Week of Oct. 29th & Nov. 5th
I apologize that I have been quite sick for almost two weeks now! After leaving school last Friday (battling an illness) I forgot to post a blog so this blog will encompass two weeks into one.
Important Information:
Raz-kids:
Some of us have access to Raz-kids to practice our reading skills at our current independent levels of reading. Please go to https://www.raz-kids.com/ and click on "Kids Login" and type in soveracker0 to log in and see if your name is in the classroom. Students should be reading EVERY single day for 20-30 minutes. If you have access to Raz-kids try to listen to, read and respond to the questions of one book a day! I would love it if you could also record yourself reading a book once a week so we can sit down together and talk about what we notice :)
Weekend Letters
We will be writing "Weekend Letters" that will come home 1-2 times per month. This will give you an opportunity for you to see what you son/daughter can do independently. Please take some time to review the letter that comes home and send the folder back on Monday (or Tuesday if there is no school).
School Council Information
School Council Meeting is on Thursday, Nov. 15th @ 630pm. Please join us to hear about our School Development Plan, and to hear from our kindergarten and grade one team about some of the learning taking place this year.
Important Dates in November:
Important Information:
Raz-kids:
Some of us have access to Raz-kids to practice our reading skills at our current independent levels of reading. Please go to https://www.raz-kids.com/ and click on "Kids Login" and type in soveracker0 to log in and see if your name is in the classroom. Students should be reading EVERY single day for 20-30 minutes. If you have access to Raz-kids try to listen to, read and respond to the questions of one book a day! I would love it if you could also record yourself reading a book once a week so we can sit down together and talk about what we notice :)
Weekend Letters
We will be writing "Weekend Letters" that will come home 1-2 times per month. This will give you an opportunity for you to see what you son/daughter can do independently. Please take some time to review the letter that comes home and send the folder back on Monday (or Tuesday if there is no school).
School Council Information
School Council Meeting is on Thursday, Nov. 15th @ 630pm. Please join us to hear about our School Development Plan, and to hear from our kindergarten and grade one team about some of the learning taking place this year.
Important Dates in November:
November 9: Remembrance Day Assembly at 10:30 am
November 14: Fun Lunch
November 22: Randy Bottle (rescheduled)
November 22: Randy Bottle (rescheduled)
November 22 & 23: Parent-Teacher Conferences
November 23: No school
Last week we showed a LOT of respect and kindness to Ms. Chalouh, Mr. White and Ms. McGill who joined our classroom as guest teachers while Ms. Parent recovered at home.
Here are some highlights from our last two weeks:
In grade 3 story writing, one important expectation is that students "can write varied beginnings" so we spent some time talking about ways authors start stories to make them interesting. We now know that that are four strategies we can use instead of "one day" or "once upon a time" when we start a story. We practiced using a couple of the following: dialogue, an action, a thought/worry or a sound to start some spooky stories!
During the week of Halloween, we spent some time designing our "I want monsters" in our visual journal. We talked about the difference between 2D drawings and 3D models. On Halloween, we made our "I want monsters" and we talked about how these represent what we might be doing/wanting to do when we are not following the group plan. We have talked about the importance of following the group plan when we are in a group setting, like a classroom, and how it can be disruptive for others when we are doing a "me plan" instead.
On Halloween, we also enjoyed some delicious snacks (thank you to the parents who sent them in!!) and did a guided drawing of a spooky mansion in our journals.
We watched a Bill Nye on Hearing and Sound before our field-trip and we had such an wonderful time at Studio Bell. We spent some time working in our journals to recap our day and to share some things we had learned.
We have continued to play math games that build on our mental math skills. We have explored pattern problems that allow us to practice 2-3 digit addition. We have continued to talk about strategies that include: traditional algorithms (formulas), making friendly numbers and breaking numbers down according to place value.
We explored a couple of new rocks and minerals website- one where we were asked to work with a partner to continue to explore concepts such as types of rocks, how rocks change over time and to look at the rock cycle. We had a group discussion about the rock cycle and we talked about how long this process actually takes.
Starting next week, we will be getting a Maker Challenge kit! So we watched a video and explored with the concept of tapigami (like origami but it involves tape, rolling and folding). At the end of the week, we worked with a partner to create a character for a story we will write next week :)
We made Peace Posters to help with the Remembrance Day assembly. Ms. Parent will spend a bit of time next week finishing up with some teachings about animals in war and some of the history around Code Talkers and Indigenous soldiers in the wars.
In our journals, we did a guided poppy drawing and will finish up with an acrostic poem this week :)
We listened to a Cree story this week called The Girl Who Loved Horses and created an adventure map & favorite scene from the story.
We had our first Power Hour session! We also worked with a group from Rocks and Rings to kick off our curling unit in PE.
We will be looking at celebrations in Peru, India, Tunisia and Ukraine as well as some different masks from those countries to start our mask study :)
We worked on some letter art to celebrate things that make us unique! We are also working on our sculptures with Ms. Ferrari :)