3FT Third Grade Thoughts

Sunday, 6 December 2015

It's December!

To welcome the month of December, we decorated our class tree and enjoyed some Christmas oranges and candy canes.

We had the opportunity to meet a local author from Leduc, named Nicole Brook. She introduced us to her series called "The Amazing Adventures of Abigail Andrews". She has just released the third book of the series, "Pool of Secrets". Nicole read the students the first chapter of her new book and then answered many questions from the students. The students were so excited to meet her and she inspired a number of them who love to write. Each student received their own signed copy of her new book and had the opportunity to meet Nicole. She has encouraged all of them to enter a contest to become the main character in her next book! The students can enter the contest by writing a story of their own at home. These can be handed in at school and we will make sure Nicole receives them before the Christmas holidays begin.

For more information, you can go to the following link...

http://abigailandrewsseries.com/about-the-author-nicole-brook/

In Social, we continued working on our travel journals, learning about the goods and services in India. We discussed the difference between exporting and importing goods. We also learned about India's environment in the four different regions. The students then chose their favourite region ~ plateau, plains, mountain or desert and explained why it was their favourite.

In Science, we experimented with sounds and vibrations. The students compared the sound made by flicking varying lengths of a ruler. We talked about the how the frequency of vibrations change the pitch of a sound. They found that when the ruler was hanging farther off of the desk, it moved more slowly and the pitch of the sound was lower. When the ruler was shorter, it moved faster and created a higher pitch.

The students used a comb and wax paper to make kazoos and practiced humming to some favourite songs. We learned that the "bump" in our throat, that moves when we swallow, is our voice box. Inside, there are two thin bands called vocal cords. When air is pushed past these vocal cords, they vibrate and make sounds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV8mudwcorw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qr9me9b9ZW8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlI5d7hIhBg

We completed our novel study of Freckle Juice. Our last assignment was to create a potion to make Sharon's mood and attitude improve. The ingredients and recipes were very creative!

For handwriting this week, we learned the letters Pp, Rr and Ss. The students are very eager to learn Nn, so they can write SANTA.

The students also completed another "STAR" test on the chrome books. This test is one of the reading assessment tools we use.

Congratulations to our readers that have made it to India, Tunisia, Ukraine and Peru!! Please remember to read and record nightly with your child. To help your child become a better reader, it is suggested that you read with them 20 minutes every night. Reading your child a story is also very beneficial!

Congratulations to our new Student of the Week!!

Sunday, 29 November 2015

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!!!

Sunday, 22 November 2015

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.