Winter Walk

We participated in the school wide Winter Walk on Wednesday afternoon. The students followed a course around Devon and were super respectful, staying on the sidewalks and walking together. We all met back at the school and enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate in the gym. It was a great afternoon!!

We began our new read aloud this week. Together, we are reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. This book is at a higher reading level, so we will be spending more time talking about the vocabulary and context. We will also be working on fluency and accuracy by having the students read short paragraphs, switching back and forth between teacher and student to model. 

We continued working on our All About Me writing this week. We began the good copy of our writing by typing them in a google document. Once the students had finished their typing, they edited their work for spelling, punctuation and changed the font and size. Then they shared their work with us. To complete their first topic, the students will be illustrating above the paragraph. There are many topics to choose from for this project and the students will be working through the paragraphs at their own pace now. We hope to see growth in their writing, including more complex and detailed sentences. 

We completed a Making Words activity using the letters...

N, U, B, T, T. R, S, S, C, I, O

On their own, they worked on finding 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 letter words. They came up with so many words! Impressive!!! The mystery word was "SUBTRACTION".

In Math, we worked on subtracting from 100. To do this, you need to regroup from the hundreds before you can regroup from the tens. Following this practice, we worked on word problems where the students had to regroup.

To launch our Survivor unit we discussed what the expectations and rules of the island are...

• respect each other, self and the environment around you
• practice safety
• work cooperatively
• complete work on time
• put all materials back where they belong

Throughout the unit the students will be working through a number of challenges so we talked about what a fair test was. The class was given a short activity which didn't end up being fair for all students in our room. We talked about why the activity wasn't fair and what makes a fair test..changing only ONE factor (variable) for each test. 

The students were also given their first Survivor challenge by "tree mail".

We have landed safely near shore and made our way to the closest beach. Ahead of us ​is a dense jungle and we see a huge storm heading our way, so we decide to make our ​way to find some shelter. As we reach the edge of the forest, we notice a large crack in the Earth. Nate takes a step forward to take a closer look. It is very deep and looks ​like it may have been caused by an earthquake. He tells us that he can not even see the bottom. There is also hot lava spewing from the crack. The crack is not too wide, but ​we definitely can not jump over it. We will need to build something in order to cross ​onto the other side. We have decided to make a foot bridge out of a piece of wood we ​see nearby. We need to figure out if bending the wood to make a square frame or ​bending it into an arch will be stronger. We need to remember that this structure needs to hold each classmate and teacher one by one as we step over the crack.

The "testable question" in this experiment was...will a square shape support more mass than an arch shape? The students were taught what a hypothesis was and needed to make one before completing the experiment as a tribe.

We were able to conclude that the arch shape held more mass than the square shape because the mass is spread evenly along the arch and there are no bends where the pressure would cause the shape to buckle.

Thank you for sending in kleenex boxes! The students starting painting their "Monster Valentine's Day" boxes and will finish by decorating them next week!

In Phys. Ed. we practiced for the upcoming "Skip-a-thon" and started a basketball unit, practicing dribbling and passing.

Brrr...another cold week!!!

It has been another COLD week! For the most part, we were inside for recess but the students still need to be prepared for the outdoors. Students should be coming to school with a warm winter jacket, snow pants, mittens and a toque. A scarf or neck warmer is also a good idea as it is often quite windy on the fields surrounding the school!  Our rules is, "If your parents send it, you need to wear it!" Soooo... if the students are bringing it to school, we will do our part in trying to make sure your child is asked to put all of their winter wear on before heading outside! THANK YOU!

In Language Arts this week, the students continued typing their "Life in a Snow Globe" paragraphs. When they were completed, they shared it with us on Google Drive. This is a quick way for the students to send us their work so that we are able to check it over and print it out for them. A snow globe image was also added to their document for their illustration. The students put a lot of effort into their sketching and colouring. If you are in the school, feel free to pop by the classroom to check out the finished assignments! 

For our daily read aloud, we enjoyed "Nate the Great and the Snowy Trail". As we read the book together, we stopped frequently to discuss new vocabulary words and make predictions. We talked about the important elements of the story...main characters, setting, problem and solution. Every student had an opportunity to read a part of the story to the class, working on their fluency and expression! 

In addition to the spelling practice the students complete in their books, they worked on Spelling City.

Each week, the students are introduced to a new set of five Word Wall Words. These are high frequency words which are added to our bulletin board so the students have access to them for their writing. They always complete a Rainbow Writing activity, demonstrating that they are able to use the WWW in a complete, detailed sentence. 

In Math, we continued working on subtraction with regrouping. The students started regrouping either the ones or the tens last week. They have been drawing base ten models and using the "stacking" method. This week, they were taught how to regroup two digits. We will continue practicing this with the class!

We began a new unit in Science called "Building and Testing a Variety of Materials". We have created a Survivor Theme for this unit where the students will receive challenges in order to test different kids of building materials. This week, they were put into tribes, given matching buffs and asked to come up with a tribal name. They also started designing title pages for their challenge booklets.

We got an early start on Valentine's Day this week. The students began with drawing a tree and then used Sharpie to colour it in. They were then given three different colours of paint and used their thumbs to make Valentine's Day blossoms on their tree. 

In Phys. Ed. this week, we played some running games to burn off some energy. The students learned a new game called Yoshi and participated in a team building activity which required a lot of concentration and focus.

Here are 3B's  Amazing Race super stars for the week!

Congratulations to our new Student of the Week!