Counting down...

I'm sorry I forgot to take a picture of all the bridges that came to school today!  It was great to see the work that went into the project and how proud your student was to share their bridge!!  Thank you for supporting your student at home!

Please bring an extra backpack or strong bag to school tomorrow as we will clean out desks.  Everything will come home - be on the look out for some great pieces of work.

Nose Hill is within the CBE walk zone and therefore does not require field trip forms to be signed by parents.  Weather permitting Wednesday Nose Hill is our morning plan.  If you can join us feel free.

Getting There

We used magazines this morning to cut out pictures of structures.  Everyone wrote about their structure - what it might be used for, the materials used to make it, types of pillars, and how it was fastened together.  It was a great exercise in thinking like a scientist!

Ms. Cokar worked with us this morning to write a little comic strip.  Watch for those in backpacks.

We are planning on walking up Nose Hill on Wednesday morning - if you can join us for a walk in the park please let me know.

Bridge projects are due Monday along with the writing booklets.

Nose Hill

We would like to end our year off with a walk up Nose Hill.  It fits into many parts of our curriculum and it is in our neighborhood.  To do so we will need your help.  Volunteers will be required for Wednesday June 27 in the morning.  We would like to walk up to Nose Hill, snack, note some of the features of Nose Hill, play Coyotes and Hares and return to the school for lunch.  If you can help out please drop me an email or call.  Thanks for helping us make that happen for our students.

Our work continued today and we found out that a cylindrical pillar will hod more mass because the weight is distributed evenly.  This is something to keep in mind as you are building bridges at home.

Animals belong to a classification system and today we dumped everything we know about mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and insects onto our papers.  We talked about things like eggs, teeth, wings, fur etc. as we continue our work with life cycles.

Bridge project due Monday June 25

Inferring

We continue to work and work hard in our classroom.  Our work is never done.

Inferring.  Rather a difficult skill for some of us to master.  It involves using the clues left behind by the author and what we already know to make conclusions.  Author's don't always give us all the information, so rather like being detectives we must read the clues and figure things out for ourselves.    I like to use the Pixar short films for practice.  We looked at 'Geri's Game' today and discussed all the things we saw, what we knew and then the inferences we could make.  Tons of fun.

We were shape shifters in math this morning.  Starting with a triangle and working our way up to shapes with 10 sides.  We then compared and contrasted the quadrilateral family.  I have to say, a good job was done by all.

We looked at different types of bridges in Calgary - noting the arches, beams, foundations and spans.
       Bridge projects are due Monday June 25.

Our Day Plan

Kamp Kiwanis Daytrip

June 14, 2018

8:00 – attendance in the classroom/students will prepare their belongings to leave the building

8:15 – bus will leave the school

9:00 – bus arrives at Kamp Kiwanis

9:00 – 9:30 – orientation for the students and volunteers to Kamp with community meeting/snack/washroom break

9:30 – 11:30 – the large group of students will be broken into smaller groups for activity time.  Students will go with the counselors and volunteers to complete their activities:

Pond Study

Forest Realty

Sense Us Change

Forest of Sound

11:30 – 12:00 – campfire lunch break – students will eat at K ring area.  In the event of weather they will be able to eat in the day lodge.

12:00 – 1:30 - Coyotes and Hares – a large group learning activity in the forest

1:30 - 1:45 – washroom and clean up time

1:40 – leave the camp

2:30 – arrive back at Beddington Heights

Packing List

Please be on time tomorrow - we expect the Kamp Kiwanis bus at 8:00 and the sooner we can get out of here the longer time we will have to play.
I would recommend a bigger than usual lunch - one gets hungry playing in the forest.
A water bottle.
A morning snack.
Extra socks and perhaps pants.
Dressed in layers.  So that when the sun comes out we can strip down.
Rain gear.  So then it won't rain.
A can-do attitude that this is a great new adventure and we will make the most of it no matter the weather.

In a backpack near you is the instructions for a bridge project to be built at home for Monday June 25.  Keep the bright yellow papers handy.  Not only are they the instructions but they need to come back to school for self evaluation and marking.  Please make sure the yellow papers come back with the planning and materials part filled out.

Keep on the sunny side!

Please excuse my lack of communication - I went down.  And I went down hard.  All the germs and all the little bugs that have been in this room all year long took their toll on me and the best place to be when sick is at home.  It's quiet at home.

Kamp Kiwanis Thursday.  Rain or shine.  Keep your fingers crossed that the rains hold off until we leave the area in the afternoon but send your child prepared with rain gear and a change of clothing as we will be outside.  Even in the rain.  Keep on the sunny side.

ALL library books needed to be returned this week.  We no longer have the ability to sign reading materials out from the library.  Check under beds clean out closets Mrs. Paolini will be hunting you down.

We reviewed the names, edges, faces and vertices of 3D-shapes.  Which ones can roll?  What real world thing has the same shape?

We have finished The Tale of Despereaux but our work continues with the story elements and our favorite characters.  Ask your child if they enjoyed the story.

Scholastic Book order

Thank you for supporting the readers in room 11 by purchasing books through Scholastic.  Every time you purchase books from the monthly book orders Scholastic place books in the classroom for student use.  Did you know that a literate classroom should have over 1000 fiction and nonfiction books?  June book orders are due Monday June 11.

I am off to Kamp Kiwanis tonight to organize our field trip and take care of a few details.  Watch for the forms to come home in a back pack near you tomorrow.

Looks like a water bottle will be a necessary item on Thursday for Sports Day.  The forecast looks hot.😎

Sports Day

Thursday June 7th is sports day. It will be regular classes in the morning, fun lunch and then activities all afternoon. The forecast is looking good with a high of 26 predicted. If you wish for your child to wear sun screen please send them to school with it as we are not allowed to provide it to students. I recommend wearing a hat, sunglasses, good running shoes and to bring a water bottle. We will have 3 stations that involve water with a chance of getting slightly wet. All stations are optional so if you wish your child not to participate in these events, please let them know to skip those. The day will end with freezies provided by parent council in the gym about 10 minutes before dismissal. If the weather changes and it is raining or unsafe to go ahead with sports day we will re-schedule to a later date.

Any questions or concerns can be directed to Mr. Sadowsky.

Thank you

Tangrams

No school tomorrow - see you Monday!
Fun lunch orders due Monday

We accomplished a lot today - ask your student about Tangrams

I can compare and contrast characters in a story

Fun lunch order coming in a back pack near you - due back June 4

Library tomorrow

I can compare and contrast characters in a story - student chose between Despereaux and Chiaroscuro or Miggery Sow and Princess Pea to explore their similarities and differences.  They created a venn diagram and used the guiding questions of: how are these two  alike?  How are these two different? Are there traits unique to one and not the other?
Good readers know that the author (in this case Kate DiCamillo) reveals information through physical traits, actions, thoughts, and dialogue.  We know many things about the characters that we have come to love.

We did a fun activity in math today by comparing the vowels and consonants in a word in the form of fractions.  Students read the room, read a book, read the dictionary to come up with words and then determined how many vowels were in the word and how many consonants were in the word.  Tomorrow we will turn our attention to polygons and tangrams.

Water bottles please

Super important in this heat that children have a water bottle at their desk.  Staying hydrated during the day helps with cognitive function but also there have been many complaints of headache, especially after recess and gym.

We worked on comparing fractions this morning.  Deciding which fraction was  greater than, less than or equal to and using the symbols.

We finished up the grade 3 Student Learning Assessment with reading comprehension so now we will return to our regular schedule!

Important notice coming your way...

Important notice coming your way in a backpack near you.

Volunteer notice went home yesterday for Kamp Kiwanis on June 14 - please consider helping us out.  It is a beautiful setting with some fun on the side.

SLA tests continue into next week.  Headphones are super important.  Please check with your student.

Congratulations to our Pillars of Care award winners for the month of May:
Anna - care for learning and care for self
Connie - care for others
Liam - care for place


Have a great weekend in the sun.

May 22

Thank you to those who came for Student Led conferences last week - hard to believe that we are almost at the end of our time together.  If you were not able to make an appointment give me a phone call at 403-777-6610 and we can set something up.

We wrote our first Student Learning Achievement Test today.  We started with the written portion and wrote about planning a trip.  Thursday we will continue with the written portion of the math.  Please check with your student that they still have working headphones at school because they will need them on Friday for the digital portion of the test.

Spring concert Wednesday evening at 6:30 pm.
Pillars of Care assembly Friday @ 8:15

Student Led Conferences

Look for social studies coming home in backpacks today.  I know it is a beautiful day but Thursday is our hard deadline on this.  Lots of time has been given in the classroom so you might want to have that discussion about how time is used.

Student Led conferences Thursday and Friday.  Please have your student with you - we can't do anything without them😁

Peru homework

Students are handing in their Peru work on Thursday - their graphic organizer, sticky notes and completed questions.  Ask your student how their work is coming along. They were to decide for themselves today if they needed time at home tonight in order to get that work done.

Book the Second of the Tale of Despereaux was completed this afternoon and students are writing about the three most important events and the best vivid mental image.  Determining Importance is a difficult skill and we all are in need of practice.

Book orders due tomorrow
Book Fair is open to us tomorrow during our library time but it will be open during student led conferences.

Apple a Day

We had a presentation on healthy eating and found out a few things about sugar in our food and how to read a nutrition label.  Ask your student which drink has the most sugar in it and what would make a better choice.

We are working hard to complete a graphic organizer and answer comprehension questions about Peru.  This work needs to be done by Thursday so you may see it in a backpack in the next day or so if it looks like your student will not be finished.  Time is given everyday to complete this activity.

Illumination - we learned so much about this word today.  'tion' is the suffix ending.  'Luminate' is the root word and it means to light up and 'il' is a prefix and a prefix comes at the beginning of the word.  Work will continue through out Despereaux about these new concepts.

Book orders due Wednesday May 16
Student Led conferences Thursday May 17 3:30 - 7:30 and Friday 8:00-12:00

Cursive writing

We are super excited to announce that we have conquered the lower case cursive writing alphabet!!  Hip hip hooray for us.  Next week we will have a handwriting test and then carry on to the upper case letters.

Mathletics is an excellent website to use at home for practicing math concepts.  We are currently working through fractions.  Your student needs to be able to explain that a fraction represents part of a whole and describe where fractions might be used.  We can relate everything back to a cookie!!

Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro.  Ask your student what it means in our novel study, The Tale of Despereaux.  We had to look it up in the dictionary and we felt it was a pretty interesting word for the author to choose to use in her story.  We wrote, I wonders as we moved into Book the Second.


'Which is bigger one-half or one third?'
'Which is bigger one-third or one-eighth?'

'How many fourths does it take to equal one-half?'
'How many eighths does it take to equal one-half?'

These are the type of questions we worked on today in math as we become comfortable working with fractions.

Beam Designs

'Do all beam designs support the same mass?'
We built a box girder, rectangular beam and an accordion beam.  Students have made a hypothesis in their science notebook and given a reason and are now ready to add the mass to the beam.  Ask your student which beam they think will hold the most mass.

I introduced fractions today and everyone built their own fraction kit by cutting and folding paper into equal parts and naming them.  It went really well.  Have your student help you in the kitchen tonight and measure 1/2 or 1/4 or 1/8 for you!

Fun lunch tomorrow -

Foundations and Beams

Tomorrow is pajama day at Beddington Heights - students have earned this day through their work and play.

We wrapped up our work with perimeter by using a combination of Lego blocks to build rectangles with a given perimeter.  101 uses for Lego!!

We finished Book the First in the Tale of Despereaux and once again we are horrified about the way Despereaux's family treat him and the prospects of being in a dungeon.

Our next lesson in science has us looking at foundations and beams.  Please take the time to show your student the foundation of the house (most have assured me they don't have a foundation) and any exposed beams there may be in the structure.  This is a great hands on unit for parents out there that are in the construction business.

Fair Test

Fun lunch orders due tomorrow
Spring pictures tomorrow

It is important for a science experiment to be a fair test.  We found out today that to have a fair test we need to make sure the factors all stay the same.  We conducted a fair test together and although all factors were the same not everyone had the same result.  But, the test was fair.  I love the word fair in grade 3!

We investigated polygons in our classroom to determine their perimeter.  Everyone found 5 different polygons estimated the perimeter, drew the object and found the actual perimeter.  Fun time in math.

Building Tasks

We started the last day of April with building tasks.  Each partnership started with a task card and something to build with - paper rolls, dice, pipe cleaners etc.  Investigations began as we tried to determine what would make a good building material. In grade 3 students need to be able to work with a partner to complete a science task - listen to their partners ideas and offer their own ideas.  Harder than you might think.

Perimeter work continued today as we measured and wrote about polygons and their perimeters.

Headphones.  Many children have lost, broken or taken home their headphones that we used to complete testing in October.  We need to repeat that testing in May and all students will need to have headphones again.  Please check with your student to ensure they still have working headphones.

Spring photos Tuesday

Spring Photos

On Wednesday, May 2nd, we will be hosting our first Spring Photo day.  For every student and staff member that has their photo taken, Lifetouch will donate $2.00 to our school.  If every student participates, that is over $900.00!  As with our fall photo day, proof packages will come home with your student a week or so later.  There is no obligation to purchase.   

Students will bring home a "Spring Portraits" form; please fill it out with your child's name and class and select a pose.  Teachers will collect these forms prior to photo day.  We hope everyone will participate. Thank you.”

Ask your student how they are coming along with their letters to their pen pals.  We are working on asking thought provoking questions - questions that matter and writing details about ourselves that the other child will be excited to read - going deeper than 'I am a girl.'

We are beginning to find the perimeter of polygons and we have found that there is more than one way to determine the distance around a shape.  Next week we will do some investigating of polygons in our own classroom.

Editing Process

Students began drafting ideas and information about themselves into short paragraphs to their pen pal today.  We will be using the editing process to identify misspelled words, capital letters and proper punctuation before putting the work into good copy.  Everyone was super excited to get underway.

Fire drill this afternoon led to a discussion about general safety.  It has been sometime since we were able to have a drill so it was a good reminder to be listening and thinking the whole way.

We continue to work on division.  Great dinner table conversation would be around equally sharing the french fries or equally sharing cookies.  Cookies are one of my favorite topics - they lend themselves so well to math!!

Pen Pals

We are so excited!!
We received mail today.  In the mail was a letter for each one of us from a grade 3 or grade 4 student at Piitoayis Family School.  We will begin learning about letter writing this week and reply back to our new friends.  Ask your student about their letter.

Some of us dipped our toes into perimeter today while others finished up their division work.  Students used geoboards to create shapes that had perimeters of a certain size.  Geoboards are great fun.

Out Toolbelts

Constable Kovacs was in this morning to talk about tools we all have for coping and managing stress.  He introduced to us all the tools he has on his duty belt to help him do his job and then he told us about the tools he was born with (brain, eyes, hands, heart) that assist him in his job.  He helped students recognize the tools that they have to help deal with their emotions and read us a story.  Ask your child what tools they have for dealing with stress.

We read 'One Hundred Hungry Ants' in math to explore the different ways 100 ants could get to a picnic before the food was all gone.  Students then worked with the number 20 to see how the ants could be organized into one line, two lines, three lines etc up to 10 lines.  Students were then able to challenge themselves with their own number.  This allows me to see that your student is able to share items out equally and that they can see not all numbers can be divided equally.

Congratulations to our Pillar Of Care award winners:
Marissa, Yoyo and Logan
No school tomorrow Friday April 20

Math Night

Thanks to all of you who got your homework done last night!

Math night tomorrow from 6 - 8 please sign up on the school website.

Students starting working with a little book called, 'Wish You Were Here Tunisia.'  They began by asking questions, making connections and noting the pictures on the front.  They are using the non-fiction text features of the table of content, captions, charts, glossary etc. to answer comprehension questions.  In grade 3 we must be able to locate answers to questions and extract appropriate information.

See you tomorrow -

Homework for Parents

Homework for parents tonight is described in the letter your student brought home today tucked into their social studies notebook.  Please read the letter and sign the notebook and return to school tomorrow.  Thank you.

Students completed a little mart project today.  Mart being taking a math concept and applying it to an art project.  We read,  'Miss Rumphius' again today and then did a multiplication activity with the lupines that she plants around her neighborhood.  We talked about the rule of thirds in drawing, 1/3 is the foreground, 1/3 is the middle and 1/3 is the background.  Each scene has a multiplication sentence hidden in it.  To see our wonderful projects sign up on the school website for a  visit on Thursday evening for math night.

We had a look at a video about a boy in Tunisia who rides a camel for sport.  We noticed that he lives in the middle of a very dry desert and learned that camels like grape juice!!

Book orders due Wednesday
Pillars of Care assembly Thursday @ 1:15

167th day of January

It feels like the 167th day of January.  We are all so so so tired of this snow.  I look forward to the day when my coat room is not littered with mitts, toques and snow pants!!

We started today with a personal reflection of our Box Project.  Students were thinking and writing about their experience with the engineering process.  We will have a look at them at the end of our science unit.

Students are comparing their school to the school of a child in India, Peru, Ukraine or Tunisia.  We have done lots of reading, we have textbooks and have seen videos now we are thinking how we are the same and how we are different and if their quality of life plays a role.

Despereaux has broken the most basic and elemental of all mice rules - he has revealed himself to humans.  This was the basis of our discussion during novel study.  His brother saw what was doing and went to tell father.  Students then drew their best mental image of what was happening and wrote a short paragraph about their picture.


Book orders due Wednesday April 18
Math Night Thursday April 19.  Please sign up on the school website.

April Scholastic

Scholastic book orders for April went home today.  Let's have those back to school by Wednesday next week.  If your student wants something from Arrow you will need to look online at their offerings this month - I didn't get those flyers.  Scholastic.ca

We are almost finished our box project.  Tomorrow we will look at solving a few of the problems that have occurred by asking questions and coming to new understandings.

We are using Mathletics to further our work on division.  Athletics is something your student can use at home along with Tumblebooks and Raz-Kids.  Reminder that your student should be reading 20 minutes by themselves and 10 minutes to someone else.  Everyday.

Annotation

We took another crack at annotating while reading to help your student refine their understanding of  text.  We have two symbols we are using - ask your student about them - and we write them right on the text.  Annotation is a record of the students thinking and it helps me to see that they were thinking while reading.  Annotation also helps when we discuss the text.  Students remember what they were thinking at the time.  We then wrote a little about our annotations as I am looking for the deeper questions (ones not answered in the text) and deeper connections (connections with details)

Box projects are coming along!  Ask your student if they need anything from home.

Jersey day tomorrow

What to do with a box...

Students all have a plan of what to do with their box.  They have completed a material list and have thought through how they are going to make their project come alive.  Reminder that everything they want to add to their box must come from home.  Lots of pictures show toilet rolls, popsicle sticks and paper.  Please ask your student what they need for their box project.

Looking divisible today.  What can a number be equally divided by and how you can tell just by looking.  So we have decided that odd and even numbers make a difference, skip counting is helpful and multiplication tables are super important - help your child by working on basic facts at home!

Busy Monday

Many great things went on in our classroom today.

We shared raisins during a math activity that had us estimating how many raisins would be in a 40 gram snack size box, grouping them for counting, adding all the raisins at our table groups together and finding out how many raisins we had altogether.  One thing that we discovered is in a snack box of raisins there was a range of raisins from 24 to 51!  Students were estimating, adding, dividing and multiplying all in one little activity.

We started our box project this morning by talking about our boxes in table groups.  We had a close look at the size, shape, special features, holes, flaps openings etc.  We analyzed every aspect of the box and our brains said, 'Hmmm...'  Students drew and labeled their boxes to include all the special features.  Tomorrow we will look at what to do with a box.  Reminder that anything your student is going to add to their box must come from home.

We finally got to chapter 1 of the Tale of Despereaux today after much anticipation.  We read together and then students wrote a summary, In the story... and then wrote a connection This reminds me of... which lets me know they are thinking about the text.

Thursday, April 12 will be Jersey Day in recognition of the Humboldt Broncos tragedy in Saskatchewan Friday night.  To show our care and compassion for those affected, students are encouraged to wear a team jersey, school shirt or green and yellow.  Our thoughts are with those families.

Math Homework/Box

Math homework due back tomorrow -

We are working on strategies for division.
We started today with the Calgary Zoo receiving 12 panda bears.  The zoo keeper put an equal number of panda bears in the  2 available enclosures.  How many panda bears are in each enclosure?  We put the 12 panda bears one at a time into the enclosures until there were none left and wrote the division problem in numbers.
Guided practice was provided as students used their own whiteboards to draw and move panda into enclosures.
Students were given 24 counters and four cupcake liners to manage their own 'pandas' and told that they had a shipment of 24 pandas and their job was to figure out how many animals would fit into 1, 2, 3, 4 enclosures.  They are to model the division through the objects, draw it in their math books and write a division sentence for each.
Students who did not finish are bringing this home for homework.

What do you think engineers do? was the science question today.  We talked to our partner, watched a video and then read 'Rosie Revere, Engineer.'  Rosie had to solve a few problems, some that took several attempts, and come up with new inventions.  We learned that engineers solve problems.  If there are any engineer parents out there we would like to hear from you!

Reminder that everyone needs a box for Monday.

New Project

Announcing our Magnificent Box project!
We all need a box.  Any box.  Big box.  Small box.  Interesting box.
For Monday April 9
The box will be transformed into something magnificent.
Anything that is added to the box to transform it will come from home.


Share Dance 2018 is the website of Canada's National Ballet School that the instructors gave to students to have a look at their dance!  Ask your student about their ballet experience!

Great Beginnings

We had a day full of great beginnings!  It was nice to see everyone back again rested and ready for the last three months of grade 3.  Hard to believe right?

We began our new science unit with a discussion about the difference between learning and understanding.  Students today get information from a variety of sources but it is what they do with that information that is important.  We will start a unit on building and testing materials in science so we talked about understanding means that we can take some facts that we know and make sense of them by applying it to our work.  We can ask questions, make connections, gather information and add facts to our brains.  We have much work to do in this area.

Division had begun in math.  Today we read, 'The Doorbell Rang' a great story of sharing cookies among various friends.  Students are retelling the story using pictures, numbers and words.  We have already linked division to multiplication and are able to write math equations both ways.

Five pictures were presented to students to draw and then the question was put to them, "What to these items have in common and how might they tell a story?" and so we began a novel study today that is a favorite.  Students have been told if they are familiar with the story not to spoil it for everyone else and if they have seen the movie to know that the book is very different from the movie version.  Ask your student what the novel study title is.

Return the Sharing Dance form we begin tomorrow

Boost Athletic – After School Sports Programs
We’d like to invite all students to our After School Soccer Program at Beddington Heights School!
Boost is excited to be offering our 1st program at Beddington Heights School! For the 2018 Spring Season, we will be offering Soccer. The programs are led by Boost Athletic founders Andrew Fleming and Phil Malone and our sport-specific technical staff. All kids are eligible to join, whether they already play or not! We’d love to see new faces out on the field! Our program cost is $50 for each 6 week program and financial assistance is available for those who are in need, we will not turn any kids away because of cost!
If you are interested, please register online to hold your place at www.boostathletic.ca. All students must register online, but payment can be made on the first day via either cash, cheque or debit/credit through our mobile card readers. If you require financial assistance, please email Andrew.fleming@boostathletic.ca after registration and indicate that it is required.
Each program has limited places for the Outdoor Season. We will limit programs to the first 75 registrations.
Programs
www.boostathletic.ca

Outdoor Soccer

Thursdays 2.30-3.30

April 26th – May 31st

Canada's National Ballet

Canada's National Ballet is coming to Beddington!!
Your student had a consent to participate notice in their backpack.  Please return it first day back to school.  The Ballet Company will be with us April 4 and 5 so the turn around time with this is awkward but this is an excellent opportunity for our students.

April calendars also went home today in backpacks.

Have a great holiday everyone😎
See you Tuesday April 3😎

Happy First Day of Spring

Social Studies homework tonight due back tomorrow.  Students are asking one question and making one connection to the article, "Boat Ride to a Better Life"  I'm looking for evidence of deep thinking. We read, 'The Three Questions' this morning.  The young boy is asking his friends for the answers to this three questions.  We learned that the answers to his questions weren't right there in front of him, that not all questions have answers and those are probably the best ones of all!!

Creating and solving problems that involve multiplication was our task this morning.  We pulled numbers from the problem, estimated, wrote the equation and then solved in more than one way.  Experience connecting with real-worl situations is important to help students through the process.  Students then had the opportunity to write their own problems and have a friend solve.
Multiplication test Thursday morning.

No school Friday - system wide Professional Development Day

March Madness

Did you know that basketball was invented by a teacher who had a bunch of rowdy boys he didn't know what to do with?  We do!!  We were busy today brainstorming what we already knew about basketball and then asking questions about basketball and creating a plan to find the answers to our questions about basketball.  We had some fun too watching a few videos that showed the skills some other children have with the basketball.

We are trying our hand at multiplication story problems this week.  In grade three we need to be able to create and solve problems that involve multiplication.  We are aiming to have our multiplication unit test Thursday morning so we can begin division after Spring break.  Please continue helping your child with multiplication facts to 5x5.

Mr. Weins sent home a notice to purchase recorders $6.00 please.

Spring Break March 23 - April 2 (First day back is the Tuesday)

Cancellations

The warm weather that we have had has melted the community rink and our skating lessons have had to be cancelled.  Thank you to everyone who volunteered to help tie skates.  This will free up your mornings to have coffee!

Parent Council has cancelled tonights dance due to weather.  No word if they will reschedule.  Again.

We are working hard at asking deep questions.  Questions that matter and make us think beyond the book.

Pillars of Care assembly Friday 8:15

Annotating

We continued working on asking deep thinking questions today surrounding the story If...
Ask your child what sentence stem they are working with and how their questions are coming along.

We have been trying our hand at annotating while we are reading.  Think of it as reading with a pencil.  We started by highlighting facts in a newspaper article about swimming to school in India.  Today we made the infinity symbol on the article, 'Boat Ride to a Better Life' when we had a connection and a ? mark when we didn't understand a word or had a question.  Your student is working on making their thinking visible and interacting with the text.  This works with pictures and text.

We have begun solving story problems using multiplication.  Some of us are creating chocolate boxes for packing while others will begin tomorrow.  This gives students experience connecting real world situations to multiplication.

Pillars of Care assembly Friday March 16 8:15 am all welcome

Springing forward is for the birds...

This business of springing forward is hard on the short people in this classroom!  We are all in need of a nap - some of us by recess time.  Consider making bedtime just 15 or 20 minutes earlier for the rest of the week as we all adjust to the time change.  Studies show that sleep deprived children work 2 to 3 years below their grade level.

We looked at how children in Peru go to school today.  On Lake Titicaca some children go by boat.  We observed things in the photo, wondered about the photo, made connections and tried to ask deep thinking questions.  We watched a short video about the picture and going to school by boat in Peru and tomorrow we will do some reading.  We are activating our brains to get ready for the thinking by using some of these strategies.  Some of us are able to annotate as we read also.

Scholastic book orders due tomorrow -

Consider putting extra socks and pants into the backpacks as our playground and compound are going to be underwater any day now.  Children and water ...

"I can ask appropriate questions"

Good readers ask questions before, during and after reading.  Some questions are quick surface questions and their answers can be found right there on the page other questions are deep thinking questions and the answer has to come from the reader and the world around them.  I want your student to be aware of their thinking and be confident readers.  I will be directing them towards asking meaningful deep questions.  We started by playing with some play-doh which generated a lot of questions.  We then read 'Sami in the Times of Trouble' and marked all of our questions with sticky notes.  With a partner to read with everyone used sticky notes on their own books. We were so amazed with all of our questions in our books!

Science tests are in backpacks.  Ask your student.

Skating

Our class will be going ice-skating on March 19, 20 and 21 as long as the weather and rink conditions remain.  Kidsport is providing all of the equipment for us.  Students who own their own skates and helmet are welcome to bring their own gear.  Please note: a bike helmet is NOT a skating helmet and is NOT safe on the ice.  We will be skating at the Beddington Heights Community rink, which is a short walk from the school.  There is no cost for this activity.  Our class will be skating from 8:15 - 9:00 am all three days.  If you can help out with getting skates on and off I would really appreciate your help.  If have a volunteer clearance form in the office and you are free all or some of those days drop me an e-mail.  You don't need to be able to skate but do feel free to join us!

Scholastic book orders due Wednesday March 14

This and that...

Jump Rope For Heart due in tomorrow.
Sound and Hearing Test tomorrow.  Don't forget to review the study notes that were sent home last week, all the answers are there.
We took some of the facts we learned about the Iditarod and dog sledding to write about Akiak this afternoon.  We embedded some opinions in our writing also.  We are working towards being able cowrite strong paragraphs with topic sentences and 4 - 5 supporting sentences.
Last week Mr. Hebert was offering a popcorn incentive to the classroom that had the fewest 'incidents' and we were the winning group.  Popcorn will be served tomorrow morning and we are very happy with ourselves!!

Our Band of Guitars, Drums, Kazzos and Can on a String

We saw some fantastic musical instruments today!!
Great care and attention to detail was evident.  We brought Mr. Weins up to see our work and he too was impressed -

Science test Friday - please use the notes that were sent home for review - all the answers to the test lie there.

Iditarod

I am super excited to see the musical instruments students have made at home come to school tomorrow.  I've heard some great things.  Animal hearing cards are also due tomorrow.

We were counting by 5's today - nickels, fingers, other items that come in groups of five.  Those that felt comfortable added the 5 times tables to their multiplication chart.  In grade 3 we are responsible for being familiar with strategies to determine products so explaining an array, equal groups, repeated addition, or a number line.

Sunday the 2018 Iditarod race began in Alaska.  We had a look at a couple of videos about the race and then read the book 'Akiak' sorting facts and opinions and asking topic appropriate questions.  Ask you student about the Iditarod and the question they have about the race.

Jump Rope For Heart due Friday March 9

Baby it's cold outside!

Good Canadian children need to be dressed for outside.  Many of us were caught today without our mitts and hats.  Boy were we sorry!

We played another round of Circles and Stars Bing this morning and then we started a journal piece about the game.  Students are writing about the game so they can teach someone at home to play the game.  Writing about math gives us insight into how well students understand the concept.

We are proud to say we wrote another class book today.  Ask your student.


Musical instruments and animal hearing cards are due Wednesday, March 7
Jump Rope for Heart fundraiser ends Friday, March 9

Animal Hearing Research

Animal hearing cards came home today to be finished.  They are due back at school Wednesday, March 7 with the musical instrument your student is making.  Two animals must be completed and they are: bat, owl, frog, elephant and dolphin.  I am looking for complete answers - that means full sentences with two or three important points.  Drawings should be colored.  We used the following steps to help ourselves:
BGRS science grade 3
Hearing and Sound
Animal trading card

Beddington Heights Olympics wrapped up today - ask your child how their team finished up.

We are becoming very knowledgable of our multiplication tables - ask us!

Important Papers

Your student has some important papers in their backpack.

First, they have the instructions for their musical instrument that they are to build at home.  It must be built out of items found at home.  They do not have a budget for this project.  Their instrument must demonstrate pitch and have a loudness control.  They are welcome to search the internet for ideas with your blessing.  Project due on Wednesday, March 6.

On the flip side of the project instruction page you will find a study guide for the Hearing and Sound unit test which will be Friday March 8.  All the highlights are there and also the name of 2 websites that have all the test answers!

Secondly they have their Jump Rope For Heart envelope.  All the instructions are on the envelope.  They have two weeks to collect sponsors.

I will be out of the building tomorrow - so I will remind you now that Wednesday is Pink Shirt day and also Fun lunch.

Ocean Odyssey

Ocean Odyssey is the website we used today for hearing and sound.  We worked together to free the mermaid by answering questions about pitch, frequency and sound waves.  There is more to the game as we didn't have time to work through the whole website.  It would serve as a good review for a certain upcoming unit test.

Ask your child how they did with sticker math today.  It was tricky to be sure.  It required multiple steps in order to solve.  The background knowledge that we brought to the question was the names of coins and their value.  Super important that your student handle money.  Give them opportunities to collect change, count money and tell you the names of the coins.  This will set them up for life as financial literacy is a life skill.

Pillars of Care Assembly 8:15 tomorrow morning

Congratualtions to:  Sadie, Elizabeth, Kaleb, and Elainna

Punctuality Movie Reward

One of our current focuses at Beddington Heights is improving the number of students who arrive at school on time in the morning.  In December we introduced the “Punctuality Award” at our monthly Pillars of Care assembly to recognize students who have arrived on time every day that month.  We also made a promise that if our students’ punctuality improved we would celebrate with a movie.  We are pleased to say that we have seen an overall improvement and will be holding our first movie session tomorrow (Thursday, February 22) during lunchtime.  Students that normally go home for lunch are welcome to bring their lunch and stay with their classmates to enjoy the show. 

I can recognize a fact and an opinion.

I can recognize a fact and an opinion is the learning objective we are working on this week.  We began by expressing facts we know and then opinions about topics orally.  We read 'The Web Files' because Duckdetective Web always asks for, "Just the facts ma'am.  Just the facts" as he solves crimes in the barnyard.  Together we created an anchor chart with buzz words that will help us determine facts and opinions while we are reading.  Independently students created a foldable for themselves about facts and opinions.  We will take this knowledge into our social studies this week as we look at ways children get to school in other countries.

We started to analyze which products are possible with the factors from 1 to 6 in multiplication from our Circles and Stars answers.  It was an opportunity to think about why some numbers are more likely than others. For instance we have noticed there are no 7's when playing this game but there are a lot of 12's.  We have collected a lot of data that we will look at more closely in the next little while.

One more day at the pool - and then we will all officially be fish.

'I can express my feelings through words' is the end statement we worked on today.  We listened to 'Somebody Loves You Mr. Hatch' discussed the changes that took place during the story for the character and then talked about things that we love about our selves.  Everyone created a tree map with the statement - I love that I can, have, am.

We continue to work with computers to put our stories into good copy and into a classroom book.  Looking forward to the published version.

Fun lunch orders due tomorrow.
No school Thursday, Friday and Monday

Postponed

Collectively, we all need to think warm thoughts!
It was to cold again this morning for us to cross country ski.
Our dates have been pushed into March.
Hopefully Mother Nature will cooperate at that time with sun and snow😎

CBCkids/Olympics has some great information about the Winter Olympics.  We are following a skeleton athlete by the name of Barrett Martineau who is the nephew of our Mrs. Paolini.  He will compete this week and we can't wait to see how he does.  Check out his story on CBC

We continue to work on our keyboarding skills to compose and revise our stories in the style of David Shannon.  The finished product should be great fun to read.

We looked at how children in other parts of the world get to school everyday - ask your child about one way children get to school.

Fun Lunch orders due Wednesday
Now school Thursday, Friday or Monday

Swimming lessons are going great - your students are having a ball!

Not Our Day

Sorry to say swimming lessons were cancelled today due to road conditions.⛄
Sorry to say cross country skiing was cancelled due to wind chill.⛄
It was not our day.😒
We did teach Mr. Mahon's class to play Oh No, 99.  Ask your student to teach you tonight.  It's a great game and all you need is a deck of cards.

Fun Lunch orders due Wednesday
Scholastic book order due tomorrow

Good Canadian Children

Cross Country skiing begins tomorrow.  Good Canadian children know how to dress to be outside for an hour.  Should be great if we get that  dump of snow tonight.⛄

Swimming lessons are going great.  Everyone is getting wet and having a great time.  Lessons will continue next week.

Scholastic book orders due Friday

As students begin reading chapter books the ability to make pictures in their head is vital.  We are practising visualizing and talking about the words the author used to put that picture in our heads.  This morning we practiced making pictures together and drawing them on the chart then everyone took a pice of poetry to make pictures with and determine the picture words.  Thinking about the authors words means tuning in to your thinking!

Making equal groups is still our focus in math.  The math sentences that go along with the pictures are most important.

YAHOO!! Swimming

We begin swimming lessons tomorrow afternoon.  We reviewed the necessary items, and some not necessary items at our morning meeting today.  It would be a good idea for the girls to tie back their long hair and toques come to the pool to cover wet hair.

Also note that Thursday we have our first cross country ski lesson as noted on the February calendar and written about in the February newsletter found on our website.  Dressing for the weather will be super important on Thursday - in layers would be best.  Warm socks (not nylons) with snow pants, toque and mitts.  I think this will be great fun for good Canadian children!!

I introduced a game of Circles and Stars today that gives students a visual representation that multiplication is repeated addition!  We began by rolling a die and drawing that many circles on our paper.  We rolled the die again and drew in that number of stars in each circle.  We then figured out how many stars we had drawn all together.  Some of us were able to write the repeated addition sentence to match.  For example 5 circles with 2 stars in each would have the number 10 written with it and then the sentence 2+2+2+2+2=10  We will continue with this tomorrow.

We discovered today that we can all visualize in our heads and that everyone will have a different picture because we all have different experiences.  Some of us see things in color, while others see them in black and white but we should all be using smell, taste, feel and sound along with our picture.  Ask your child about their lollipop.

Writing Homework

Math Writing Homework - due tomorrow.
Chopstick Problem - Suppose I'm planning a Chinese meal for everyone in our class.  How many chopsticks would I need to bring?
Students are explaining in writing how to solve the chopstick problem we discussed yesterday.  I'm interested in how they think about the problem.  They should be using a combination of pictures, numbers and words.

Story Writing Homework - story written in the style of David Shannon with an animal getting on a form of transportation and visiting other animals due Tuesday Feb. 6 complete with adjectives and conversation.

Ask your student about our tuning fork experiment this morning.  I didn't go off very well but they should be able to explain that sound is a vibration that travels through air to our ear.  The harder we hit the tuning fork the louder the sound was.  When we put it into water we should have small ripples because the water acts as resistance to slow down the vibration but we could not get the tuning fork to vibrate enough.  Perhaps we were to gentle!

Swim Forms Due Tomorrow

Swim forms are due in tomorrow - they have to be taken to the pool for organization.  Please help out Mr. Sadowsky by having your forms in on time.

Adjectives

Schoolhouse Rock.  For those of you who remember they made great little commercials that taught little concepts for children.  We used 'Unpack Your Adjectives' to help understand how to add detail to our writing.  We found out that adjectives can describe a color, feelings, sounds, behavior, how something looks and feels.  The challenge is to get it into our story.  We know that good writers create a picture for their audience with their words.  We then continued to write our personal story.

We started an experiment with a tuning fork in science that we will continue tomorrow.  We looked at a couple of really neat video clips that were capturing sound as it travels.

Mission Impossible has proved, once again, to be a challenge.  Ask your student how they did today in the course.

Super Blood Moon will occur for the first time in 35 years and the first one in North America for 150 years.  Have a look in the sky around 6 am tomorrow for your best view of the red orb in the western sky.

I can add details to make my setting, characters and events interesting.

I can add details to make my setting, characters and events interesting is the student outcome we began working on today.  With this in mind we began writing a story in the style of David Shannon.  David Shannon writes some of our favorite books, 'No, David', 'David Gets in Trouble'.  After reading 'Duck on a Bike' we began making a plan for our own story, the characters (animals) setting and their transportation.  Since we are working on detail we will be adding adjectives and adverbs to our work along with dialogue.  Can't wait to read the end result.

Math test tomorrow on the different methods to add and subtract larger numbers.  So, breaking apart addends, number lines, algorithms, adding tens to tens and ones to ones, building numbers with blocks.  Showing me flexability with numbers.  Then we will turn our attention to multiplication and division.

Student Led Conferences

See y'all tonight!!

But not tomorrow -

Swimming Lessons

Swimming lessons start Feb. 6

Paperwork for swimming lessons was sent home today. 

We believe swimming to be a life skill and an important part of the physical education system.

Please fill out the forms and return them to school by Thursday Feb. 1 so we can get all the information to the pool that they will need to make classes.

Determining Importance

What matters most?
One thing I should notice...

These were our take aways about determining importance.  We listened to Three Dog Night sing 'Black and White' (yes from 1972!)  and talked about what was important.  We listened for the important ideas - the lines that were repeated - and then talked about our thinking.  Your students have great ideas.  Application to our social studies textbook and the services in other countries was  little bit more difficult and requires more work!

Sticker math proved to be frustrating for some this morning - the question 'How do you know?' created a stir because students were using numbers that they could not prove or explain where they came from.  Something that we will continue to work on.  Numbers can't just appear as if from thin air.

Metacognition

Metacognition - the biggest and most important grade 3 word.  Ever.
Your student may be checking with you at supper tonight to see what you know about metacognition. They know that it means to think about your thinking.  While I read 'Ruby Bridges' today we kept track of how many times I was thinking about the story and how many times I was reading the words of the story.  We found that I did way more thinking then reading.  Which is the way it should be!!
Everyone wrote about what they had been thinking about Miss Ruby using sentence starters such as:

• I noticed...
• I'm thinking...
• This reminds me of...
• I'm wondering...
• I'm feeling...

Services are important to a community and today we brainstormed and wrote about what we felt to be our most important services.  Tomorrow, we will look at the 4 countries we are learning about and the services they receive in their community.

Student Led Conferences Thursday January 25

System Wide PD day Friday January 26

Services

Services.
What services are provided in our community?
We talked about services, their characteristics, examples and the hard part - non-examples of services.  We will expand this into services that are provided in the four countries we are learning about.

Some of us were using Mathletics this morning to work on subtracting two and three digit numbers while others were solving story problems that involved more than one step.  We sure were busy!

We wrapped up our mini unit on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a tree map of who he was, what he wanted, and things that he said.  We read 'Viola Desmond Won't be Budged!' for a Canadian perspective on civil rights - ask your child about Ms. Viola and her claim to fame.

Pillars of Care assembly Friday 8:15
Scholastic Book orders due Friday
Student Led Conferences Thursday,  January 25 from 6 -8 pm

I can subtract two digit numbers and explain my strategies

I can subtract two digit numbers and explain my strategies.

We reviewed rounding (4 or less let it rest, 5 or more raise the score) and then we started to estimate numbers.  Estimation is a strategy that can be used for subtraction.  Some of us found it to be very simple and easy to use.  With our elbow partners we turned over four playing cards to make two 2-digit numbers.  We estimated the difference between the two numbers by rounding each number to the nearest ten and subtracting mentally.  Everyone was able to do this 10 times over.  We've created an anchor chart to help us to remember the various strategies we could use for subtraction.  Everyone has a method they prefer.

We are working on breaking down big, unfamiliar words for reading with various strategies.  We know the names of the vowels and the sounds they make so today we worked with syllables by clapping the parts of a word or putting our hands under our chin and counting how many times our chin moves when we say a word.  We counted the syllables in everyone's name and then went to books looking for bigger words.  We found words with 14 syllables, but my word won with 19 syllables.  An exit ticket was written with what we learned about syllables today.

Scholastic book orders due Friday
Pillars of Care assembly Friday
Brown report card envelope needs to be returned
Still missing A LOT of homework

Gymnastics is upon us

Gymnastics is upon us in the gym but there are some very important safety rules that must be followed:

• no hoodies
• no draw strings on tops or bottoms
• no jewelry
• no dresses/skirts/loose clothing
• hair to the shoulder and down must be tied back
• shirts are tucked into pants

Thanks for helping out with the details it just helps with the safety if we all follow the guidelines.

Math homework check - ask your child only 8/24 students had their math done and handed in.

Cold Weather Inventory

I have more mitts, gloves, hats, snow pants and scarves in my coat room then children in my classroom!!  Inventory your child tonight and see what you are missing.  If this cold snap continues they will run out of things to put on at home.

Math homework tonight can come back to school on Monday.  Students are showing me various ways to add larger numbers.  They are decomposing, using number lines, and breaking apart addends.  Get them to explain to you what they are doing - see if they make a good teacher.

We experimented with pitch and frequency today.  We found out that without vibration there cannot be any sound.  I introduced the idea of a musical instrument project for the end of the month.  We will talk more about that in the classroom and instructions will be sent home later.

Please make sure you have sent me your brown report card envelope.

Treat everyone like it is their birthday!

"Not everybody has been treated like a somebody," Kid President told us today.  He wants us all to treat everyone like it is their birthday and we love that idea!  A biography is the story of someones life so we have been reading about Martin Luther King Jr. and his life trying to change the way people think.  We found out a lot of key facts about him and have had a history lesson in the process. We used the dictionary today to find the meaning of the word freedom and its antonym.

Everyone has science homework tonight to listen to the sounds around them in the house, in the yard and on the street.  We walked through the school this morning and just listened to all the sounds in this building and it was amazing how many sounds we heard.  We watched a quick video "How Old Are Your Ears" that showed us that our hearing ages and it certainly does because students heard a lot more than I did during their test.  Might mean something for me!  Science homework needs to be back at school tomorrow please.

Reminder that Mr. Sadowsky wants us all to be stretching every night for five minutes to get us ready for gymnastics later this month.

I can give examples of vibrations.

Vibration was the vocabulary word we looked at today in science.  Many examples were given of things that can vibrate and then we looked at The Slow Mo guys examples of vibration which was kind of fun to see paint vibrate on a speaker and the colors mix together in slow motion.   We came to realize that all things that vibrate make a sound.

Strategies are most important in math - arriving at the right answer is just step one.  To explain how you got there is even more important.  We repeated yesterday's lesson using 1001 Things To Spot and talked further about strategies for adding larger numbers.  Students are now showing me that they can use a variety of strategies to solve questions.

Please sign and return the brown report card folder.  You may keep all the papers that were sent home inside for your personal files.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

We had a great first day back everyone was rested and ready to work -

1001 Things to Spot  is a much loved series of books in any classroom.  We used In the Sea today to provide a context for using place value to add with regrouping.  We began by estimating the number of items to be found on the page and then used interlocking cubes to build the number of items to be found on each page.  We were left with 10 'trains' of blocks to add together which helped us to focus on strategies for combining the numbers.  Several different strategies were put forward and we worked through each one to determine there were 63 items under the sea.  We will continue this work tomorrow with a different page.

Sound and Hearing is the science unit we started before the break.  Today we worked with a partner to flip through books we have in the classroom and find some interesting facts.  Ask your child what they may have found on their own.

We used 'My Fantastic Elastic Brain' and Benny the Bookworm to talk about how our brains work while we are reading.  We found many facts about the brain that were very interesting, but bottom line, the most important, was that making mistakes allows the brain to grow!!  Must be why we all have erasers.  Students wrote in their journals what they learned about their brain and drew a picture of the the body parts they use while reading.