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.