We’re part way through our most recent read aloud, The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate The class has grown quite fond of the gorilla protagonist Ivan and his crew of animal friends, and we're curious to learn more about how Ivan ended up at the Big Top Mall, and his plan to make things better for him and his friends.
This week we made monochromatic landscape art inspired by our recent snowy outdoors! The students had fun represented the snows in different ways, and you can see your child's art piece on Seesaw. Watch the video below to see how the artist Simon Beck made his own type of art with snow! We wrote letters to Santa today, and then delivered them using Canada Post's Santa Letter-Writing program. It's always engaging to write to a meaningful audience, and there are few audiences as exciting as Santa Claus himself! We're hoping that he might write back to us before Christmas time, so we'll keep watching out for some class mail with anticipation! We’ve been learning all about fair tests, hypotheses, beams, pillars, materials, and conclusions in Science these days! You can check out the photos of some of our experiments, and watch the video to see a fair test of something people are using lots these days: masks! In grade three, we learn about measuring height in centimetres (and metres) and we also learn about the life cycles. To get started on these learning outcomes, this week we got some amaryllis plants in our classroom, with special help from the families of Rowen, Bruce, and Nathan! We will be tracking the growth of these plants over time and observing changes as their life cycles progress. The students especially enjoyed naming their plants, and we are curious to see how the plants grow in the weeks ahead!
We got to enjoy the first snowy week of this school year with a walk in the woods! The class enjoyed playing hide and seek amongst the trees and exploring the sights, sounds, and smells of the changing weather. We've also highly enjoyed the snow at recess this week (except for the long trudge to and from our recess zones)!
This week we've been honing our hockey skills in PE by practicing some floor hockey drills and games. Hockey is a very popular sport in our class, so many of the students have been elated to show off their hockey moves in the gym!
In reading for the next couple of months we’ll be shifting our focus to reading non-fiction texts! Our unit will be all about reading to learn, grasping main ideas, and accessing text structures. So far we’ve worked on previewing our books, identifying the main idea, extracting key points, and becoming experts so we can teach our peers about a topic. We read a bit about frogs this week, and so we drew frogs this week after becoming experts on the differences between frogs and toads. The students have really enjoyed choosing topics to read about and teaching their peers about what they’ve learned, and I’ve learned lots about interesting animals, vehicles, and many other topics already!
To remember the important sacrifices of our soldiers this Remembrance Day, our class made magnified red poppies that would have come from Flanders Fields. We made these flowers in the style of Georgia O’Keeffe, who we learned about this Mondayin Art. Georgia O’Keeffe is famous for her magnified, detailed approach to portraying flowers. You can watch the videos below to learn more about Georgia O'Keeffe and her flower art. We celebrated Diwali in our class today, which is one of the most celebrated festivals in India! It is a Hindu holiday that is usually observed for five days, and we learned about some of the traditions and activities that make Diwali special. We made our own paper versions of rangoli and cleaned our classroom because many Indians believe that the Goddess Lakshmi only steps inside if your home is clean. We played games, enjoyed some sweets, and enjoyed lunch with some special lights (because Diwali is the festival of lights). You can watch the videos below to learn more about Diwali!
This week we started our new Science unit on Testing Materials and Designs! Miss Gramson is getting the students all set up to test a variety of materials and designs, and the students have already learned a lot about different structures!
In this unit, students will study the materials and designs used in construction tasks. They will compare paper, clay, cardboard, styrofoam, and other available materials to see which are the strongest—which ones resist bending, crushing, or tearing—and which are the most easily shaped and joined. They will test different shapes and thicknesses to find out what makes a structure strong and stable and to find out how much material is needed. Students will learn that many factors are considered the materials and designs are selected and that different tasks may require different materials and designs. In the coming weeks, students will learn to:
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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
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