In spite of some limitations that we had because of pandemic protocols, our class still had a very lively and fun Halloween at school. Students got to wear their costumes all day, which they found quite exciting, and we had quite an array of book characters, video game stars, conniving villains, and many other clever costumes in 3B. We enjoyed doing some Halloween-themed activities in the morning, and then this afternoon we took part in Millgrove’s virtual Halloween Parade and watched a Halloween movie. I can’t wait to hear about their Halloween weekends when I see the the students next week! We’ve been reading and writing poetry this week in Language Arts, and wrote a variety of different types of poetry this past week. The students worked hard to make interesting word choices and tried to paint pictures in their readers’ minds. They are very proud of their variety of poems, and you can see more of your child's poetry on Seesaw!
This week, our class learned about different materials that make up soil, namely minerals, air, water, and organic material, and students enjoyed contrasting the textures, appearances, and components of the peat moss, clay, and sand that we compared in class. We also learned about one of the most common chemicals on Earth: calcium carbonate. We talked about the many uses of this chemical, and its prevalence in many rocks and minerals like calcite and calcium carbonate. Our class tested for calcium carbonate's presence in chalk, shells, and limestone using acid and we found it present in all three! In Math this past week, we are starting a new unit on addition and subtraction. Your child will develop strategies for adding and subtracting whole numbers by using open number lines, addition charts, mental math, estimation, Base Ten Blocks, place-value mats, and pencil and paper.
In this unit, your child will:
Here are some suggestions for activities you can engage in with your child:
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!
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!
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!
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!
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!
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! 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. 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!
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! 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! 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!
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!
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! 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!
|
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
|