Week 10 & 11

November 08, 2019

LITERACY

Our book study for the month of October was focsued on the book Crankenstein by Samantha Berger. Whos is Crankenstein, you may ask? He may look like a regular school aged boy but when faced with a rainy day, melting popsicle, early bed time he transforms into a mumbling, grumpy Crankenstein! The students took part in a number of activities surrounding this book including writing a descriptive paragraph about their very own Crankenstein and a STEM challenge! In the STEM activity the students were challenged to create a calm down tool to use when they are about to feel cranky. It had a set limit of materials and it had to fit inside a pocket with a moveable part. The students made their initial sketch of their calm down tool and then got into groups and shared their ideas. Once they had some feedback from their peers, they finalized their design and started to build their fidget. They turned out amazing and the students were so proud of their creations!

Shared our writing with some Kinders!

Sharing Our Designs!

Our Calm Down Tools!

Writing: With the upcoming importance of Remembrance Day, I read the book Peace Feels Like by Vladamir Radunsky. As I read the book, I asked the students to close their eyes and imagine how the authors describe peace using their five senses. The students shared some of their own ideas of what PEACE feels like, sounds like, looks like, feels like and tastes like...They used these thoughts to write their own "Peace Feels Like..." paragraph. For more imagery to inspire their writing project, I read What is Peace? by Wallace Edwards. The students realized that the idea of peace is different for everyone but the feelings such as calm, happiness, awareness of body are usually present when experiencing peace.

Reading/Phonics: Congratulations to these 3D students for reaching a total of 600 minutes of reading at home!!!! They hopped in their car and drove to the first pit stop - Canada.

AND a congratulations to this student for reaching the second pitstop by reading a total of 1200 minutes!!!!

Handwriting: The students began their new set of cursive letters: the second kite string letters. They started with the letter b.

Reading: This week, the students were introduced to the squeaky "ee" spelling rule. Spelling Test #6 included words such as: three, street, queen, agree, cheek. The oddball word was favourite and the bonus word was Remembrance Day. The students took part in various word work activity to help them prepare for the spelling test on Friday.

MATHEMATICS

Last week, 3D started their new unit Number Senses with a focus on place value.
Students are learning how to represent three digit numbers using place value blocks: hundreds, tens and ones. With this knowledge, they are asked to determine the value of each number. This week, students focused on the term expanded form and how to "expand" a number into its parts, for instance, the expanded form of 435 is 435= 400+30+5.

The Grade 3s practiced their basic facts of +8 and +9 in the form of Mad Minutes. Their personal goal was to get more equations solved each day. Practice at home is encouraged. The Grade 3s are rocking their Thursday scores. Keep up the fantastic effort!

SOCIAL STUDIES

This week, the third graders finished up their unit of Mapping. The students learned about the seven continents: North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, Antarctica. As a class, we watched a video about each continent and made jot notes and organized them in a bubble chart. The students were asked to listen for facts and unique characteristics of each continent. I recorded their findings on chart paper. They used these facts to write three sentences about each continent.

See below for National Geographic Kids links to the videos about each continent. The students loved learning about the cool things you can find in the various continents.