Sept. 23 - Sept. 27

In grade three this week…..

Students continued to work on their reading comprehension by focusing on the strategy of “making text to text connections.” They compared what they read to other stories or even shows. Just like they did when “making personal connections”, students used the prompts “This makes me think of….” and “This reminds me of….” in order to articulate their ideas. While reading this weekend, ask your child to make a text to text connection.

Students reflected on their successes and challenges when working on their group logo designs. They wrote responses and made sure to clearly explain their ideas. Ask your child how they contributed to their group’s logo design success. Students also continued to build their writing stamina and excitement through daily fire writing.

The grade threes continued to develop their understanding of numbers to 1000. They engaged in conversations about numbers while using place value terminology (e.g. This number has two hundreds). They also worked on different strategies for estimating and adding. They then used all of these skills to estimate and determine the total amount of money our classes raised for Toonies for Terry. They also practiced two mental math strategies this week. They worked on “doubles” and “making ten” in order to efficiently find the total number of laps each class ran. As well, students worked as a large group and in partners to solve a problem. In order to do this, they had a great discussion about what they noticed and determined that creating a pattern every time they tried to solve the problem was important! Ask your child to show you how to solve this problem. You will need to draw seven lines and have six coloured objects (three of one colour and three of a different colour).

The students used the feedback given by the expert who visited our class last week to finalize their class logo designs. They focused on originality and simplicity. After really focusing on these two ideas, students completed their logos! They are very excited to be sharing them on Twitter soon!

The active grade threes continued to play running and tag games in preparation for the Terry Fox Run. Ask your child what their favourite activity was this week.

The students participated in the Terry Fox Run! The entire school did a fabulous job participating in the run and raising funds to support cancer research. Thank you families for sending in money for this great cause.

Upcoming Dates

Sept 30 – Orange Shirt Day/Elder Shirley Residency

Oct 4 –Vaccinations pm

Oct 7 – Picture Day

Oct 8 – School Council

Oct 9 – Apple Fundraiser orders due

Oct 11 –No School (PD)

Oct 14 – No School Thanksgiving

Oct 16- Gr 1 Corn Maze field trip

Oct 21-25 Gr 1-3 Swimming

Oct 22 – Apple Pick Up

Oct 25 – No School for Kinder only

Sept. 16 - Sept. 20

In grade three this week….

Students continued to work on making personal connections as they read to self throughout the week. They recorded their connections in their reading response journals. As you read this weekend, ask your child what the story reminds them of or what it makes them think of.

After having completed a couple weeks in grade three, students wrote a reflection about how their year has been going so far. They expressed what has gone well, what has been challenging, what they would like to see, and what they still wonder about. They worked to clearly articulate their ideas through their writing. Ask your child what they shared about what has gone well so far.

Students continued to explore numbers this week. They brainstormed different ways to make 100. They used different equations, such as 50 + 50 or 75 + 25. Then they moved on to ways to represent numbers greater than 100. The ways they determined were expanded form, words, and pictures. Ask your child to represent the number 125 in three different ways.

A big highlight of the week was having the students’ logos come to life when they worked in groups of three to draw and colour their group logos. After this, they had a fabulous time listening to an expert logo designer present information to the class. Students recognized that they were on the right track with their logos and also learned a lot! In addition, they had a wonderful time looking for the hidden details in logos! Ask your child about their favourite part of the logo presentation (if they haven’t shared it already!)

Thank you

-Thank you to our parent volunteer who shared his wealth of knowledge with the class.

-Thank you to all the families who were able to make it out to the conferences. It was great to get to know more about your children!

Reminders

-Milk forms went home on Thursday.

Upcoming Dates

Sept 27 – Terry Fox Run


Sept 30 – Orange Shirt Day/Elder Shirley Residency

Sept. 9 - Sept. 13

In grade three this week....

It was a great full week in grade three! The students continued to get to know one another and the classroom routines.

Students focused on the reading strategy of “making personal connections” in order to improve their comprehension. To start, we read the story Scaredy Squirrel by Melanie Watt. In this story, a squirrel is afraid of the unknown so prepares himself against it. In the end, he finds himself without his preparation kit in the unknown….and learns something very interesting about himself! After reading the story, students made personal connections to things they are afraid of or times when they were fully prepared but things didn’t work out according to plan. Ask your child to share the personal connection they made to this story. In addition to making personal connections, we talked about making “text to text” connections after a student brought in the book How Full is Your Bucket by Tom Rath. The student brought this particular book in because it reminded him of the other books that we read throughout the start of the school year.

The grade threes continued to build their writing skills and stamina during fire writing. They continued to use a variety of strategies to show their ideas about anything they want, such as lists or sentences. This week, we focused on what to write about if students felt stuck. We generated a list of ideas, including a story (fiction or non-fiction), poem, things you like to do, or songs. Ask your child what they like to write about during fire writing.

Students worked together in groups of four to find the numbers to 100 on a sheet of paper where the numbers were spread out. After their first attempt at finding all the numbers, we met as a group to discuss the task. Students identified that in order to make this task work, teamwork was important. They shared ways their teammates helped them. The grade threes explained specific strategies that their team used in order to be successful. The grade threes also made some mathematical discoveries during this task. One student explained that the numbers were organized and another explained that there was a pattern! After these realizations and discussions, students tried to find the numbers again and were even more successful. Ask your child to explain how this task worked in their particular group. Students also continued to practice their basic facts by playing card games.

A big focus of our week was starting to design logos for our class name (designerthr33s). These logos will be used on our Twitter and blog. Students defined a logo as a picture or symbol to represent a company, store, or group. Before starting their design, we came up with class criteria after looking at a variety of logos, such as McDonald’s, Starbucks, Vans, and Batman. The students determined that logos should represent their company, pop out, be simple (without tiny details), unique, and have colour. After all this preparation, students started their independent logo design! Ask your child what their logo looks like!

In order to improve their logos, students did a lot of group work. Group work will be a big part of our year together! To become even better at group work, we talked about how to invite others into conversations to make sure everyone is included. The first step is to find someone who is not in a conversation and say their name. Then the next step is to ask a question (and we most often provide them with a focus question). This way, that person is included and has something in particular to talk about. After working on these conversation skills, a student who was not included in a group the first try but who was invited in the second try, explained that he felt like the peanut butter and the person who invited him in was the jam. Together, they made a great sandwich! Ask your child to explain how to invite someone into a conversation.

Another important part of group work is giving one another feedback. Students watched a video showcasing students giving feedback to a peer. They then explained in their own words that feedback is giving advice to someone to make their work better. They also decided that to give feedback, you must look closely with a sharp eye, be kind, be helpful, and be specific. One student explained that we should have a feedback routine in our classroom that should start with a compliment and end with something to work on. From this idea, we determined that our feedback will be in the form of a star and a wish. Students then gave each other feedback on their logos, tweaked their work, and got more feedback. They realized that this “feedback loop” is a cycle or pattern. Ask your child what feedback they gave to someone to make that person’s work better.

Reminders

-If you have any forms (demographic, apples, or pizza orders), please send them in ASAP. Pizza forms are due by the end of the day on Monday.

-The Welcome Back Picnic is on Sept. 19

-Conferences are the evening of Sept. 19 (3:30pm-7:00pm) and the morning of Sept. 20 (8:00-am-12:00pm). If you haven’t yet booked, please do so. If you need help, you can email your child’s teacher or contact the office.

Upcoming Dates

Sept 16 – Pizza Orders Due


Sept 17 – Gr 5/6 Winsport Field trip


Sept 19 – Welcome Back Picnic


Sept 19 – Conferences 3:30 – 7:00


Sept 20 – Conferences 8:00 – 12:00


Sept 27 – Terry Fox Run


Sept 30 – Orange Shirt Day/Elder Shirley Residency