Millgrove 3B

Student Vote 2021

9/17/2021

We've been paying attention to the federal election in 3B since the beginning of the year, and the students are eagerly anticipating finding out how the votes pan out on Monday! We've been viewing news coverage of the election during our current events time in Social Studies, and using the leaders' answers to Student Vote questions to inform our upcoming voting decisions. Perhaps the class' favourite election coverage has been viewing an election poll tracker to evaluate the odds of different governments being formed. Recently there was a 1% chance of a tie between the leading parties which was a fun possibility for the class to consider! On Monday each student will get to vote as part of Canada's Student Vote program along with thousands of other Canadian students, and we'll find out the results of both the federal election and student election on Tuesday!

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The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

9/16/2021

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Our class has been captivated this week by the chapter book The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, which we just started reading. It is about a vain, self-absorbed stuffed rabbit who finds himself on a fantastical adventure. The book has many surprising twists and turns, and we've used the book this week to practice our reading skills of making predictions, using clues from the text to infer, and checking for understanding. We can't wait to find out what happens next to Edward (I am asked multiple times each day if we will be reading Edward Tulane soon)!

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Dot Day

9/15/2021

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Today we celebrated Dot Day in 3B! Dot Day is based on the book "The Dot" by Peter Reynolds about a girl named Vashti who initially believes she can't draw, but later discovers that everyone can make a mark in the world. 15 million people in 181 countries are celebrating Dot Day this year, and we marked the occasion in 3B by dressing up in dots, working on a dot art project, and reflecting on how we can all make a mark in the world after reading the book. You can see the students' beautiful art, information about the artist Kandinsky who our art was inspired by, and the book "The Dot" below.

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Tacky Tourist Day

9/10/2021

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Today was Millgrove’s infamous Tacky Tourist Day for grade three classes, and the students did not disappoint! To celebrate the year ahead of learning about countries around the world, students dressed up in their cheesiest traveling gear. Our year of global learning is off to a great (and hilarious) start!

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Reading and Writing Workshop

9/10/2021

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We've been working hard in 3B over the last couple of weeks on our reading and writing! Grade three is a big year of growth for students as readers and writers, and we've been practicing building our stamina in both of those areas.

In Reading Workshop, we've been talking about how grade three readers build a powerful reading life, read as if books are gold, and read tons of within-reach books. Students have especially enjoyed reading on the Chromebook a couple of times and keeping track of how much they're reading.

Our Writing Workshop this year is starting with a focus on narrative writing. Our class has been hard at work examining examples of excellent grade three writing, learning about strategies to help us find writing ideas, and writing up a storm. It's a big job getting back into the swing of writing after the summer, but students are starting to get into more of a groove getting their ideas onto paper and having stamina during writing time. The students love getting to hear their peers' writing during our sharing time!

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Mapping and Social Studies

9/9/2021

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Grade three has one of the most exciting curricula of all the grades because we get to learn about places all around the world! Our Social Studies units in grade three are built around the theme of “Connecting with the World.” We will focus on communities in four countries:

Peru—Lima and the countryside around it
Tunisia—Tunis and a nearby village
Ukraine—Kyiv and the countryside around it
India—New Delhi and a nearby farming area

In our first unit, we've been locating the communities on maps and globes and working on reading maps and making maps. We’ll be studying life in the selected cities, towns, and villages in each of the countries. We will learn about:

Everyday life (including family roles, food, homes, schools, services)
Languages, customs, traditions, and celebrations.
How to create and use a simple map to locate communities studied in the world
Use cardinal and intermediate directions to locate places on maps and globes
Apply the concept of relative location to determine locations of people and places
Apply the terms hemisphere, poles, and equator

This unit will help develop an understanding and appreciation for people in other parts of the world. We're looking forward to "traveling the globe" this year in grade three!

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Word Study

9/8/2021

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This year for our spelling program in grade three, we will be using The Fountas & Pinnell Comprehensive Phonics, Spelling, and Word Study Guide. This resource is a systematic approach to teaching students about the crucial components for reading and writing words, including:

Phonological awareness
Letter-sound relationships
Spelling patterns
High-frequency words
Word meaning and vocabulary
Word structure
Word-solving actions

So far this week we've been working on consonant clusters (which are part of letter-sound relationships) and onsets and rimes (which are part of word-solving actions). Last week we completed a spelling inventory to determine individual students' developmental spelling level, and while we won't be writing spelling tests every week in 3B, I will be assessing students' reading and spelling over the course of the year to keep track of their progress. You can see some of our activities from this week in the photos below!

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Matisse Self-Portraits

9/8/2021

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Today we learned about the art of Henri Matisse, a painter who was very important in the style of fauve art where artists painted with wild colours. We read a book and watched the video below about Matisse’s art, and used his style to make our own self-portraits. The students did a wonderful job of imitating Matisse’s style, and their choices of pastel colours were lovely; you can see your child's portrait on Seesaw! We now have a very colourful set of class portraits.

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Rocks and Minerals

9/8/2021

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We’ve been digging deep into our science learning about rocks and minerals this week! We’ve worked on classifying and sorting objects, tapping into our geological background knowledge, and next week we will be tasked with the very important mission of helping geologist Jess Geo from the Royal Alberta Museum. Jess is asking us to help sort some minerals that got jumbled up in transit, and we will start our mission next week by profiling each of the ten minerals.

In our unit on Rocks and Minerals this term, we’ll be learning lots of important concepts about materials that make up the Earth’s crust:

Compare samples of various kinds of rock, and identify similarities and differences.
Given a description of the properties of a particular rock or mineral, identify a sample rock or mineral that matches those properties. Properties that students should be able to describe and interpret include:
- colour
- lustre or “shininess”; e.g., shiny, dull,
- glassy, metallic, earthy
- texture; e.g., rough, smooth, uneven
- hardness, based on scratch tests with
- available materials
- presence of carbonates.
Describe and classify a group of rocks and minerals, based upon the above properties.
Recognize that rocks are composed of a variety of materials; and given a coarse-grained rock and magnifier, describe some of the component materials.
Recognize and describe the various components within a sample of soil; e.g., clay, sand, pebbles, decaying plants; and describe differences between two different soil samples.
Describe ways in which rocks break down to become soil, and demonstrate one or more of these ways; e.g., by shaking a group of small, soft rocks in a jar of water; by striking rocks together.
Describe some common uses of rocks and minerals; and identify examples of those uses within the school, home or local community.

Students are welcome to bring interesting rocks or minerals from home to share with the class during our science class. They've already bringing some in to share, and there have some very cool specimens so far!

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Cooperative Games

9/7/2021

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This month in PE we've been playing some playground activities, cooperative games, and centres in the gym. So far the students especially enjoyed caterpillar traveling and scooters. It's wonderful to see them working together!

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Mystery Person Writing

9/3/2021

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Today during our writing time each student wrote a piece about themselves. They didn't include their names in their writing, and then at the end of writing time we mixed up the writing books and did a gallery walk to guess who wrote the different descriptions. The class really enjoyed guessing the different writers and the big reveal afterward. Some of the descriptions were very detailed but still stumped the whole class!

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Increasing Patterns

9/2/2021

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We started our focus on increasing patterns in math this week. Increasing patterns can often prove to be tricky, but the students in 3B have worked hard to describe, reproduce, extend, and create increasing patterns over the past week. You can practice increasing patterns by taking the link to the game below

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Postcard Writing

9/1/2021

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To kick off our writing in grade three, each student wrote a postcard to a Millgrove staff member this week! Students told their recipient about their past few months, what they thought about school, and asked questions about the recipient's summer. It will be exciting when we get some responses back in our mailbox! You can see your child's postcard on Seesaw.

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First Day Done, 181 to Go!

8/30/2021

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What a great first day It was a pleasure to meet all the lovely new students of 3B, and to get to know them today! I can tell it's going to be a great year with this group of children (in my very favourite grade, grade three)! We got to go to library today and have recess on the back park today, and the students were very gracious in getting to know each other and our new classroom. I can't wait to see what the rest of our school year has in store!

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The Countdown is On!

8/25/2021

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I have been looking forward to meeting our class all summer, and can't believe that we get to meet each other in just a matter days now. Back to school is upon us!

Some of my favourite activities in the classroom include reading books, using technology to create, and most importantly developing relationships with my students. Grade three is such an exciting grade because we get to employ so much newfound independence and learn about all sort of interesting content such as rocks and minerals, countries around the world, numbers up to 1000, not to mention grow so much as readers and writers!

My kids Jack and Ellie have been coming with me during the summer to set up our classroom, and we've had a nice relaxed summer together with Mr. Barker (you can see the video below of some summer moments). You can see the photos below to get a sneak peek of our classroom, and it will look even lovelier with all the students here next week.

I can't wait to hear about all of your summers soon!

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Lots to Be Proud Of

6/29/2021

The students of 3B have so much to be proud of from this strange and challenging year! Today they each received an award suited to their individual talents, treasured quirks, and merits. We've had such a remarkable group of students this year who worked so well together, and I am proud of each and every one of them!

Spray Park Fun

6/24/2021

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The class had a blast today celebrating the end of a wonderful year and enjoying some time at the spray park! You can see some photos below of all the fun that was had.

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The Pie-ing of Mrs. Barker

6/21/2021

Our class won our grade’s Spellathon fundraiser this year, so they have been eagerly anticipating the opportunity to pie Mrs. Barker. That moment finally came when Austen got to enact this pie attack, and needless to say, the class was delighted!

Among Us Review Games

6/18/2021

Among Us is incredibly popular with some of the students in our class, so this week we had a couple of days to have some fun with that theme. We wrote using an Among Us prompt, played a real-life Among Us Math Scavenger Hunt, and completed some challenging Math missions in an online Among Us format. The students enjoyed creating their own avatars, completing the Math tasks, and figuring out who the imposters were. It was a fun way to review some of our learning from this year!

Classifying Animals and Different Developmental Stages

6/16/2021

We’ve had a blast learning about life cycles this term! This month we've learned about different classes of animals and how to classify them, along with the major differences in life cycles between different classes of animals. We got to look at some real-life specimens of different species' eggs, larvae, and juvenile stages, and the students are becoming true experts on animals' development. Their zoology knowledge is truly top-notch!