Learning About Remembrance Day

This week, we’ve been spending quality time using literature to help guide us through what Remembrance Day truly means. We enjoyed reading a gorgeous book called A Bear in War by Harry Endrulat and Stephanie Innes. It is told from the perspective of a teddy bear that belongs to a little girl named Aileen. Her dad goes off to War and she ends up mailing him the teddy bear to keep him company and remind him of home. A Bear in War: Innes, Stephanie, Endrulat, Harry, Deines, Brian: 9781927485125: Books - Amazon.ca

There are wonderful illustrations mixed with photographs of real life items as this is a true Canadian story! Students are always amazed that you can actually visit the real teddy bear at the National War Museum in Ottawa!

We also read a very colourful book called The Peace Book by Todd Parr. In simple ways, it shares different ways that we can think about what peace is. We then brainstormed some of our own thoughts about what peace means and created our own class book.

We’ve been focused this week preparing for our Remembrance Day ceremony in our school gym. We each had a role to play and were proud to be a part of the special day. Way to go, Grade 3s! You were so wonderful.

Have a look at our artwork and our messages about peace. Enjoy!

Category: Religion & Family Life, Teacher Talk, The Arts | 2 Comments

November 2

Our First Book Tasting

Last week, our classroom was transformed into a sort of literary cafe as students were invited to their very first BOOK TASTING event of the school year. A book tasting gives students the opportunity to sample some juicy reads in a short period of time and come away with a wish list of titles. It’s a great way to let young readers sample different authors, genres, and series. After all, books are a lot like food—you won’t know if you like something until you try it! Speaking of food, Chef Sully prepared some snacks and juice for all to enjoy.

Chef Sully made an appearance, flying in from France. Students noted she looked a lot like her friend, Mrs. Sullivan. They even shop at the same clothing stores!

We ‘sampled’ several different genres of books including:

Biography
Fairytales
Mystery
Informational

When will Chef Sully visit again?

Category: Reading Workshop | 2 Comments

November 2

The Beauty of Autumn

What do you like about this time of year? Do you love to eat apple crisp? Do you go apple picking? Do you enjoy the crisp air? What about Thanksgiving? There’s a lot we might enjoy about this new season of Autumn, including the beautiful colours of the changing trees.

We did mixed media art involving paint, newsprint, and twine.

Have a look at our recent art experience. Enjoy!

Recently, we took advantage of the beautiful weather and went outside on a little walk in our neighbourhood.

Category: Teacher Talk, The Arts | LEAVE A COMMENT

October 31

Halloween Fun

On Halloween, we wore Orange and Black and had some fun carving pumpkins, estimating and counting seeds, designing the pumpkin’s face, reading a scary poem from the book “Scary Poems for Rotten Kids”, watching a few short Shrek films for Halloween, playing Halloween Themed BINGO, and so on.

Our room definitely smelled like pumpkin! Mrs. Sullivan took home the seeds, washed them, then baked them in the oven after adding some salt. Many students enjoyed eating the seeds the next day. They make a healthy snack, don’t they?

If you celebrate Halloween, what was your favourite part of the day/evening?

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October 23

What is S.M.A.T.H?

In math class, we spend our week doing something called SMATH. We start the week doing a lesson that has a focus for the week (for example, rounding numbers). The rest of the week we work in small groups, rotating through 5 different stations where we practice and apply our learning.

S stands for Skill Practice where we log in to Knowledgehook website or do some other paper practice

M stands for Math Journals where we are given a prompt that we glue in and we answer the question

A stands for At Your Seat where we are given paper practice or a few textbook questions

T stands for Teacher Time. We sit with our teacher and we work together on a specific task or game

H stands for Hands On. This is where we usually play a game or put together a puzzle

Below, we are reviewing math concepts learned during our unit. We scan a QR code and it gives us a practice questions that we answer with a partner. After we’re done, we share our answers with our teacher.

Category: Math | 1 Comment

October 23

Let’s Meet Kamryn Whiteye

The primary students recently had the privilege of meeting Kamryn Whiteye, an indigenous woman from the Lenape (Lunaapeew) People of the Delaware Nation. She taught us about herself and a bit about the traditions of her people including the story of how life began on earth according to the oral storytelling of her ancestors. She taught us how to dance and even demonstrated some dancing herself!

Category: Teacher Talk | 1 Comment

October 14

Representing Numbers and Math Games

Playing math games is a great way to reinforce math concepts learned in class and to practice our skills while building relationships with our classmates. We have 1 week left of our first unit on learning about numbers to 1000. We’ve been comparing, ordering, drawing pictures using base 10 blocks, decomposing numbers, writing them in words, placing them on a number line, and much more!

Below, we are seen playing a game called Place Value War and Race to a Flat.

Do you have a favourite math game?

Category: Math | 2 Comments

October 13

A Work of Heart

We are learning to be wide awake as writers and pay attention to what amazing stories we have to tell from our own lives. Our first unit is writing a personal narrative which is a true story about something that happened in our lives.

Students have been gathering ideas in their notebooks and finally we have chosen the one idea we will nurture and develop over the next short while. We will learn to write a lead, add juicy details, maybe add some dialogue, and learn how to make a conclusion to our story.

Some ideas students have thought of include:

searching for seashells at the beach
going on a rollercoaster for the first time
visiting Grandma and Grandpa’s boat
going bowling and scoring my highest goal ever

There are so many wonderful stories we can tell from our own own lives. We can’t wait to publish them! Stay tuned.

In the pictures below, we are story-telling. We are using elaboration and asking questions of our partner to tell us more about the event in our life that we are writing about.