We are builders and engineers!

 We have started our building process. We are focusing on making bridges. Today, using lego, we had a first challenge of building a bridge across our paper river. We then had our bridges tested to see if they could hold the weight of Mrs. RA's water bottle. We then built them for a second round with a new requirement. They had to be 10cm tall!!! Ask me how mine did!

We are going to be doing a lot more building challenges. Please start bringing in recyclable materials that we can use in the classroom for our building. (Cardboard, cans etc...)

HATS ON FOR MENTAL HEALTH WEDNESDAY MAY 5TH!

April 29, 2021

We are all so happy to finally be back at school!

This week in writing we had a chance to share some of the amazing Earth day stories that we created while we were at home last week. This week we are starting to take those writing skills to the next level! We learned about the writing process that authors use! Starting next week we are going to actually start the writing process for ourselves with the goal of writing a short story. 

In social studies we have started our Country Research project! We have all chosen a country to study and we are using the computers to learn about that country. When we are done our research we are going to be using our book creator library to write a travel log/journal story about our country. 

In math we have continued working on our division. We have also been working on different types of problems, like word problems or balancing problems, and learning when we need to apply our knowledge of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. 

We are starting our building unit in Science and are going to be having a focus on the different structures and types of bridges.

Playing With Numbers!

 

What is this strange thing that has appeared in our classroom?

Why it's a NUMBER LINE!!!!

Today we were playing with numbers on the number line! We were reviewing number orders, evens vs odds, skip counting, addition, subtraction and even used it to start building our knowledge in division! 

April 16

 What a busy couple of weeks it has been! Now that we are starting to get settled after our lovely spring break, it is time to share some of the exciting things that have been happening in our class!

In math we have wrapped up subtraction for now. We are starting to learn how to tell time and about division! Ask me to show you my new skills with the clock! One of the videos that have been helping us is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6RNkQ7lU8Y  In our visual journals we have also been making clocks and learning how to our knowledge of skip counting by 5's can help us tell the time on the clock! 

We have started our story writing unit!!! We have our own authors books for all of our story writing now. Additionally, we have been learning about the different parts of a story. This week we have started applying our knowledge of stores and have been doing Lego stories! Please try this with me at home!

In word work we have been finding and building words in our word scrambles. We have also started our handwriting unit! So far we have learned how to make the letters A,B,C,D & E in handwriting!

We have also started to include a daily read to self time right after lunch. We were working so hard to today that we also got to have some extra reading time outside in the beautiful sunshine!

Are you there spring? It's us, room 102!

 Good day everyone,

Since our last post, the students and I have been hard at work with out subtraction strategies. We are finding what works for each individual student and what doesn't. Unfortunately due to the tumultuousness that was last year, we are taking a little longer to settle in to some of our subtraction strategies. However, everyone is working very hard to understand as always! At the moment we are working on one of my favourites, two and three digit subtraction with regrouping. 

In writing we have wrapped up our look at great and exciting introductions with picture and musical prompts to stoke our imaginations. Next week we will be starting a rather lengthy period of discussing elaborative detail in writing. So far I have been very impressed by the number of great writers we have in the classroom! Looking forward to improving our skills and becoming even better. 

In science and social studies, we will be finishing our sound unit as well as our look at Tunisia in the next week. Up next for social studies is Ukraine, and science will see us exploring soil as the weather warms up a little. Expect to hear a lot about us growing plants in the classroom in the near future. In other news, we have begun two weekly student-generated activities. The first is the tried and true show and tell. The idea behind this is to give students two minutes to share something that they have created or are working on in their spare time. Please don't send your child to school with something expensive or that can be easily lost! Art, writing, coding projects, family history are all great ideas. Picture and video of pets are also fine. The second project is a question box. Students can add questions about things they are curious about or would otherwise not learn in grade three. I will take a question and make a presentation for them for the following week. Eventually I will expand this idea to have the students answer some of the questions on google classroom as well. 

In preparation for the upcoming interviews, I have had the students complete a short questionnaire about where they think they are in terms of classroom expectations. This will in-turn be used for one-on-one interviews with students to discuss learning goals for the rest of the year, as well as in our interviews at the end of the month. Don't forget to sign up!   

Thats it for this update, stay healthy everyone! 

-Room 102

Mid-week catch up

 Hello family and friends!

Thought I would send out a little update for our class and to give you a glance at what we are working on in class.

This week we celebrate pink shirt day, and being a very difficult year for all, we decided to celebrate it all week by talking about anti-bullying ideas and kindness everyday. The students whipped up a quick video after they brainstormed ideas and made a brief outline in groups. Most student groups chose to focus on the bullying aspect and finished with a kind message. The video was shared with the other grade three classes who shared one they also made in turn. 

We continue to roll on this week with our addition strategies, with some subtraction on the horizon! We are settling into how we like to solve problems and no two students are the same. I expect the next two weeks to be a bit of an adjustment for some of the students, as we take the difficulty up a notch. Don't worry! We are here to help, support, and assist everyone in the class until they are comfortable. 

We have been learning a lot about sound the last few days. What it is, how it works, and how our ears and brains perceive it. We've also participated in some cool experiments about how sound can move through solid objects and how it can move objects. In social studies, the students had a chance to check out student life at a few different Indian schools. We then took turns teaching each other about what we had learned. At the end of last week we tried our hand at some student-led coding time and watched the Perseverance land on Mars! It was an exciting and historical occasion that we are still talking about. 

 

Looking forward to some continued warm weather so we can get outside more often. As always, feel free to drop me a line if you have any questions or concerns. 

Stay healthy,

Adrian

February 16: How it's been and where we're going!

 Hello! 

First off, let me apologize for being more than a little late with a classroom blog update. It has been a busy week for myself as i've tried to organize myself to fill in for the amazing Mrs. Jordan. It's been a fun and rewarding past two weeks in the classroom, and I have spent the majority of my time getting to know the students, forming relationships within the school, and complete some basic assessment of literacy and numeracy. 

In math we have been working on completing our look at double and triple digit addition strategies. We are looking at a variety of ways to solve problems so we can find what works best for each individual student. Some are more intuitive than others, and if you're like me, finding out which strategy works best takes time. We also had some fun graphing some questionnaires for our classmates and signed up for an online math game called Prodigy, which is a gamified way of learning grade-appropriate math skills. In the next few weeks we will be looking at some subtraction strategies in the classroom. and I will be sure to post what we are working with, as subtraction can cause some headaches for students. 

In language arts, I'm happy to report that a writing stories craze has taken over the classroom. Students have been writing their own little books and reading them to their classmates during downtime. As a classroom, we are using this newfound love to increase our writing skills, and have been working on planning for our stories and why having an outline is important. Next, we will be exploring some self and peer-assessment for the student work and then moving into writing impactful beginnings that will hook readers. 

Last week the grade 3 team started working with a program called Making Words by Patricia and James Cunningham. The program aims to enhance the spelling-decoding words connection with students and comes in the form of individual lesson and worksheet containing consonants and vowels for the chosen words. This program is intended to be used in the classroom for three weeks to see if there is any marked improvement in student writing and spelling. 

In social studies we continue to examine life in other countries around the world. This week and last we looked at India. Next week we will be taking a closer look at Tunisia, followed by Ukraine. We will be comparing and contrasting the ways and quality of life in the countries, particularly as how it relates to school for children their age. 

In science, we dabbled with soil briefly but ultimately decided it would be a better subject to take up when we can get outside more and the ground is not frozen solid. We will instead be staring noise and sound this week, and we have a few experiments and a lot of fun things planned for the classroom. 

Next week we will be celebrating pink shirt day, and to make sure this isn't a one day celebration, we at Kenneth D. Taylor have decided to turn it into "Kindness Week".  This will most likely dominate our art, stories, and health blocks, with some possible crossover into writing and gym. I hope to have some good news for you on this in the coming days, but we are still in the planning phase on what this might look like for the classroom.   

Pictures to follow later this week. 

Hope all is well with your family and friends,

-Adrian

Goodbye and thank you

Today your child met their new teacher, Mr. Murphy. I have no doubt that he will be caring and patient and be an incredible new teacher to each of your children. He instantly connected to the students and over lunch, many of them coloured him pictures and made him things. This shows the impact he was able to make so quickly. Please take some time to welcome him! 

Today was the last day for me in Grade 3 and at Ken Taylor School. I feel so blessed to have worked with each child in this class and each has taught me something new.  The students in this class are so kind and loving and I will never forget how each of them has made me feel special and loved. 

Teaching in a pandemic was a whole new learning curve, but I couldn't have asked for a better class to learn this with. Through this pandemic, students have shown me and each other what kindness and friendship are and how to care for each other. They have shown patience and optimism when many of us feel quite the opposite of this. Because of this, I loved coming to school each day and seeing all their faces (well the top half of their faces...).  I laughed more than ever this year and this is because of the joy that each child brought to learning. 

I also want to say thank you to all the families for your kindness and support. The little emails and kind words have made what could be a really difficult and stressful year an incredible year. Although we couldn't see each other in person, I felt connected to each family. Thank you for being so kind and wonderful. 

I would love to keep in touch with you through the year and even in years to come. Send me a quick note and let me know how you are all doing. I hope to continue to connect even in small ways with the class and tell them all about my new adventures and learning. 

Thank you again for being so amazing!

Mrs. Jordan

Jan 27

There have been a lot of questions about Valentine's Day! With it being such a unique year we have adapted how we will do Valentine's Day. We know the importance of honouring the day and recognizing friendship and for this reason, we will still allow students to exchange cards.  Here is what you need to know for the exchange:

1. You do not have to hand out cards but if you do, please make sure everyone gets one

2. You can find the names of each student in our Google Classroom under "People"

3. No candy, food etc

4. All cards must be at school by Feb. 5 in order for them to quarantine in the class. 

5. Students will hand them out on Feb 10 (Feb. 11, 12 are non-instructional days for Teacher's Convention)

Today your child should have come home with a model of the layer's of Earth. We have been learning about the different rocks, how they are formed and what the rock cycle is. The layer of the earth are key to understanding that, so today we watched a short SciShow video: Earth's Layers.  Then we reviewed each earth and drew a diagram of the earth in our visual journals. Finally - we used plasticine to actually make a mini-version of these layers. They were thrilled when I cut them open and they could see all the layers. The classroom was buzzing with excitement and they loved comparing theirs with their peers!

In math, we have been working with both 2 and 3 digit numbers using the expanded form method of addition. For some students, this method makes sense and really works for others, they are having a difficult time wrapping their mind around it. It is only one of many strategies we will introduce. Have your child try to show you how this strategy works - I can promise it will be quite different from the way you learned math ;)

This strategy is helpful because it allows students to connect to what they know about the value of the number and expanded form. It also allows them to break each number up and doesn't involve any "carrying". 

Please check back tomorrow for a message from me as tomorrow will be my last day with students at Ken Taylor School. 💜

January 19

 We are so happy to be back at school in person and have been busy catching up with each other and learning new things. 

In math, we have been strengthening our understanding of our multiplication strategies and the times tables through games, open-ended math problems and even art! We have also been working on building our fluency and speed of our times tables by saying them aloud and using our math journals to help us record the times tables up to 5x5. Check out our beautiful art flowers that bring some joy, colour and hopes of spring to our class!

We have also used the book, One is a Snail to apply our knowledge of problem solving, multiplication and addition. We were introduced to different creatures we might see at the beach. We focused on the number of feet they had (I know... a funny concept) and put different combinations of feet together to make the total number of 30 feet or 10 feet depending on each child's preference and confidence level. There were endless combinations but here are few that we came up with.

If you have time, ask your child their times tables as you are driving, eating dinner or even out for a walk! The more exposure and practice they have, the more fluent and confident they will become. 

In science, we continue to learn about how the rocks can change from one rock to another with the rock cycle. We created some personal anchor charts and did a whole class Reader's Theatre to help us really understand this process. Some questions you could ask your child are:

• what are the 3 types of rocks?
• How does ______(sedimentary, igneous, metamorphic) change into another rock?
• What is erosion?
• What does magma do to a rock
• Describe the rock cycle 

We will be moving into looking at the properties of rocks and how their formation influences their properties. 

As you know by now, I have accepted a new position with the Calgary Board of Education as an ELL Strategist. This means that my last day with our class will be on January 28th. This was a very difficult decision to make as I have such a connection to this class, but this opportunity provides me with a unique learning experience and allows me to connect with children all over the city. I know that this learning will make me a better teacher. This transition is not easy for the students or families, but I will work to make this as easy as I can for everyone and please know I am only an email away if you need something :)

Important Upcoming Dates

• January 28 - Mrs. Jordan's Last Day
• January 29 - No School - Professional Development Day