Technical Difficulties

Due to technical difficulties downtown your myCBE account has not been updated to allow you to pay for Tuesday's field trip.  We are happy to accept your cash as we are not sure how long it will take them to fix this problem.

No school tomorrow -
Have a great weekend

Good First Impression

A good first impression is important at a job interview and on the first day of grade 3! 
It's also important for an author to have a good first impression to their writing.  We looked into the books in our desks and found some good examples of a first impression.  We also noticed that not one author started their writing with, 'Once upon a time..."  or "Hi!  my name is..."  and not a single, "One day..."  We found great first impressions that made us want to read on used conversation, sound words, a fact and conversation.  We all then started our own story with a good first impression to make our readers want to read on.  It really was a great writing time today.

Teacher's Pet needs to be paid for on-line before Tuesday. 
Tuesday we will have Teacher's Pet in the classroom to give us a glimpse of life in Peru.

Read 20/10

In-service

In a backpack near you is the notice regarding our in-service on India.  This will take place Tuesday in our classroom if you care to join us.  Please pay on-line for the service and send back to school the cut off portion from the notice so I know your child is able to participate.

We were in the library this morning to change out our books.  Ask your child what they are currently reading.  Even better - read with your child tonight!

Read 20/10

Take a moment to check in with your little learner to see how they are progressing with multiplication.  Remember that we are responsible for the facts up to 5x5.

Teacher's Pet

We had a creative Monday today.  We created a repeating pattern of colours and numbers with multiplication facts, drew the pictures in our head while listening to a story, and wrote about ourselves and our families.  Ask your little learner how their Monday went.

Tuesday February 4 we will have Teacher's Pet visit our classroom to provide an in class presentation about Peru.  This is directly linked to our social studies curriculum.  A notice will come home tomorrow with more information.  Please note we want you to use your myCBE account to pay the fee.

System wide PD day Friday

Pillars of Care

Congratulations to the January Pillar's of Care award winners, Sadaf, Roua, Lily, Selina and Nyakuey.  Assembly is at 8:15 tomorrow if you care to join us!

Today we were sorting Key Information from Irrelevant Information - determining what is important and what isn't can be a daunting task.  We look to the text to see if there were bold words, a heading or something in the index to help us make sense of the information.

Ask your little learner about their personal memory bag.  Yesterday we drew the memory bag of Shi-Shi-Etko that she prepared as she was going away to residential school.  Today we drew our own memory bag and put in it things we would want to take with us from home.  We noticed that everything Shi-Shi-Etko took with her was from the land (flowers, pinecone) and everything we packed in our bags were material items. 

Read 20/10

Today's Sticker Math

"I'm planning a Chinese meal for everyone in our class.  How many chopsticks would I need to bring?  Use pictures, numbers and words to explain your thinking."

This was our sticker math question this morning.  (It's just the question on a sticker that we put at the top of our math page to solve.  Sticker math.)  This is actually how I introduced multiplication at the beginning of the month so students have already heard this and seen this solved.  We try for 15 minutes of silent time for everyone to work and then time to discuss with others how we are solving.  Your little learner should be circling the numbers, underlining the question and boxing important words to help themselves get started.  I always stress that drawing a picture will help to get things started.  When marking work I'm looking for the thinking to be on the page and the strategy used to be clear.  Skip count, double the number, multiply, repeated addition all would have solved this question.  Without the strategy shared I can't see thinking.  Finally a sentence using the answer must be written in words to complete the task.  There are many steps involved but everyone can be successful with a little effort.  Ask your little learner how they did today.

Pillars of Care assembly Friday January 24 8:15 am

In a backpack near you is an invitation to Math Night please have a look.

Biography

Biography - the story of someone's life written by someone else.

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Junior day in the United States.  My nieces and nephews did not go to school.  More importantly my brothers did not go to work (deep sigh) . What, you ask does Martin Luther King day have to do with us?  We are good Canadians.  Well, it allows me to bring in biographies.  We started with Martin Luther King we will move on to Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges, Katherine Johnson and Viola Desmond who is on our new $10.00 bill.  It allows us to look at non-fiction text features.  We will talk about key events.  But most importantly they were all people who believed in treating everyone fairly.  They believed in change and they believed our world could be a better place.  Isn't that what we want our children to know?  To be sure your children were shocked with the world that Martin Luther King grew up in and they were appalled that in his world we would not have all been in the same classroom enjoying the same freedoms.  They were sure that should not be repeated.  Ever again.  They can be change makers too.

Read 20/10

Multiplication Tables

Multiplication tables were introduced today to little learners.  They learned how to read the table and run their finger down the column and over the row to find the answers.  Everyone has their own multiplication table taped to their desk with all the spaces they feel comfortable with filled in.  That may only be the 0 times table or the 1's because we will fill in the tables over time.  In grade 3 we are responsible for learning up to 5x5.

"What is the difference between a house and a home?"  This was my question this afternoon that sparked some very interesting responses.  Mostly around the paying of rent.  For our purposes a house is a building and a home is a place that is full of people who love each other and make memories and have feeling of joy and sadness together.  We will link the concept of home to our unit in visualizing to create a visual of our own homes, grandparents homes, First Nations homes and the homes of people living in India, Ukraine, Peru and Tunisia.

Library exchange tomorrow
Read 20/10

Missing face mask

We had a black and grey neoprene face mask go home with the wrong person today.  If your child came home with a V shaped velcro closed cold weather mask please have them bring it back to school tomorrow so it can keep its owner warm.

Sounds are caused by vibrations.  The highness and lowness of a sound is its pitch.  Your ears age.  Children hear way more than teachers.  These are a few of things we found out today in science.

We made ourselves a skip counting anchor chart for multiplication.  If you can skip count you can multiply.

Read 20/10

Arrays

We've been playing Circles and Stars to help students understand that multiplication can be thought of as combining equal groups and is related to repeated addition.  Today we added the multiplication sentence to our game boards with great success.  We then read, 'Amanda Bean's Amazing Dream' to see how multiplication is useful and how it relates to the world around us.  The word array was introduces with many examples.  Ask your little learner about arrays.

We completed a visualizing exercise around lollypops and while working with a partner we determined that everyone makes different pictures in their head because we are all different people with different experiences.  Good readers make pictures in their head while reading.

Stay warm my friends!

Report Card envelopes

Report card envelopes need to be signed and returned to school.  Please keep the actual report card.  Once again, if you had any questions or concerns about your little learners progress please drop in and see me or send me an email or a phone call and I am happy to answer any questions.

In a backpack near you is a Fun Lunch notice for on-line ordering.

We began our new unit of science today with a KWL chart - we brainstormed every thing we think we know about sound and hearing and then we created questions we had about sound and hearing. 

Circles and Stars was the game we played with a partner last week.  We rolled a die to determine how many circles to draw on our paper and then we rolled our die again to determine how many stars to put in the circle.  Next we added up how many stars we drew.  Altogether.  This is the beginning of multiplication for us. By playing Circles and Stars my hope is to drive home the idea that multiplication is making equal groups.  Today we wrote the addition sentence that matches the number of circles on our page and how many stars are in that circle.  Now we are ready to add the multiplication sentence.

Library exchange tomorrow

Classroom Games

I use a wide variety of games in my classroom as an instructional tool.  I think they are a very valuable tool.  As a family we have always played games and my children would ask, "When can we play games again?"  Not, 'Why do we have to play games?"  This afternoon I introduced a new board game that we played at home over the holidays, Rat-a-Tat-Roll.  It is the new sibling to Rat-A-Tat-Cat that we have played all year long.  This new version still requires players to take turns, use logical thinking, add, and strategize but in a new way.  Games get little learners to take an active role in their own learning.  Just adding the dots of the dice together to know how many spaces to move is part of our math (adding numbers) and working towards a goal of having the lowest score is higher thinking.  I think the game was a hit - ask your little learner if they enjoyed the game.

Read 20/10

Diwali

Good Canadian children come to school dressed for the weather.  We were out for recess this morning and it was cold but then by lunch time it was too cold to be outside.  Please help your child be prepared with the necessary cold weather clothing as the temperature begins to do that down hill slide.

This week we have been sharing traditions and celebrations in our own families - talking about special food, special clothing and special activities.  We read the picture book 'Sona and the Wedding Game,' describing the traditions of a Hindu family wedding in India.  We noticed some of the same traditions and some very different traditions.  Today we looked at the celebration of Diwali in India - the Festival of Light.  Tomorrow we will complete an art activity about Diwali.

Mental Math

Merry Christmas to our Orthodox friends!

After a math warm up with the digits 2, 7, and 6 we put our mental math skills to work.  Questions like: "How much bigger is 6 than 4?" and "If I have a nickel in one pocket and 6 cents in the other is the sum greater than or less than a dime?" are completed on white boards so students can share their thinking with me and quickly change answers should they need to.  We do mental math activities two or three times a week.  We then finished up our New Years math pictures.

We are working on determining the lesson of the story and knowing what the author is trying to teach us this week.  We started with a cute little video, Carrot Crazy to talk about what the characters were doing and then we read, 'Alexander Who Used to Be Rich Last Week.'  We will use this anchor book all week to look at lessons taught and pronouns in our writing.

Mindfulness is our new goal this month and this afternoon we completed some breathing activities and talked about using breathing as a tool for decreasing anxiety.

We all have new books from the library - read 20/10.

Mindfulness

Welcome back to school -
We had a look at the number 2020 this morning and noticed many interesting things.  The number is even.  It has 4 digits.  This is a leap year.  We have entered a new decade.  We then practised our addition and subtraction with a picture game using the number 2020 and our own birth years.

We reviewed classroom expectations by making an anchor chart of My job/Your job.  Our number one item on both sides of the chart was respect.  Respect for ourselves, respect for peers and respect for other adults in this building.

Mindfulness is the new pillar for January at school.  We began today with a chat about mindfulness being present in the moment, using it as a tool to decrease anxiety and being peaceful, kind and accepting.  We worked on deep breathing and thinking about the colours of the air as it goes into and out of our bodies.  Cool colours going in and warm colours coming out.  We will be spending time every day on mindfulness.