To wrap up our learning on Hearing and Sound in Science, the students designed and built their own musical instruments this week! The instruments needed to create a variety of pitches, and it was fun to see many different sounds being made by the instruments. The class' favourite part of the day was creating bands and performing songs for each other. Their performances were entertaining to say the least! |
We've continued to enjoy our read-aloud Tâpwê and the Magic Hat this week! We learned about fry bread and made our own at school with maple sugar that we had read about, and the students analyzed the character Wâpos who is a Trickster. We're learning so much about Indigenous culture through this novel, and having lots of fun while doing so!
The students of 3B are now officially published authors! Mrs. Pirie is going to add barcodes and put our books in the library catalogue so that the rest of the school can take them out. They worked so hard on their stories, and it's exciting that other students at our school can read their writing!
As a special treat this afternoon, we got to watch a performance by the Parkland Ukrainian Dancers! They showcased some amazing dance moves, and even taught us a few dances that we could try out too. It was a great connection to our Social Studies learning about Ukraine, and the students found it extremely entertaining. The dancers were truly impressive. This group is from our community, and there were some familiar faces in this troupe! There was a great deal of excitement this week over St. Patrick’s Day, and we had our suspicions in 3B that a leprechaun would pay a visit to our classroom before we got there this morning. We wrote persuasive letters on Thursday, some begging Louie to mess up our classroom, some (such as Mrs. Barker's) imploring Louie to have mercy and steer clear of the classroom. As most students wanted, the sneaky Louie the Leprechaun had been in our classroom overnight scattering classroom items, leaving a backwards note, and hiding our shoes around the classroom. He even left a puzzle for us to solve with some candy treats. Let’s hope that next year Louie isn’t quite so sneaky at Millgrove School!
As part of our upcoming unit on animal life cycles, our class received a delivery of a mantis ootheca (eggs) that will hopefully hatch sometime in the coming months! We needed to transplant the ootheca to a humid environment, and we have some flightless fruit flies ready for the hatchlings to snack on once they emerge. The class has been dutifully checking on the ootheca everyday since it arrived! You can watch the video below to see a mantis laying an ootheca of eggs. We learned lots and had lots of fun today at Telus World of Science! We got to watch a special presentation in the IMAX theatre, and we participated in the Make a Sound program led by our science expert Derek which tied into our class' unit on Hearing and Sound. Derek helped us review concepts on volume, pitch, vibration, and protecting our ears. We also were able to explore all of the exhibits in the facility (the current feature on blue whales was quite popular) thanks to our four wonderful volunteers! This month we wrapped up our unit on stories! The students each wrote some wonderful climbing stories the course of our unit, and then chose their favourite one to turn into a final draft. They’ve worked hard on using narration, description, dialogue, punctuation, tense, dialogue, and paragraphs to create engaging and sophisticated stories. Many of them were very amusing, and the class was thrilled to wrap up the unit with a celebration of fairy tales and the stories they had written. We also enjoyed some delicious popcorn (thanks to the families who sent popcorn) while we watched Because of Winn-Dixie which we recently finished reading as a class. You can watch some of the fairy tales from around the world that we learned about this week! We were so lucky today to have a performance by Kung Jaadee! Kung Jade is an indigenous professional author, storyteller, singer, teacher and drummer. She told us some very special stories, taught us about Indigenous culture, and played some beautiful music for us. It was a special afternoon for the students! Our class has been enthralled this week by the chapter book Tâpwê and the Magic Hat, which we just started reading. It is by Cree author and songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie, and is inspired by Indigenous traditions. The boy Tâpwê lives on a prairie reserve and is gifted a magic hat by his kohkom (grandmohter). So far, it seems like Tâpwê is about to embark on quite the adventure! We are very lucky to be working Parkland School Division's Indigenous Education Coordinator Geri Wu on this novel study, and we've already learned so much about Indigenous culture. With our learning about Peru recently, we’ve been talking a lot about the importance of llamas to the culture and economy. This week we made art based on the bright contrasting colours of Peruvian textiles and the llamas that live in the Peruvian mountains. We learned about shepherds and Inca traditions with llamas, and the students did lovely job depicting the llamas and textiles! You may have heard of March Madness, but 3B is taking part in a book tournament called March Book Madness this month. There is a bracket of 16 entertaining and interesting picture books, and we have enjoyed reading the selections. We start voting this week to see which books move on in the tournament. The students have their different favourites, but so far the most popular books have been Blue, Runs With the Stars, Gibberish, There Are No Bears In This Bakery, The Cool Bean, and Endlessly Ever After. We’ll keep you posted on which books make it to the next round of March Book Madness!
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Mrs. BarkerMrs. Barker is a grade three teacher at Millgrove School. She loves science and reading, and lives in a little brick house with Mr. Barker and her kids Jack and Ellie. Archive
April 2024
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