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