Enjoy!

Enjoy your family time together - travel safe whether you are going across the city to visit grandma or traveling to destinations far and wide.

Report cards went home today.  Please read it with your child.  They are the expert and know all about their personal learning.

See you January 8, 2018

Raz Kids

Thanks for the boots, mitts, hats and snow pants for recess today - makes being outside a ton of fun!!

We continued with our reading and writing about reindeer today - we have become reindeer experts.

Your student will bring home their log in information for Raz Kids tomorrow - if you are looking for a little quiet time over the break it is a great way to get in some reading and work on comprehension. Look for their card to be in their backpack.

Report cards will come home tomorrow.

PD day Friday December 22

I can research questions and draw conclusions

"I can research questions and draw conclusions" was our mission this afternoon as all your students worked to determine the meaning of tinnitus, what causes it and determine what I can do to get some relief.  There are some excellent researchers in this class and they found out a lot of interesting things.  But, I am still not very hopeful that there is an end in sight.  This was the beginning of our new science unit, Sound and Hearing.  Sort of a fun way to introduce the unit to be detectives and solve a real problem right from the start.

Our work continues with paragraph writing.  We have been working on the basics of paragraphs - that they are 4 -5 sentences long, all on the same topic, they begin with a topic sentence and include supporting sentences.  We wrote paragraphs about addition today - to explain what it is.  Ask your child how their writing went in math.

Estimation was the subtraction strategy we used today.  We found it to be an easy way to subtract double digits.  We used the rule we learned several weeks ago for rounding and applied it.  Rounding each number to the nearest 10 makes for simple subtraction because we also know about zero the hero and how he holds his place.

As you can see there is still a lot of work going on in the classroom although we all have our eye on that calendar!!

Looks like the weather is changing please ensure your child is dressed to be outside.  I have collected a lot of mitts and hats in the last couple of days none of which have names in them and mostly they are all black.  Help your child to recognize their own clothing by putting their name on items.

No school for students Friday December 22

I can subtract 2 digit numbers and explain my strategy

I can subtract 2 digit numbers and explain my strategy."
It's the explain part that trip most of us up.   Just giving me the answer is not good enough in grade 3.  The steps must be explained so we talk about the different ways to subtract.  Use a number line, hundreds chart, decompose, round and estimate, algorithm.  This morning we practiced with a partner writing the strategies we were using to subtract.  A variety is always nice.

Reindeer are interesting animals and we continue to learn all about them and work at centres to show our work.  We used video today and added to our tree map.  Ask your child how to tell the difference between a male and female reindeer.

SNAKE

Thanks to everyone who came out and supported us last night!

'Wild Christmas Reindeer' by Jan Brett is the mentor text we are using this week.  We enjoyed the story and then discovered it was full of simple and compound sentences.  Everyone used their own book and dug through it for examples of simple and compound sentences.  This morning we watched a couple of videos about reindeer and added facts to our tree map.  Then the fun began.  We started a round of centre all about reindeer.  We are reading for facts, pulling out vocabulary, writing responses and determining facts and opinions.  Ask your child what centre they were at today.

We continue to add two digit numbers and talk about our strategies.  The answer is not the key part of the equation.  How you got there is key.  Students must be able to tell me the strategies they used to find the sum.  We have discovered a new game called SNAKE.  Very engaging and I have discovered this classroom is full of chickens!

Pillars of Care assembly tomorrow at 8:15.  Congratulations to Sadie, Nelson and Haseeb and all the students being recognized for being at school on time every day in December (there are 11 students in this class receiving book marks)

Test return

Your student is bringing home their math test and Rocks and Minerals test from last week.  Please sign and return those papers.  This is an excellent opportunity for revisions to be made - looking at what the thinking was and where the error was made.  Particularly with the math test I found that mistakes were most often a result of not reading the whole question.

Scholastic book orders are due tomorrow.

Grade 3 concert night is Wednesday December 13 - doors will open at 6 and the concert will begin at 6:30 pm.

Winter Celebration

PD day tomorrow December 8

Winter Celebration Wednesday December 13 @ 6:30 pm
No tickets required - Food Bank donation taken at the door.

Commutative Property

Observation of things in a picture continued today in the small group.  Observe and wonder has been modeled to the whole group, we've worked in the small group and tomorrow students will work independently with their own picture. Using the skills of observe and wonder will help them to ask thoughtful questions about what is happening and also to organize information in different ways.

Read 20/10 should be a snap tonight since we all went to the library this morning and everyone has something new to read.

We practiced adding numbers on the number line - also with making of 10 to make a friendly number to work with.  Commutative property was introduced - changing the order of the addends does not change the result  i.e.: 2+3=5 and 3+2=5

Book orders due Tuesday December 12

Observing

We've been looking carefully at pictures from India to help us learn about observing what is in a picture.  We then wonder about the picture, thinking about what we do not know but would like to know.  Students are encouraged to ask questions that will deepen their understanding about what is going on.  Today we added making an inference and trying to figure out what information is not presented to us that would be important.  In the next couple of days students will work with their own pictures in the same manner.

We started addition with double digits this morning.  Students will need to know how to use several different strategies and explain what they are doing.  Today we started with a number line skip counting to add.  Over the course of the next couple of days several strategies will be presented and students will work with the one they feel most comfortable.

Scholastic book orders due Tuesday December 12
PD day Friday December 8

Shooting Hoops

Did you know there was a super moon this morning??🌕🌕
I do!!
What do shooting hoops and math have to do with each other?  Well, a lot actually.  We are learning how to play basketball in gym right now so we decided to collect data on how many baskets we can make and graph the information.  Then we wrote in our math journals how the information might be helpful for a basketball scout looking to put people onto their team.  Great fun.  We accomplished a lot.
Last week we read 'The Raft' where a lot of animals visit a boy on his raft during the summer.  Today everyone got a non-fiction piece of writing about one of those animals and we completed a four quadrants of thought organizer.  After reading the information students made notes of important facts, looked up the bold word from their reading in the dictionary, drew a picture and asked questions.  It is a lot of work and we will continue tomorrow.  Making jot notes is the hard part as there is always that need to copy the authors words exactly.

School calendar sent home today.