mrsbarker.ca - Millgrove 3B

The Royal Alexandra ER

10/25/2021

We are lucky to have a connection to the Royal Alexandra ER through the mom of one of our students (Rowen), and she sent along some lovely photos of her and her colleagues with the cards we made for them! She also sent along this message with some interesting facts about the ER:

Did you know for every 8 hour work shift we have approximately;
28 Registered Nurses
4 Doctors
2 Respiratory Therapists
2 Licensed Practical Nurses
1 Ortho Tech
2 Health Care Aides
3 Service Aides
2 Social Workers
3 Unit Clerks
3 Housekeeping staff

It takes ALL of these people to run our Emergency Department and we work together as a team to take care of all of our patients. This team is required to make sure everything from the patient rooms being clean and stocked full of equipment all the way to life saving measures by our medical team. It truly takes a BIG group effort! We have approximately 68 beds in our Emergency Department. I attached a picture of what we wear going into each and every patients room to keep ourselves protected as well as our patients protected. I love being a Registered Nurse!

The class was so thrilled to see these photos and hear from Rowen's mom and Justin's mom from the Misericordia ICU, and we continue to be so grateful for all these health care professionals' work. There were many aspiring nurses in our class after learning more about their important jobs!

The Scream

10/23/2021

In a month that we often associate with fear, we were inspired to paint like Edvard Munch and make our very own versions of his piece “The Scream.” We learned about Munch’s history as an artist, and looked at many examples of other artists’ adaptations of “The Scream.” The students painted their own background of a sunset on the fjord, and posed with their best poses of terror. Their expressions were simply wonderful, as you can see below!

The Rock Cycle

10/22/2021

This week in Science we’ve been learning all about the rock cycle, and the three types of rocks: igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic. Jess Geo sent us a video message responding to a message that our student Taylor had sent her, and she gave us lots of useful information about different igneous rocks! You can see her video below. We looked at examples of each type of rock and examined their properties just like a geologist. You can check out the extra videos below to learn a bit more about rocks and how they are formed!

Earthquake in Alberta

10/21/2021

It was quite serendipitous that just as we're starting to wrap up our unit on Rocks and Minerals, Alberta experienced an 4.1-magnitude earthquake! Many of the students and staff at school had felt the earthquake, and it was a great opportunity to discuss the Earth's crust, tectonic plates, and seismic activity. It certainly brought our learning about the Earth's crust to life this week!

Skip Counting and Estimation

10/21/2021

We’ve been putting together many of our building number sense skills in 3B this month as we worked on creating amounts with coins, estimating up to 1000, and skip counting by 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s, and 10s. We also enjoyed some graphing this month, and had fun reading a book all about animals and numbers. You can try some of the estimation and skip counting games below and take a look at some pictures of what we’ve been up to in Math class!

Take Me Outside Day

10/21/2021

We celebrated the 11th annual Take Me Outside Day this week, which is a Canadian initiative that encourages schools to extend the classroom beyond four walls and a desk to engage with natural areas. Our class has really enjoyed our time in the woods this year, and during this pandemic especially it’s lovely to take a break from the classroom and get some fresh air. The day before Take Me Outside Day, we took part in a concert by Remy Rodden who sang songs about Canada’s flora and fauna, and taught us some interesting facts about the outdoors. We joined thousands of other classes across the country and had lots of fun exploring the forest and playing hide and seek!

Badminton in PE

10/21/2021

This week we got to practice our badminton skills in PE! It is tricky to learn to control the birdie with the racket, but the students worked hard and got some great rallies in by the end of the week. You can watch the world's longest badminton rally below, which was 108 shots!

Rights and Responsibilities

10/16/2021

Our next Social Studies unit is about children’s rights and global citizenship. We will study the basic needs and rights of every child and how agencies such as the United Nations and Doctors Without Borders help children around the world.

This week, we talked about the rights to food, water, a healthy life, and a home. Students reflected on the rights that we have as citizens (and children), and the responsibilities that accompany those rights. We thought about children who don't always have those rights guaranteed, and on Friday we wrote letters to refugees through the Red Cross as we reflected on the right to a home.

We will be discussing rights, responsibilities, and roles of citizens in communities around the world, and considering whether they are the same as or different from those of Canadian citizens.

Students will also learn how individuals and groups contribute to positive change in the world. They will also be thinking about how their actions might affect people elsewhere in the world and how the actions of others might affect them. The respect for and equality of all human beings are central to our lessons.

During this unit, I encourage you to ask your child about children’s rights and basic needs. Ask them to share with you the stories we are studying in class, and share with them examples of how you and members of your household have helped others in a time of need.

Dress Like a Teacher Day

10/16/2021

The classrooms of Millgrove featured a plethora of very professionally-dressed students today as students showed up as educators for Dress Like a Teacher Day! Teachers dressed up as students, and I am sad to report that Miss Gramson and I got some very stern warnings from the 23 teacher-doppelgangers in the class. Mr. Cherry, or "Michael" as we called him that day, visited our classroom and got in quite a lot of trouble as well. The students seemed confident in their disciplinary skills, and certainly dressed the part for the day!

Small Moment Publishing

10/15/2021

We wrapped up our writing unit on writing about small moments this week by publishing our seed stories that the class has been working so hard on! The class typed up their stories on the Chromebook, edited and revised them, and then illustrated them. To celebrate our published stories, the students got to enjoy a sweet treat, read their stories to a buddy, and we watched the movie The Fantastic Flying Books of Sir Morris Lessmore all about the magic of books and writing. We’ve now sent our writing to Mrs. Smith who is adding barcodes to them so that they become books in the Millgrove Library that the rest of the school can check out and read!

Mystery Mineral Identification

10/13/2021

In our continuing work for Jess Geo this month, we learned about a variety of properties of minerals and conducted some tests to describe our minerals' properties. Very excitingly, we were able to identify the minerals sulfur, muscovite, magnetite, halite, obsidian, talc, fluorite, and quartz for Jess Geo this month using the properties of smell, streak colour, light properties, colour, shape, hardness, lustre, magnetism, and texture! We hope that she will be impressed by our work, and we'll get to learn about the rock cycle next week!

Health Care Heroes

10/13/2021

Here are some photos of the health care professionals who received our cards last week! The class was so excited to see some of the staff who we sent our cards to, and we continue to be so grateful for all the work they're doing!

Feeling Thankful

10/8/2021

As our class was reflecting on Thanksgiving this week, one of the topics we touched on was how lucky we are to have the health care professionals who are taking extra care of our province in this pandemic season. To try to pass along a small token of our gratitude, we wrote cards to different people that our class is connected to who are helping during this pandemic. We especially wrote cards to the ICU at the Misericordia Hospital and the Emergency Department at the Royal Alexandra Hospital because two students in our class have special connections to those hospitals who were kind enough to deliver some cards to their colleagues. 3B wishes you a very happy Thanksgiving!

Mapping

10/7/2021

We’ve officially wrapped up our unit on maps this week as we made our own maps along with directions to an important location on the map. We’ve learned about how to create and use a simple map, use cardinal and intermediate directions, and apply the terms hemisphere poles, and equator. The students also worked hard to remember the locations of the countries we’ll be learning about this year (Tunisia, Ukraine, India, and Peru). You can watch the video below for more ideas on how to draw a pirate map!

Leaf Art

10/5/2021

Using some leaves we collected in the forest, and some that families sent in, we enjoyed making art with some autumn leaves! We read the book The Leaf Man by Lois Ehlert (see the video below) and were inspired by her leaf illustrations to make our own leaf animals. The students were very creative and careful with their leaves. You can see your child's leaf art on Seesaw!

Our Student Teacher Miss Gramson

10/4/2021

We are extremely lucky to have welcomed the wonderful Miss Gramson to our classroom this past week! Miss Gramson will be with us until December as she completes her final practicum for her Elementary Education degree at the University of Alberta. It's been great to have another teacher in our classroom, and Miss Gramson's warmth, thoughtfulness, and great teaching have already been a great asset to our class. She started teaching some Social Studies this week, and we can't wait to have her teach more next week!

Orange Shirt Day

9/29/2021

We commemorated Orange Shirt Day today to remember and recognize children who were affected by residential schools in Canada's past. The students showed great compassion and respect, and we had excellent conversations about how we can ensure that children are never treated like that again in our country. We spent the day watching a Peace Pipe Ceremony, listening to Elders, learning about mikiwahp (tipis), making some reflective art, & planting tree seeds to honour Indigenous people impacted by the tragedy of residential schools. You can watch the videos below to learn more about Orange Shirt Day.

Terry Fox Run

9/28/2021

We ran our annual Terry Fox run today and Millgrove seemed likely to meet our fundraising goal! The students were very inspired by the story of Terry and how he put others first. They ran hard in the run, and showed great concern for the people they were running for. Our class helped to make the assembly video for this year's run, which you can see above!

Writing Personal Narratives

9/24/2021

We've been learning a lot this month about how to craft personal narrative stories during our writing lessons, and this week we learned from authors like Karen Hesse in Come On Rain about how to make our writing powerful and meaningful. The students have chosen a "seed" writing piece that we will continue to revise and edit in the coming weeks. We learned that Robert Munsch never publishes a story until he's told it at least 100 times, and while we won't write 100 drafts of our writing pieces, we're learning that it takes a lot of refining and writing to get a book published!

Forest Walk

9/22/2021

We went on our first adventure to the Participark today, and the students enjoyed exploring the sights and sounds and playing and hide and seek in the woods. All in all, it was a warm but successful first trip to the Participark!