As part of our science learning about Living Systems, we planted some seeds this week! We have poppies and peas growing, and we've been learning about how seeds germinate. As the weeks go on, we'll talk about plant needs, senses, and conservation as well. The students were especially fascinated when we learned about plant cells and DNA which led to some rich discussions! The most exciting event of this week has been the arrival of our chicks! We had 13 hatch, and and the different chicken breeds are all adorable and fascinating to observe. The class has been abuzz about all the interesting chick behaviour, their amusing names, and careful tending to their needs. They've even been the topic of many a poem in our class this week. We can't wait to spend more time with them next week!
We're starting a new unit this week in Math on Data Analysis. Data analysis relates to the collection, organization, and interpretation of information.
In this unit, your child will:
Here are some suggestions for activities you can do with your child.
We had an extra fun counting collection today as we worked with Digi-Blocks! Digi-Block is a base-ten model that students build by themselves using specially-designed boxes (“holders”) to assemble single blocks into blocks-of-10; then they assemble these blocks-of-10 to make blocks-of-100, and they assemble block-of-100 to make blocks-of-1000. The key to PLACE-VALUE is to think of “ten” in two different ways – as one thing and as ten things. With Digi-Block, this potentially confusing duality becomes physically obvious: a block-of-ten looks like one thing, but when it’s open, it looks like ten things! Each table counted a large group of ones, and then over a succession of groupings, we counted exactly 600 blocks as a class!
We were excited to welcome some praying mantises to our class this week! As part of our unit on living systems, our class received a delivery of three mantis hatchlings. They are Chinese mantises, and are currently snacking on flightless fruit flies. Eventually they'll grow large enough to eat crickets! The class has been dutifully checking on them throughout the day since they arrived, and we have named them Joe, Lizzy, and Mant. You can watch the video below to see a mantis laying an ootheca of eggs. This week we've been learning more about chicken adaptations and development! We got to candle a couple of the eggs, and we learned all about the different parts of the egg that allow the chick to develop inside. Students "dissected" their own egg in class to find the albumen, air pocket, embryo, chalaza, yolk, and membrane. It was egg-cellent fun! We've continued our hard work on poetry this week! We focused on writing Thank You Poems and List Poems this week, and the students' creativity was delightful. You can see some of our poems below!
For the next couple of months in Social Studies our class will be focusing on the country of Ukraine! So far the students have noticed that Ukraine has some features in common with Canada, but also some interesting differences. Ukrainian sports, industries, and communities have been interesting so far, and we'll also get to learn lots about Ukrainian culture. ми не можемо чекати (we can't wait)!
This month, we'll been focusing on the essential skill of self-monitoring while reading. But what exactly is self-monitoring? It's the ability to recognize when we're understanding what we're reading and when we're not, and then to take steps to improve our comprehension. In our mini-lessons, we've been discussing strategies such as pausing to check for understanding, asking questions when something doesn't make sense, and rereading to clarify. By practicing self-monitoring, our students are not only becoming more fluent readers but also deepening their comprehension of texts.
3SB has been working hard in our look at 2D shapes math this week. Geometric shapes are all around us, and mathematics can help your child recognize them. Understanding geometric form will help your child appreciate the geometry found in art, design, architecture, and nature. In this unit, the students will:
You can encourage your child to look for geometric shapes and objects around the home and neighbourhood, and talk about them. Here are some suggestions for activities that you can do at home:
So far we’ve learned how to describe and compare shapes and objects using words like vertices, edges, faces, and length! We’ve been very engaged in our Living Systems unit in science recently! In this unit, students will analyze and describe how plants and animals interact with each other and with their environments. We've focused especially this week on food chains and learning about the life of a chicken. It's been a busy and fun week! During our learning on Living Systems, students will:
We were very this lucky today to have the chicken lady Mrs. Hardy deliver 20 eggs for our class! The eggs are settled into the incubator now where they're toasty warm and carefully rotating. This will be the next component of our science unit on Life Systems. Next week we're going to take a peek inside by candling the eggs, and in the coming weeks the chicks will start to peck their ways out of their shells! After that they'll spend about a week in our class before heading to the coop on Mrs. Hardy's farm. The class is already eagerly observing the chicks' progress!
There is an official winner for March Book Madness! After a month of reading, discussing books, and voting, the brackets were narrowed down to one final champion. You can watch the video below to find out which book was named the 2024 champion! It's national poetry month and we're learning all about writing poetry in 3SB! We've read lots of wonderful and varied poetry, and in our poetry writing we've been learning about how poets write about things that they observe and care about, that poets should pay close attention to the world around them and the feelings inside, and that poets revise their poems as they write. The students have enjoyed reading their poems to each other, and there have been lots of emotive and humorous poetry! Coming up in our writing, we'll learn more about language, form, revision, and building poetry anthologies. You can read some of the poems we've been inspired by here and read some of our poems below!
|
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
Categories
All
|