Winter has arrived!!!

In Language Arts this week, we decided to do some research about peacocks, making a connection with our India Art project from last week. We learned how to make jot notes by putting information into point form. Together as a class we read a non-fiction book about peacocks while pulling out important facts and making notes. They were also given the opportunity to use the internet to google some interesting facts about these colourful birds. The students were then asked to use all of this information and write paragraphs, making sure to include a topic and concluding sentence. After the paragraphs were edited, the students used their chrome books to type their paragraph.

We also continued our novel study. As a class, we read chapter 4 of Freckle Juice. The students then completed an activity using adjectives and a vocabulary word search.

This week, we worked on cursive writing for the letters Tt and Jj. We have learned a lot of letters now and our building on to the list of words we can now do in handwriting!

This week in Math, we learned how to count by 3s and 4s by using different starting points from 1 to 1000.

We also started estimating. The students were taught how to use a referent to estimate quantities of different objects up to 1000. After completing an estimating activity and recording the results, the class discussed how it is easier to make an estimate with a larger referent.

We finished up our unit talking about "how much 1000 is". We discussed things that would be more than 1000 and fewer than 1000. Some examples were...stars in the sky, students in the school, blades of grass in a yard. The students then played Race to 1000 in groups of 3, using a 0-9 spinner and base ten blocks.

We continued our Hearing and Sound unit in Science. The students completed an activity about what they already know by reading statements and choosing whether they thought the statements were true or false. Then we watched a video, stopping it periodically to discuss the statements. The students were introduced to words such as vibration, volume, pitch, echo, and sound waves.

Link for..."First Look:Sound" video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BU15yCk43J4

We also watched a video to learn how sound travels through the parts of the ear. Then we labelled this for our Lapbook.

Link for..."How Your Ears Work" video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMXoHKwWmU8

In Social, we continued working on our travel journal for India. The students read about the services in India and were especially interested in the fact that some places in India do not have running water. This sparked group conversation and the students shared some interesting stories about camping without running water and experiencing power outages and the problems faced.

Congratulations to another student in our room who reached his goal of reading 1200 minutes! Way to go!!!

Christmas Elves

The Grade 3 classes have taken on the job of collecting, sorting and delivering the Christmas Elves food bank donation items for this Christmas season. It ties in with our Social Studies unit on Global Citizenship. Our class created the donation box and will be responsible for delivering and sorting the food at the Christmas Elves depot. They are also encouraged to bring in a donation item. Thank you to all of you who have already sent in items!! 

Our new unit in Social Studies is India. 

We have finished our passports, they have been stamped for New Dehli and we are now traveling around India with Ravi. The students began their travel journals and have been learning how to pull important information from the text they read. We have learned about Ravi's home life and what it is like in the city and country.

For Science this week, we started our new unit on Hearing and Sound.

We began the unit by reading the Listening Walk.

We then headed out around the school...on a Listening Walk. We were paying close attention to the sounds we could hear and the students were quite surprised at how many there were! We then went outside and circled the school, listening to outdoor sounds. 

We learned the letter Uu and Ww in handwriting this week. The students can now spell words like "dug" and "wig". 

We are continuing on our novel study of Freckle Juice. We did a group reading of Chapter 3. The students worked on their own freckle juice recipe and also in partners to find all the nouns (person, place, thing) in that chapter.

In Math, we continued with skip counting. We worked on counting by 5's, 10's and 25's using coins. Please review money counting at home with your child.

This week we learned that the national bird of India is the peacock. We read two stories, a fiction and non-fiction, to introduce our Art project.

As a class, we completed a quick draw of a peacock. The students then picked different designs and colours of scrapbook paper to make the beautiful feathers. 

 A few of our classmates took part in Twin Day on Friday!

Congratulations to our students who have now read 600 minutes!

Way to go!!! You have read 1200 minutes and have landed in India!

Congratulations to our student who has read 1800 minutes, flying to Tunisia! 

WOW! Excellent job on reading 2400 minutes!!!

Congratulations to our new Student of the Week!