Nov. 25

 Thank you to everyone who met with us for Parent Conferences. That connection is so important for all of us and really helps us keep connected! It was nice to have the time to be able to see each other and talk about your children and their progress. 

I noticed a few questions that many of us had that I thought I could add to this blog today!I  know that families are looking for more books so here are a few sites with some book recommendations for grade 3. I hope this helps keep busy and engaged over the winter break!

This site is great for recommending books based on other books:

https://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/

Recommended Books:

https://www.readbrightly.com/books-for-advanced-second-third-grade-readers/

Grade 3 Series:

https://imaginationsoup.net/24-book-series-3rd-graders/

Non-Fiction:

https://imaginationsoup.net/nonfiction-books-8-year-olds/

The other thing that came up often was around reading sight words. I have attached the list of words that students should be working on reading in grade 3. Remember that not all children are the same and some need more practice with them than others. Here are a couple of websites that have some games and activities you can do as a family to practice sight words. If you practice these at home, try to make it fun and engaging so that kids will want to read them - they will have more success with games and fun than rote memorization.

https://sightwords.com/sight-words/fry/

https://www.themeasuredmom.com/10-simple-sight-word-activities/

https://www.readbrightly.com/sight-word-games-activities-reading-ideas/

We have been working on finishing our science projects creating a Wild Animal or a Life Cycle stop-motion video. I hope to have these posted by early next week to our Google Classroom! The students are so proud of them, so please take some time to ask them about their projects. I will post some guiding questions and more information about the project next week so that you have some background information and ideas for discussion. 

Lastly, with the announcement last night, I wanted to say how glad I am that our students still get to come to school until the winter break! They are so happy to come to school each day to learn and see their friends.  That being said, we will be online for one week at the end of our winter break (Jan 4 - 8). We will continue to practice logging in to Google Classroom, using Google Meet and using the technology tools so that they are ready for this week. We will ensure that what we are doing that week is intentional and  purposeful and that the learning tasks will connect to what we do when we are back to in-person classes. I know online learning can seem overwhelming and scary for many families, but if we all work together, we can ensure this runs as smoothly as possible. Please watch for more information about this before the winter break :)

Important Upcoming Dates:

• Dec. 4 - No school - Professional Development Day
• Dec 18 - Jan 3 - Winter Break
• Jan 4 - 8 - Online Learning through Google Classroom (More information to follow)

Nov. 17

 I hope everyone is having a great week so far!

 We have all but a couple of our Peace Books published into videos for you all to see on our Google Classroom. The students created some beautiful books about Peace that I know you will love. I hope that posting these into video form  on Google Classroom is helpful for you to see! I know how difficult it is not being able to come into the school and see your child's work in person so I am experimenting with this format. I would love your feedback!

In math, we have started using our knowledge of skip counting to help us better understand the concept of increasing and decreasing patterns. Students have been using blocks to help them create and complete patterns. They have been practicing verbalizing a pattern rule based on patterns that peers create or they create. 

Students also played a game that you could try at home. Here are the gist of it. Have your child teach you!

Choose a number between 1 and 5, roll your die. Your first number is what you will start your pattern with, the number you rolled is your pattern rule (how many your pattern will increase by each time). Create an increasing pattern using these numbers, with blocks or drawing a pattern.

You can make a decreasing pattern by choosing a number between 20 and 30 to start with, rolling the die, and decreasing your pattern by that number each time.

We will be moving into using numbers to show repeating patterns, such as 3, 7, 11, __, ___ or 

90, 84, 78, ___ ,____ and identifying the pattern rule. We will also be doing some input and output tables. This is a great way for students to see patterning in another way and one they will see often in future years.

To help your child at home, you could:

Don't forget that Thursday and Friday are our Parent Conferences. You will receive a link for the conference 5 minutes before your time to your email address. Please check your junk folder just in case it goes there.  At your time, I will admit you from the lobby into the Teams Meeting.  Please have your microphone and camera on for this meeting! It is nice to be able to see each other, even though it is through a computer screen. Alternatively, if you don't want a video conference, you can email me and I can call you at your time. I am looking forward to seeing you all and having some time to chat about your child!

Important Upcoming Dates:

• Parent conferences - Nov. 19/20
• No School - Nov. 20
• No School - Dec. 4
• Ms. Wolfe's Last Day - Dec. 8  :(
• Winter Break - Dec. 19 - Jan. 4 

Nov. 11

 Over the last week, students have been publishing their own "Peace Is..." book with Ms. Wolfe. They have come up with such beautiful examples using each of their senses and illustrated a picture to go with each.  Students are using adjectives to help their writing become more descriptive and powerful. We hope that students will have these finished by Friday and then they can start to record them using PuppetEdu. We will put these videos on Google Classroom for you to see! Watch for these to be posted in the next week or so!

We also used the  watercolour pencil crayons for the first time last week to create some poppies  in our hallway.  Students applying using space, line  and colour to create their own poppy art. The soft colours really bring a sense of peace to the school.  

On Tuesday, we also had our first school wide virtual assembly. All classes "met" on Google to view a simple assembly as a way to bring together the school on an important date. Grade 4 students led the assembly in which they talked about the importance of Remembrance Day, read In Flanders Fields  and led us through a moment of silence. 

Don't forget that conferences are next week. These will be available with a video face to face format (Microsoft teams) or a phone call. Please let me know if you prefer a phone call as I will default to the Teams link given when you sign up.  

These meetings will be very brief (only 15 minutes) and will need to stay on time to ensure that each family gets their allotted appointment. If during this meeting you think you require more than the 15 minutes, we can schedule another time to connect, but I will need to stay punctual for each of these meetings. If you have two or more children, you might consider signing up with a buffer of 15 minutes between appointment times to account for any technology issues you could run into. We look forward to connecting next week!

Upcoming Important Dates:

• Parent conferences Nov. 19/20
• No School Nov. 20
• No School Dec. 4
• Winter Break - Dec. 19 - Jan. 4 (I can't believe I am writing this already? Where has time gone?)

Remembrance Day Poppies

Just a quick note to remind families that we will be collecting donations for poppies tomorrow. These donations go towards supporting our veterans and their families, so any donation is helpful. To help with the safety of this, each class has their own collection box with a small slit in the top for donations. This will ensure that students are not touching anyone else's money or there are not multiple classes coming together for donations. They will sanitize after they put their donation in as well. We will wear these for our virtual ceremony at 10:15. 

Please don't hesitate to contact me with any questions about this. 

Nov. 4

As we get ready for Remembrance Day, we have been focusing on the concept of Peace. We are using descriptive language to describe what Peace is to each of us. To help us figure out this abstract idea, we are using our senses to give us examples of what peace looks like, sounds like, smells like, feels like and tastes like. Using adjectives and simple similes and metaphors  allows us to give specific ideas about what peace is to each of us. We will eventually use these ideas to help us create our own Peace book in the style of the book What Does Peace Feel Like by Vladimir Radunsky. As we finish these books, we will post them to the blog and Google Classroom for you to see. 

This week, we have been trialing using our Makerspace supplies in a new way. We have created a Makercart that has our materials separated for individual use for students. This allows students to still have the hands on experience of making, but in a way safe for Covid.  To inspire us, we are reading the book "The Most Magnificent Thing". This story tells about a girl and her "assistant" who are trying to create the most magnificent thing. She struggles along the way to get it just right but in the end shows a growth mindset, which helps her create her magnificent thing.  As a class, this was good review of using our own growth mindset and how a fixed mindset can prevent us from creating our best work.

We also used this book to help us introduce the Design Thinking Process. We discussed how the girl came up with an idea and created a prototype, but because it wasn't right the first time, she had to go back and review and adjust her idea several times. Students identified a problem that they have and came up with an idea to help them solve that problem and drew a plan for how they would build it  Today, they used their idea and plan to help them create a prototype of their idea. Students had to be very creative as the material they received might influence how they could actually build their prototype. 

While talking to your child about this project, you could ask them:

• What is the problem you have and what is your idea to solve it?
• How did you show a growth mindset while building?
• What material did you build with and how did this impact your idea?
• How did your idea change from your plan that you drew?

We will post more next week about both our writing and our Magnificent Things along with some fun science research we are doing! Have a great week!

Important Upcoming Dates

• Nov. 9 - Photo Retake Day
• Nov. 11 - No School - Remembrance Day
• Nov. 12 - Mrs. Jordan away
  
• Nov. 19 - Virtual Parent Conferences (More info to come home soon)
• Nov. 20 - Virtual Parent Conferences - No School