Our amaryllis plants have continued to rocket up in their growth! Because we learn about life cycles in grade three, we're continuing to observe our plant "Greeny" as it loses its flowers and will continue to grow its leaves. Our plant "17 Centimetres" has grown exponentially in the past month, and many flowers have blossomed this week. Our latest measurement of "17 Centimetres" had the plant pegged at a height of 70 cm which means it has grown 53 centimetres since we planted it! You can watch the video below to see a time-lapse of another amaryllis growing. |
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A group of students this week practiced and performed a riveting reader's theatre of Cinderella today! It was very fitting for our recent exploration of Cinderella and various adaptations of that story in our fairy tale unit, and the play was entertaining and well-received by the audience!
The students were excited to start our new Science unit on building this week! In this unit, students will use a variety of tools and simple techniques to build things for specific purposes. Their tasks will include building a bridge to span a gap, a model playground, and a stool to hold a person. Through these projects, students will learn the value of safety and good workmanship and that different materials and designs can be used to obtain the same result. We will talk about how working together on a common task is easier when ideas and materials are shared collaboratively. We’ve already had fun planning and building vases to hold a bouquet of flowers and a gift box to hold a chocolate, and the students are eagerly planning their model playgrounds for next week! Currently 3B is learning about classic and fractured fairy tales in our writing time. Fractured fairy tales are based on classic fairy tales, but the setting, characters, problem, solution, or some other element of the story are changed. The students have had great fun reading a variety of fractured fairy tales, and are working on their own fairy tale adaptations during writing time. We’ve been talking about how to write with cohesion, write with a clear story structure, balance narration with description and dialogue, and plan our scenes with story-planning booklets. The class was thrilled to have Mrs. Weisienburger back in our class this week to continue our lessons on feelings. This week we reflected on how to listen to our feelings and give them what they need, and we learned about the concept of resilience. The class had a blast learning with Mrs. Weisenburger as usual!
This month our class is starting a Math unit on multiplication and division! Multiplication and division are basic computational skills that children must eventually master in order to succeed in higher levels of mathematics. The focus of this unit is developing an understanding of the process of multiplication and division in order to develop strategies for multiplying and dividing whole numbers up to 5 x 5. Children will use counters, number lines, and arrays to develop their understanding. In this unit, the students will:
You can encourage your child to share different strategies used to multiply and divide. We use multiplication and division in many day-to-day situations. Here are some suggestions for activities you can try at home:
3B had been working hard in December on Christmas "important books" for their families. We focused on crafting interesting descriptions and making our ideas clear to our audience (who were the students’ families). You can see the original The Important Book below to see our inspiration. The class made the wrapping paper, cards, and everything, and were very proud of their creations. We hope you enjoyed their lovingly authored Christmas books! Merry Christmas! Our class of students have been a resilient, hard-working, and conscientious bunch in this unusual school year, and I’m looking forward to what the New Year brings for learning and community in our classroom!
A trailer for the Citadel's production of A Christmas Carol (a different adaptation from the David van Belle one we watched this year) ![]() This week we explored a mini-unit on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. We read the book, watched this year's Citadel play production (which was available virtually because of the pandemic), and watched the Muppet's film version. The students enjoyed comparing the different adaptations of the story, and examining the history of why Charles Dickens wrote the story and how its message is still important today. To cap off our unit, we played Jeopardy to review our knowledge of the story and the students earned an impressive $3300 (not that the money matters so much, as we learned from Ebenezer Scrooge of course). It was lovely to see the class embrace the Christmas spirit and remember the importance of kindness and generosity this week! |
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
December 2020
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