October in Review

It's difficult to believe we are wrapping up the second month of the school year. The Grade 3 students continue to be inquisitive, creative students and are becoming more independent with each passing day. 

In math, we are working towards building proficiency adding and subtracting two digit numbers with regrouping. Students have been working with number lines and base ten blocks as strategies. Students have engaged in problem solving in groups, recording our thinking and solutions on vertical whiteboards and even on the classroom windows. We visited Bridgeland Market to collect price information about healthy snacks which we will use to create a classroom store where students will use play money to skip count, add and subtract.

Reading groups have become a regular routine in our classroom. Students alternate between reading with me, researching an animal on the ipads, reading a science article, visiting our learning commons and performing a readers' theatre. 

Students have created rhyming books which we will share with Kindergarten buddies in the weeks ahead. To create their books, students learned to use the laptops (MacBooks), specifically GoogleDocs. It was a steep learning curve, but they are really enjoying the process and hopefully have taken some time to log in at home and share their work with you. Students have found it a lot of fun to silly stories online (just google wacky web tales); writing these stories helps them to learn parts of speech.  

Our October field studies took us to the Bow Habitat Station where we learned about the life cycle stages of the rainbow trout and fished in the station's Kids Can Catch Trout Pond. The students were very successful at reeling in a lot of algae. We visited the Glenbow Museum and learned to identify minerals, then practiced sketching techniques in the West Africa gallery. We welcomed Miss Alex, a structural engineer into our classroom and she worked with us to build and test bridge designs. Finally, we went on a community walk to explore how rocks and minerals are used in Bridgeland. Students commented on everything from the kinds of pebbles found on the playground, the soil and the concrete used in construction. 

The November parent-teacher-student conferences will provide a great opportunity to see student work and to ask questions. See you all there!

September in Review

The first month of Grade 3 was a busy one!

Students explored rocks, minerals and soil at Edworthy Park and at St. Patrick's Island. Activities included physically sorting rocks using a large Venn Diagram, completing a rock scavenger hunt that involved measurement (they have learned about centimetres), and taking soil samples from different locations to examine under a magnifying lens. At each location, they also created Andy Goldsworthy inspired art.

Students have practiced a variety of sketching techniques such as contour, blind contour, quick gesture and opposite hand sketching. They also worked to create a collage.

In math, we have been playing games to practice our mental math skills such as Go Fish, Tick Tock Around the Clock, and Connect Four using a blank 100 chart. We have demonstrated our understanding of skip counting using counters and a 100 chart, as well as in a class counting circle. In grade 3, students are expected to be able to skip count forward and backward by 2s, 5s, 10s from any starting point.  They are also expected to be able to skip count by 3s, 4s and 25s from zero. Additionally, we have begun to create and extend patterns of shapes and numbers. We are happy to have Ms. Hauger working with our class in math this year! This allows for more hands on deck and more opportunity for student teacher interaction.

There have been many opportunities for students to engage in maker-tinkerer/ design thinking. Students invented and built a plasticine monster. Students observed and sketched a structure located in the Tourmaline Fitness Park. They drafted building plans in their inquiry journals and used a variety of materials to create their models. The students worked with wood, saws, wood glue, hot glue, rock, tinfoil and clay. They tested their designs to see how many grams of weight they could support. They then journaled about their testing process and how they solved problems they faced when building. On September 25, students worked with Ms. Ware to practice their coding skills using Scratch Junior on the ipads.

Our students don't just participate in construction and design activities in school - our very own Seth, his brother Zach, and two neighbour kids competed in the Beakerhead “Hack the Flyer” event where they built a sustainably powered vehicle to race against teams of adults. The kids made two runs; first a speed trial where Seth was the driver and second the obstacle course where Zach was the engine. The kids won the award for Most Sustainable Vehicle and came in 2nd place overall, beating a team of engineering students from U of C!
Here is a link to the video if you'd like to see: https://youtu.be/IjfdcmF9pfU

There have been some very interesting discussions in our class around Quality of Life and what is needed to have a good quality of life. Students brainstormed many factors that influence quality of life such as healthcare, family, education, nutritious food, clean water and technology.

In class, we have been working through spelling patterns of long vowel words and starting to incorporate these words into our writing. We have been reading rhyming books that use a lot of these long vowel words. A favourite book of the class was If I Built a House by Chris Van Dusen, which shows an eight year old's most imaginative building plans for the home of his dreams.  We have been experimenting with story writing and writing rhyme with an emphasis on legible printing and leaving finger spaces between words.

The month of September finished with our Terry Fox Run and participation in Orange Shirt Day - a reminder that every child matters and that anything is possible.

Photo Gallery