December
4
November
20
Author’s Celebration
Today, we celebrated our hard work on our narratives. They turned out wonderfully and the students are genuinely proud of them, too.
We spent some time reading each others’ stories and offering written compliments on them, too with sentence starts such as…
- I really liked how you…
- I really liked the part where…
- You did a good job at doing…
Sharing some Doritos and 7Up made us super excited, too.
Congratulations to all of you for a job well done!
June
26
Do You Like Board Games?
A fun way to wrap up a school year is giving students the challenge of creating their own board game. And boy…were these grade 3s up for it!
We wrote down the success criteria together and knew the game had to involve math in some way. The students completed their board games, playing their own game several times and then play each other’s.
The level of detail was incredible! Several groups even crafted their own playing pieces! Wow.
Have a look at their hard work!
Finally, we were pleased to see our poetry anthology arrive to our classroom. The students were delighted to see their published poems in a book that they can keep forever. What a great job everyone did!
June
6
Sharing our Talents with Others
Our published stories were so great that they must be shared with others! We invited Mr. K’s class to come and let us read to them. The Grade 1s enjoyed listening to the stories read aloud. Great job everyone!
Our puppet shows were a hit with our Kindergarten buddies on Tuesday. They were such a great audience and the Grade 3s performed so well. It was so fun to watch all the hard work. Our students not only created their puppets from scratch, they also wrote their own scripts. Wow! Some of the topics they presented about included protecting the earth, treating others the way you want to be treated, and respect.
Do you own a puppet?
May
29
Celebrating Our Authors–Camp Style!
Snuggling up around the campfire, nibbling on s’mores and reading really great stories was a great way to spend a Wednesday afternoon…after EQAO is all done.
Flashlights in hand, we had a fun afternoon of reading, celebrating, and praising each other for all the hard work with our published realistic fiction stories.
I have personally thoroughly enjoyed reading each and every one and am SO proud of everyone’s efforts. Wow!
There is so much involved in the writing process–planning, drafting, editing, revising, publishing. There were stories about getting lost in a mall, in the woods, making new friends, surviving a camping disaster, overcoming a fear of dogs, ocean, clowns, spiders…and so much more!
Congratulations to each and every one of you for the wonderful work you created! I am so proud of you!
April
1
Spring Has Arrived!
After March Break, time always seems to fly. We are in the season of Lent, moving closer to Easter. The students in our class have been working incredibly hard on their school work. We have been diligently studying and practicing our times tables. Mrs. Sullivan has been impressed!
As a class, we’ve been pushing ourselves to strengthen our Word Study test scores overall and the results have been outstanding!
Several students have been challenging themselves to achieve silver certificates in Mathletics. Wow! Who will earn the first gold?
We continue to move along nicely in our newest writing unit called Realistic Fiction where we are gathering ideas.
Take a look at some of the activity in our room as of late:
-
- Lenten scavenger hunt using the Bible
-
- Teamwork!
-
- learning how to find readings in the Bible
-
- 2 heads are better than 1
-
- problem solving with cookies
-
- making groups of…
-
- sharing our fiction ideas
-
- Northern Lights artwork
-
- She’s proud of her work!
-
- Smudging the chalk pastels
-
- Creating the foreground
-
- It’s coming together nicely
-
- Science Experiment designing
-
- Testing out ideas
-
- Investigating balloons
What do you like the best about Spring?
January
11
In My Opinion…
In class, we are currently learning about what it means to persuade which will lead us into writing a persuasive letter in the coming weeks.
One of the activities that we began with was an activity called 4 Corners. Each corner of the classroom had a sign that read either Strongly Agree, Agree, Strongly Disagree, Disagree. The students had to think about their position on the topic given and decide which sign to stand under. They needed to be able to justify why they believed what they did and were even allowed to change their minds if another group persuaded them to do so.
Topics ranged from “Should animal testing be allowed?” to “Should children be allowed to have a TV in their bedroom?”. Several students were very passionate about their opinion while others were more easily swayed in any direction. Lots of chatter and discussion around these topics gave the students plenty of opportunity to practice their debating skills and how to respectfully disagree.
October
4
What Does Learning Look Like?
-
- Rock Talk
-
- Comparing our rocks
-
- Characteristics of rocks
-
- Quiz Quiz Trade Math Game
-
- Quizzing each other
-
- Figuring it out
-
- Time to trade cards!
-
- Math warm up
-
- A helpful read
-
- Storytelling with our partners
-
- Personal narratives
-
- Taking turns
-
- Storytelling followed by questions
-
- Careful listening
-
- Sharing our best story
Learning is thinking, doing, playing, sharing, questioning, listening, exploring, and so much more! The photos above show our class doing many of these things. Learning can be so much fun!
May
29
Congratulations Authors!
As a fun way to wrap up our hard work in writing fiction, we held a special Author’s Party in our class today. The students seemed to enjoy reading each other’s stories and were very proud of their efforts.
There were stories of camping disasters, auditioning for a play, overcoming losing hair due to childhood cancer, playing baseball, soccer-playing dogs, dance competitions, and so much more! I enjoyed reading them all and hope you continue to look for new and interesting things to write about. You have so much to say!
Awesome work, Gr. 3s!
April
23
Show, Don’t Tell
As we move further into writing our Realistic Fiction drafts, we have revisited the writing strategy called Show, Don’t Tell.
So, what is Show, Don’t Tell? Watch the video below to find out!
After several examples and some practice work at home, too, students partnered with a buddy in class and looked closely at their own writing to find at least 1 example where applying the strategy would help bump up their work.
