved thanks to some mindful letter placing!

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 three months of grade three, I am excited to share a different reading experience with them. We have started to read the book Wonder by R.J. Palacio.

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 have already heard 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!

Numeracy

Our work with multiplication has been going well! The students are enjoying the challenge of something brand new! They are working on connecting a repeated addition sentence, multiplication sentence, picture and an array. We are also working on finding patterns within our multiplication tables and skip counting by 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s.

Zirka Performance

The students all enjoyed the Zirka performance on Friday morning! This special activity was the perfect introduction to the Ukrainian culture for the grade three students!

April Already!

It is hard to believe that there are only three months left in this school year! Every year I am amazed by how time flies! March was a ridiculously busy month! There was so much going on! I managed to email parents but didn't get the blog updated...well that's actually only half true...I had worked on a post for over two hours that was loaded with photos and something glitched and I lost EVERYTHING! My fingers and toes are crossed that that doesn't happen again!

A definite highlight of March was our Hot Dogs for Humpty sale! I hope that you all were able to get a copy of the Devon Dispatch to see the story about us! It is still up online if you missed it! This was such an amazing experience for our class! They took a leadership role in our school community, organized and helped with the collecting of orders, counting of money and adding up our grand total that was raised! It was so neat to see how eager they were through each step of the process and I couldn't be more proud of them!

Another highlight from March was the bridge building workshop and celebrating Tunisia Day! Unfortunately, I was busy with the hot dog sale so I was unable to get any photos of the bridge building workshop but the students came back completely pumped about starting our new science unit! Tunisia Day was fantastic! The students enjoyed tasting the food (couscous, flatbread with olive oil, baklava and dates), playing Mancala, weaving and creating a mosaic piece of art! A HUGE thank you goes out to all of our parent volunteers that helped run each station! 

We also started our Survivor Challenge Unit in Science! Students have been put into tribes and will work together to test a variety of building materials and methods. Students put on their tribal colours (bandanna) at the start of each class and follow tribal rules to work as a successful team!

Introducing...

The Fire Bandit Tribe

The Savage Tribe

The Dragoness Tribe

The Black Bandit Tribe

The teams have completed two challenges so far and have been focusing on the scientific process and creating a fair test. They know that:

• only one variable can be changed in each experiment. 
• they need to make a hypothesis before starting the experiment.
• they need to accurately record the data that they have collected during the multiple trials of the experiment. 
• they need to come to a conclusion to either prove or correct their hypothesis.

Add to this excitement, an assembly performance, the girl's floor hockey tournament, the Family Dance, starting the multiplication unit in math and starting an amazing new book during read alouds...phew no wonder time has flown by!

Introducing...JoAnne Moore!!!

It's my favourite time of year in literacy!!! It's time to completely transform the students' writing thanks to the brilliant JoAnne Moore from Calgary! JoAnne is an amazing teacher who has created a writing program. I attended a two day workshop almost ten years ago with her and I learned so much! 

We have started by focusing on sentence writing! We are targeting three main components of the sentence:

1) sentence starters

2) specific verbs

3) showing instead of telling 

Our first step is brainstorming verbs (action words - moving, eating, making noise) for a specific noun (subject of our sentences). We first chose the noun bear  and asked ourselves:

How does a bear move?

How does a bear eat?

How does a bear make noise?

We came up with a list of verbs and we wrote them in the past tense form (-ed): 

Lumbered, towered, charged, snatched, devoured, grazed, grumbled...etc

Once we had our specific verbs, we turned our focus on to the sentence starters. JoAnne Moore focuses on question word sentence starters: what, when, how (ly), how (ing), where and who.  

Here are samples of each sentence type!

(NOTE: The first sentence was teacher generated and the rest of the sentences came from the students independently.)

What Sentences - Using plural nouns we can drop the "the" at the beginning of the sentence. You can also start a what sentence using words to describe the number, shape, size or type of subject your sentence includes. 

When Sentences

How ly Sentences

How ing Sentences

The students are LOVING the change in their writing and are super eager to share their sentences with the class!

This week coming up we will focus on the last two types of sentences, where and who. Then, we will practice switching between each type of sentence. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another great week in the books!

Wow! We sure packed a lot into a week at RBES!

We started the week off with Valentine's Day excitement! Thank you to Esha and her family for supplying beautiful and yummy cookies for the class as a treat!

One of the other highlights of this week was definitely the students' instrument presentations! They had so much fun showing off their homemade instruments! We practiced giving complements after each presentation and the students really appreciated each other's kind words and sentiments!

Thank you to all of our supportive parents that helped their child with this project! They are always so excited to tell us about the process that they went through with their mom and dad's help! I hope that everyone enjoyed this experience!

We also enjoyed skating this week! A HUGE thank you to all of the parents that were able to make it out to help tie skates or join the kids on the ice! RBES would be unable to offer these extra experiences without your support!

A final highlight of this week was our hour spent with Garth Prince! He was such an amazing story teller and singer...the kids were absolutely captivated the entire time! He taught us a beautiful song and dance. The students and I will keep singing it throughout the year during times of transition. It was created by the farmers working with the maize and has a steady beat. I have a video of the kids singing with Garth and will try to find a way to share it with all of you!

We also completed the spell-a-thin test this week and our class did an amazing job! We had nine students earn 100%! We might just be in the running for a class prize! 

Please make sure to return all spell-a-thin money by Wednesday so that your child can be entered in for the prize draws. 

I think that's all for now!

I hope that everyone has a fabulous Family Day long weekend!!!