Raz-Kids and Xtramath

Your student is bringing home their log in information for both Xtramath and Raz-kids.  One is for reading practice the other basic facts.  Both equally important and as your student knows we can't expect to get better at reading or basic facts or skating or swimming or walking without practice.  Rad-Kids can be used when looking for books to get in your daily reading.  Happy 20/10!

Number line work continued today in math with work around reading and writing sentences:

64 rounds to 60 because it is 4 numbers away from 60

Rounding

My classroom is covered in number lines!  We began our unit on rounding by making interactive and very visual number lines. We then posted them all around the room.   When students have a good grasp of rounding, they are capable of making reasonable estimates.  Rounding and estimating are useful tools in real life situations.  We use them to see if we have enough money when shopping or when trying to get somewhere on time.  We will be working all week to round numbers - stay tuned.

Dance was great with Jen from the Canadian Ballet.  We worked on a follow me dance and moving in the gym in slow swimming in jello steps and hot on lava steps.  I thought we did a great job of trying something new with a wide open attitude!

Good readers use the book and their brains was practiced again.  Everyone had a brain paddle and were using it to begin conversations.  We talked about why it is that people have different schemas and why our experiences are not always the same.

Library tomorrow -
Black and Orange day tomorrow -
Pillars of Care assembly Friday at 8:15am

Metacognition

Metacognition is the biggest grade 3 word ever and it should be dropped at the supper table tonight by your student!  Metacognition is not only fun to say but a really impressive word.  It means to think about your thinking - good readers are always thinking with their book.  Together we talked about the word and then we made a reading salad - complete with books and brains.  Every time we read a page we dropped a book into the reading salad when we stopped to think out loud about the book we dropped in a brain.  We discovered that we had way more thinking than we did pages of the book in our salad.  Students then practiced with their own brain paddle and a partner - reading and thinking.

What can change a rock?  We made our own rocks with plastercine so that we could start to answer this question.  We know that heat and pressure, compaction, melting and cooling will all change a rock.  When we watched Magic School Bus we learned that weathering and erosion are also factors.  Every one should now have a rock at school.

Black and Orange day Wednesday Oct. 31
Canadian Ballet Tuesday morning - did you return your form?

Deal It

Deal It was the math game students played this morning to practice comparing numbers.  With a partner they made 2 or 3 digit numbers with playing cards and then compared the numbers with the greater than and less than symbols.  It was a game that went over well and students worked well with their partners!

'Alexander and The Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day' is a picture book that is an excellent example of an author using an anchor line.  An anchor line is used to hold the writing steady and repeats through out the story.  Authors will use an anchor line to add detail to their writing and make it more interesting.  We read the story this morning and then discussed how Judith Viorst made good use of the anchor line.  We have added this idea to our tool box of ways authors add detail to their stories and will put this into action next week.

We discovered that water, erosion, heat and pressure are the only things that can change a rock while we watched Magic School Bus.  We also talked about the things you will find in earth materials.

No school tomorrow.
Your student should now have a rock at school for testing.

Which earth material will absorb the most water?

We compared more numbers today, ordered them, grouped them by even and odds, found numbers larger and numbers smaller.  We were so busy.  We then did a sorting activity to have a closer look at numbers.  Phew...

Mrs. Paolini had some new books for us to look at in the library today.  We all have new books for reading 20/10 at home tonight.

Recognizing nouns, verbs and adjectives is our work this week and today we took words form 'Finding Winnie' and determined what part of speech they were.  We then sorted those words.  And wrote sentences about them.  We are good detectives.

Which earth material will absorb the most water?  that was the science question of the day.  We poured water into sand, gravel, clay and soil.  We also voted on which earth material we thought would absorb the most.  Sand and soil were tied in their voting.  Gravel only received 1 lonely vote.  Ask your child which earth element they voted for and which material absorbed the most water.

No school Friday Oct. 26
Please return National Ballet forms

Comparing Numbers

We were rolling dice and comparing numbers today using the greater than and less than sign.  We are able to order numbers from largest to smallest based on the number in the hundreds place and tell if the number is odd by looking at the number in the ones place.  Super busy! and very flexible thinkers when looking at numbers.

We have been finding nouns, verbs and adjectives in our reading and today we expanded on that and learned about the tenses of verbs.  We noticed that the past tense of a verb usually contains the ending of 'ed' while the present tense has no ending or an 's' on the end.  We also noticed that the future tense of a verb usually has the word 'will' attached to it - will jump - will cry.  We used sentences from 'Finding Winnie' and determined the tense of the verbs.  We are all pretty good at it!

The components of soil are sand, gravel, clay, organic material (leaves, dead animals) and air which we looked at today and then discussed who needs soil and what would we do if we didn't have soil.

Ask your child about their dance experience with the Canadian Ballet School in phys. ed today.   We are lucky enough to have someone coming on Tuesday's for the next four weeks.  Please look for the Acknowledgement of Risk in a backpack near you -

Game of More

Game of More
In this math game we had to figure out who had more and then figure out how many more.  We played with a deck of cards and cubes.  When we finished playing the cards we counted our cubes to see how many we each had.  Then we found the difference between the scores.  After recording game one, we played again and recorded the scores.  Our last job was to figure out the total scores of each player from both games and then find the difference.  This card game gave students practice with basic facts and with adding and subtracting two and three digit numbers.

We did a little visualizing lesson with 'Finding Winnie' and then completed an ABC activity.  In grade 3 we must be able to use alphabetical order to the second letter.  We practice multiple times during the year in various ways.

We had an unexpected visit from our buddies this afternoon which we all love so it is not a hardship! We then carried on with our handwriting.

No school Friday Oct. 26

When you add ten to a number

Work continued in math today with adding ten to a number.  What happens to the value of the tens place?  What is the largest digit you can have in the tens place?  This work is important since it will lead us into borrowing and carrying larger numbers.

Finding Winnie by Lindsay Mattick is the true story of Winnie The Pooh - ask your student what they learned about the famous bear from this book.  We read the story and were totally amazed about all the things that we didn't know but the biggest was that Winnie was a real bear and Canadian!!  We will be using the story for several days in our classroom.

We sorted all our Earth Materials today and discovered that mostly we had collected soil.  We compared it to the poem we started with and found we had a lot of the same items.  Next we will be collecting soil samples from around the school.

Walking stories due tomorrow for those wh took them home.

Walking Stories due Friday

We took advantage of the beautiful day today and went out for gym, a fire drill and to collect earth materials for science.  We took a shovel (teaspoon) and collection bag (lunch bag) and went out looking for the things under our feet.  Yesterday we read the poem, Under Your Feet, and we will use it again tomorrow to sort the earth materials we found and compare them against the poem.

Students are bringing home their Mathletics login information so they can continue to practice math skills at home.  This is an excellent method for further development.  Some of us were logged on  this morning and began the Numbers to 1000 unit while others worked with me and were building numbers and adding 10 more.

Walking stories were handed in today.  Students who were not finished have brought them home for completion by Friday.  Your student should be able to tell you that a walking story is a descriptive piece of writing where each of the 5 boxes contains a different piece of information but nothing really happens in terms of a problem so it stays on a straight line.

We also have new reading material from the library to use for reading 20/10 tonight

Representing Numbers

We continue to represent and describe numbers to 1000 in our math work.  Today we added using a hundreds (or thousands) chart to our toolbox of ways to show numbers.  We can now use the standard form (184), word form (one hundred eighty four) expanded notation (100+80+4=184) base ten blocks (ask your student) write an expression (180+4=184) and a hundreds chart.  We will continue to practice before moving on to comparing and ordering numbers.

How do authors make their writing interesting? that was the question we explored and one way is to add detail.  We are eliminating the robot writing of I like... I like... I like... as it is NOT interesting nor is it grade 3 quality writing.  We worked on giving a fact.  I like the beach.  And following it up with a detail.  I like the beach.  At the beach I listen to the crashing waves and walk in the surf in my flip flops.  Adding detail after the fact makes the writing more interesting for the reader.  During writer's workshop we practiced this writing technique.

We also had our first handwriting lesson today!  So exciting!  Ask your student what letter we started with-

Please return the yellow STUDENT DEMOGRAPHIC VERIFICATION FORM



Book orders due tomorrow.

Picture Day tomorrow

We were super productive today.  Much was accomplished!

We turned our lovely art project from Friday - printing fall leaves on a tree with a cork - into math this morning.  Something I like to call MART.  Students estimated the number of leaves on their tree and then created a strategy for themselves on how to actually count the leaves on their tree.  We then shared the strategies students used for counting such as counting by colour, making groups of 5 and then counting by 5, 1 to 1 counting of leaves and talked about mathematicians having their own strategies for working with numbers.  Interesting.  After sharing students then figured out how many leaves they had altogether at their table group.  This meant we were working with much bigger numbers but we conquered the task!  Calculators were used and we checked our work.  Ask your student what strategy they used for counting all the leaves on their tree.

Students worked really hard to complete a foldable about the plot of the story they chose to read.  Everyone is working on their own and you could have heard a pin drop in here while they all worked on this task.

We've just begun our science unit, Rocks and Minerals, and so this afternoon we generated questions that we have about rocks.  It is important that everyone wonders and questions - especially as we are practicing to be scientists.  We enjoyed Rock Odyssey an oldie but a goodie.  Like Fred Flintstone!

Coco Brooks orders due tomorrow

Picture Day tomorrow

The plot thickens!

Today we read, 'WANTED! Ralfy Rabbit, Book Burglar' to discuss plot of the story.  We created an anchor chart together with a beginning, middle, end and the story elements of characters, setting, problem and solution.  We already knew that climbing stories had these elements while walking stories do not so we were able to build on what we already knew!  Good for us😊  Students then picked a book that they can read to complete a foldable about their own personal book.

High Rollers is the math game we learned to play - it had us building numbers with a partner and then deciding who had built the larger number and comparing them.  Sticker math this morning also had us comparing numbers.

We read with our buddies today as they won't be available tomorrow - this is an activity we all enjoy.

Scholastic book orders for October are in a backpack near you.  Please have your cash, cheque or order on-line in by Tuesday Oct. 16.

School photos Tuesday Oct. 16

Rocks please

We brainstormed all the things that we think we know about Rocks and Minerals as an introduction to our new science unit, Rocks and Minerals.  We then had a look at some books with a partner looking for some interesting facts.  Everyone will need to have their own personal rock by Wednesday next week.  (October 17)Their rock should tell a story i.e.; I found my rock in the Kananaskis River.  It has a hole in it. My rock was made smooth by the water of the river.

We continued with our Making Words activity - we found that the English language has many words that sound the same but a spelled differently i.e. sew/so and sore/soar   Even with the few letters we have to work with.  It's no wonder this is such a difficult language to learn!


We were at the library today so everyone should have new materials to read for 20/10 tonight.  Students do not have to wait until Wednesday to get new library materials.  If you find they finished with their books send them back to school and your student will get downstairs for new books.

Check the yellow important papers folder for school photos.

Post turkey

We may have been full of turkey but we accomplished a lot today!

Students were introduced to sticker math this morning.  Sticker math is one problem on a sticker that they stick into their math workbooks and solve.  They are always 'story problems' on a current math strand.  Today, sticker math read:

A number has the digit 3 in the ones place

 and the digit 9 in the tens place.  

Write the number 3 different ways.

A question like this tells me if your student can think about numbers flexibly.  It tells me if they can show numbers in a variety of ways.  We will have sticker math a couple times each week.  Questions that are not finished will be sent home for homework.  Please check with your student if you find a lot of sticker math coming home to find out why they are unable to complete the task in the allotted 30 minutes.

Last week we reviewed the vowels and today we learned how to recognize the syllables of a word.  We can clap a syllable and we can use our hand under our chins to feel the syllables.  We practiced finding the syllables in the names of our friends then turned to our books to find the word with the most syllables.

We read the walking story 'No, David' by David Shannon and then tried our hand at writing a walking story.  A walking story has no problem to be solved, no rise in action but it should have lots of detail.  There were great ideas for writing such as myself, space, 5 reasons not to chew gum in school. Students worked really hard at being authors and many have finished their story.

SLA are done!

We finished all of the BIG tests today and we are pretty proud of ourselves for getting that dastardly deed done.  Ask your student how they felt things went.

We continue to work on the various ways to show numbers which will take us into next week.  We read with our grade 6 buddies this afternoon and have finished up our Scarecrow art project with pastels.  We are all exhausted and have decided we deserve a long weekend.  Enjoy some family time and a turkey meal or two.  Fingers crossed my 18 pound turkey will defrost in time and come out of the oven golden brown - my boys are coming home hungry!

No school Friday October 5 and Monday October 8

Soccer Tricks

Students learned some great soccer ball tricks from a guest instructor in the gym this morning.  We had a great time perfecting our tricks.  Ask your little soccer player!

Fundraising notice from Parent Council in a yellow important papers folder in a backpack near you!

We were at the library this morning so there may be fresh reading material in the backpack for reading 20/10 this evening.

We reviewed the vowels and the difference between when you hear a vowel's name and when you hear its other sound.  Our work in this area will continue as we investigate how it can help us when we come across a word we don't know.

No school Friday October 5 or Monday October 8

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!!
Good Canadian children are prepared at anytime of the year to be out in snow.  But who would think so much snow so early?😡
Please ensure your student is prepared to be outside with boots, mitts and an appropriate jacket.  If you need any of these items drop me an email and we can help out.

We wrote the pencil and paper portion of the SLA today.  Ask your child about the patterns a firefighter uses in their daily work.

Library tomorrow.

SLA MATH

Thank you for the headphones.  With your permission we will keep them at school for use when using Mathletics and Raz Kids.

Ask you child how they felt about the digital SLA math test this morning.

Notice coming home about fun lunch in the yellow important paper folder in a backpack near you!