Pause, Point and Proceed

Pause at the corner, point where you want to go, look all ways, look the driver in the eye and proceed when safe across the road.  Have a safe fun filled evening!!

The discussion got rather heated today as we ranked needs and wants.  You will be pleased that we all agreed things like candy, Netfliks, and Xbox are wants while we argued weather shelter or water was the most important need.  It really was a proud moment in the classroom!

Just a reminder that candy is a treat and not brain food.  Please keep the candy at home and the fruit and vegetables coming to school.  We also had a discussion about the sharing of food at school - please remember that we cannot be sharing food/candy.

Movember at Beddington

We held it together pretty well today, for October 30, but you will probably find your child has homework tonight.  It's very difficult to keep our attention focused when tomorrow brings better things.  Some of us are writing what Captain Coleburne meant when he said his heart and his head don't agree while others are trying to finish up number of the day.  Some of us have both pieces of work to finish and bring back tomorrow.

Last week we were comparing fiction and nonfiction texts.  We compared and contrasted their features in a venn diagram.  Today we paired up with a partner and created a dictionary page, focusing on one nonfiction text feature.  We will collect all the pages into a class dictionary that you can see when you come in November for Student Led Conferences.

Black and Orange day tomorrow 

Beddington Heights is showing we care by running a Movember competition to bring awareness to and raise funds for prostate cancer research. Most of our male staff members will be growing a moustache for the month of November. Students may vote all month as often as they like for who they feel has the worst moustache. The cost is $1.00 per vote. $5.00 = 5 votes etc. Mavericks will be set up in the gym at lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays to collect votes. You may also give your vote to Mr. Sadowsky at any other time. All proceeds will be donated to the Movember foundation on behalf of Beddington Heights school. At the end of the month, the teacher with the most votes, therefore the worst moustache will come to work on December 1st with his hair dyed in a bright funky colour. If we raise $1,000.00 or more as a school, all the participants will dye their hair on December 1st. 

Let's show everyone how much Beddington cares.

Thank you for your support!

Participants: Mr. Hebert, Mr. Weins, Mr. Sadowsky, Mr. Lancee, Mr. Mueller, Mr. Shackelton, Mr. Softley, Mr. Berry, 

Mr. Mahon, Mr. Beechey, Mr. Jackson

Fiction vs. Non-Fiction

We put on our binoculars and zoomed in on the features of fiction and non-fiction books.  We compared Rocks and Minerals to You Got a Rock Charlie Brown and we found out many different features: non-fiction has photographs and a Table of Contents while fiction has drawn pictures and no page numbers.  We noticed that the fiction story had a beginning, middle and end so it must be read in order while non-fiction can be read in any order.  Tomorrow we will continue zooming in and look closer at the features of non-fiction such as captions, fact books, diagrams etc. because approaching non-fiction reading is different from being a reader of fiction.

Finding Winnie is a non-fiction story about how Winnie the Pooh came to be.  We had a look at the most famous bear today (including a couple of cute cartoons) and the non-fiction text features.  We found out that Winnie was a Canadian bear who went off to World War I with the Canadian army!  We had many questions when we were done reading and we wrote them all down for future reference.

Fun lunch tomorrow
Pillars of Care assembly Friday morning 8:15 am
Tuesday is orange and black day

Geology in room 11

"I can just tell this rock has a great story to tell!"

 Direct quote from a lovely child in room 11 this morning!!  Rock centers are well under way as we work like geologists and complete activities such as a rock interview, weight, using microscopes and reading for information.  Yesterday we read a poem about the layers of the earth.  First we talked about the parts of speech: nouns, verbs, pronouns and adjectives and what they are.  Then, we went through the poem looking for those parts of speech.  Next, we went outside with our own shovels (spoons) to gather earth materials.  Today we sorted those earth materials and compared them to the poem.  We actually were able to find a lot of the layers of earth.😀

I was out of the classroom this afternoon but children continued working on describing numbers in various ways.  They were rolling dice to create their own numbers writing, drawing and expanding that number.  Some worked with tens, some with hundreds and still others in the thousands.  We had a short math quiz yesterday and I will send home those papers tomorrow after we go over the questions for you to see what your child is able to do.

XtraMath/Mathletics and You

Xtramath is a computer program to help your child increase their basic facts confidence and knowledge.  It only takes a few minutes everyday to help your child build their math foundation.  A letter is coming home with your child today to explain the program and give you their pin.  We will use the website in our classroom everyday.  Basic facts are easily done in the car, waiting at a restaurant, while doing the dishes.  In grade 3 we are responsible for knowing up to 18 in addition and subtraction.  Ask your child 4+5? and have them mentally prepare the answer.  Ask them how they figured it out.  Ask them how they know their answer is right.

Mathletics is a website we used at school last year and your child is familiar.  They all have log in cards today that they can use at home to practice math content.  We will also use this website at school to supplement what we are doing in the classroom.

Both of these websites are great for practicing and when you want a little homework done in the evenings.  Don't forget reading 20/10 as well!!

Some of us have sticker math homework tonight - check with your child some of us did not even start.  Due back tomorrow please.

A Million Fish and place value

A Million Fish... more or less is the book we read this morning that used exaggeration to make the story more interesting.  The author also had the character leaving half behind all the time.  Half of a million, half of 500,000 and half of 10.  It led to a great discussion about the patterns of place value and how we can read a number even if we don't know its name.  Students then wrote their own exaggeration - ask your child what they wrote.

Narrative story writing this afternoon was the grade 3 SLA for today.  Everyone wrote a story about a place they would like to take a trip.  It was a chance to show off our skills as an author and artist if pictures were included to move the story along.  Tomorrow we will write our last SLA - the digital math.

Homework tonight - finish the labels and color the world map - no more class time will be given for this activity.

Early dismissal tomorrow @12:00

Check backpacks the blue important folder has several notices from parent council.

Fly Away Home and the Mustard Seed

'Fly Away Home' is a story by Eve Bunting about a boy and his father who live in an airport.  We read it this morning as a forum to begin our discussion about what quality of life means.  It is important for students to realize that when we compare Canada to India, Peru, Tunisia and Ukraine the idea of quality of life does not mean how many video games and TVs we have.  We then had a presentation from the Mustard Seed about what they do to help improve the quality of life for Calgarians.  Ask your child what they thought -

The written math SLA was our task this afternoon.  A lot of us found it to be difficult but we did the best we could.  Tomorrow we will complete the written portion of the Language Arts.

Everyone has new library materials for reading 20 minutes to themselves and 10 minutes to someone else tonight.  Yah!  a new book💙💜

Adding ten to any number

Investigation took place today to determine what happens to the digits on a hundreds chart when adding 10 to any number.  After careful work we decided that when any number is added to 10 the number in the ones place remains the same and the tens place increases by 1 or 10.  Children were then writing in their math journal to explain to one of our friends when was away today what we discovered and why it is important.

SLA testing began today - ask your child how they feel about their work.  We started with the digital reading comprehension and after a few technical problems we all got right to work.  Tomorrow we will have a look at the written math component.

Grade 3 SLA

My apologizes for not putting out a blog this week we have been super busy and we have accomplished a lot!

We have been practicing for the grade 3 TESTS next week.  We will complete a digital math test and a written math test as well as an online reading comphrension and a written story.  We are all feeling confident that we know what we are doing.

No school Monday October 16
Tuesday October 17 is picture day
Book orders due Tuesday

Have a fun filled weekend!

Knew and New

I hope you all had a great family weekend!  Your children came back full of turkey and ready to learn.  We had a great day.😍

Students were using base ten blocks to cement their understanding of how ones, tens, and hundreds relate to the number system.  We were very busy with blocks and whiteboards to show our understanding of number.
We looked at a very old but still relevant video to introduce Rocks and Minerals in science.  The humor of the video was corny and most of it went over the heads of our students but the information was great.  They are creating a T chart in their science notebooks with what they 'knew' before the video and what was 'new' in the video.  By using this format they will be showing me that they were thinking while watching the video not just being in the audience.
We had a look at the grade 3 SLA for Reading Comprehension as a whole group and then practiced by ourselves.  Important elements were pointed out such as: read everything, look at the picture, use the sound track where it will read to you and read all the choices there might be two right answers but one is better than the other.  If your child does not have headphones at school now is the time.

Fun Lunch orders by Friday
Headphones and rock now.
Monday Oct. 16 is a system wide PD day

Directed Drawing

This afternoon we did a little art activity using directed drawing and our work is stinking cute!!
Directed drawing is a great exercise for listening and following directions.  The students know they have to stay focused and follow the directions, or their drawing won't turn out.  Everyone was listening this afternoon and all our pictures turned out.  Directed drawing will raise the confidence of our little artists as they see that they can draw something and it does look like a scarecrow!  We finished off our work with pastels and we apologize if it got on our clothes.  We were working hard!

Asking questions is a great way to start a new investigation.  So, we brainstormed questions we would ask the four children who live in India, Peru, Ukraine, and Tunisia if we could meet them.  We then learned the words hemisphere and equator as we looked at a world map.  I used my nesting sock monkeys (ask your child what they are) to teach the concept of continent, country, province, city and community.  It is hard for us to understand, but we are working on it😅  We are now working on our first map - labeling and coloring.

Even and odd numbers continue to be a problem for us so today we read Even Steven and Odd Todd and created an anchor chart for ourselves to we can remember important facts.  We played a game of Buzz and learned that even + even= even and odd+odd=even and odd+even = odd.  Interesting.

Headphones and a rock for next week please.
No school tomorrow or Monday

Have a great family weekend!

Location of Four Countries

In our first little unit of social studies we are looking at the communities we study (Tunisia, Ukraine, Peru and India) and their locations in the world.  Our textbook (Pearson) introduces us to a child from each country and gives us a little bit of information about each one.  Today we wrote about ourselves in the same style and drew a few pictures like they did - even a Canadian flag which believe you me is not easy to draw!  Tomorrow we will locate the four countries on a map and label important places.

We all have new reading material as we visited with Mrs. Paolini this morning.  We love going to the learning commons!

Using the poem Scarecrow from yesterday we answered a few comprehension questions which will lead us into writing complete sentences next week.  A lot of us seem to think a sentence is well written when it says, "Because it does."  Yikes.  Much work to do in writing.

Headphones need to be at school next week as we will be practicing for the SLA's starting Tuesday.

Everyone will need a rock next week as well.

No school Friday or Monday

Four Strikes and You're Out

We play a lot of games in room 11 because they motivate certain children and are a great way to sneak in practice without anyone realizing what is happening!  Today I introduced 'Four Strikes and You're Out' to our math centers.  Ask your child how they did.  I believe I won the first couple of games, but then they caught on and won a few themselves.  Ask your child to play with you after supper tonight.

Punctuation is an on-going hurdle for some students to over come.  Today we made an anchor chart for our classroom on how to use periods, commas, exclamation marks, question marks and quotation marks.  First we talked about what they looked like, their names and how they were used.  Then we used Cynthia Rylant's book Scarecrow to find examples of each one.  We loved the story and so we brainstormed what we knew about scarecrows and I gave them a poem about scarecrows that I had taken punctuation out of.  Their job was to put it back.  All went well so we will begin becoming punctuation detectives and I will be looking for it in all their writing.

Everyone needs a rock at school next week as we begin our Rocks and Mineral unit in science.

No school Friday - system wide PD

Book exchange tomorrow morning - all books should have been returned today.